A Be Price Auto Bio Story

Memoirs of a Survivor

MEMOIRS OF A SURVIVOR:MY LIFE UNDER NAZI OCCUPATION

BY

ABE PRICE

(ABRAM PIASECKI)

Auschwitz Inmate Number B - 3266

Funded in partnership with theSunrise Children’s Foundation and the Community Foundation of Collier County

and the Collier County School District

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D E D I C A T I O N

In loving memory of Our Parents: Hershel Piasecki and Esther Waintraub Piasecki and

Chaim Dymensztain and Rivka Nirenberg Dymensztain

Our Brothers and Sisters, Nephews and Niece: the M. W. Klein family and 3 sons,

the Pisarek family and 3 sons, the I. Lieberman family and son,

the I. Dymensztain family and daughter,Moses Isaac Piasecki and Rachel Fridchai Piasecki,

Szymon Piasecki and Luba Aronowicz Piasecki

Our Uncles, Aunts and Cousins:the David Hochman family, the Shmul Waintraub family,

the David Rosenbaum family, the Becalel Piasecki family,the Kanias family, the Grinbaum family, the Lefkowicz family,

the Chustecki family, the Goldwasser family, the Rawicki family,the Goldblum family, the Urbaitel family, the Zaifman family,the Aronowicz family, the Fridchai family, the Brown family,

and the Strauch and Czapnik families.

Our Teachers:Mr. Micenmacher, Mr. Gothart, Mr. Cytryn,

Ms. Aizensztat, Mr. Witlin, Dr. Feuer, Dr. Paist, Dr. Feiler, andProfessors Gruabart, Majewski, Ellenbogen, Rotensztraich,

Witlin, Brand, Fisz, Manela, and Rabbi Dichtwalt

All of my wonderful friends, that were murdered,

and

All of our relatives who did not survive the Holocaust, but whose spirits are with us today and forever

through our descendents, the Price families,the Pierce families, the Rose families,

the Dymensztain familiesand the Piasecki families

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Acknowledgments

My gratitude goes to three ethnic German women. Mola Johanna, her mother and sister-who savedmy life by feeding me and giving me civilian clothing, after I escaped from the death march with my friend Ernst Tauber, on January 19 -1945.

“Thank you” also goes to four Collier County teachers.

Theresa Demery for motivating me to write my memoirs. I acknowledge all the help she has given me - for word processing my typed manuscript and transferring it to a disc.

Thank you, Dr. Jami Jones, for putting me and my family on the World Wide Web.

Thank you, Mr. Dave Bell, for editing my book and for creating,together with Mrs. Michelle Lee and their students, a Holocaustmuseum.

A special thank you to my lovely and great family for encouraging me to write my autobiography.

The power of choosing between good and evil is withinthe reach of all.

The world would be a better place to live, if there would not be any hatred, prejudice and discrimination.

Abe Price

Copyright - I997 by Abe Price. All rights reserved.

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MEMOIRS OF A SURVIVOR:MY LIFE UNDER NAZI OCCUPATION

Early Life in Poland

I go way back, to when I was five years old. My parents were industrialists who had a shoe factory with many employees. The shoes were hand made and sold to retail shoe stores in cities, like Krakow, Sosnowiec, Katowice and other cities in Poland. Our mother was busy with five sons and helped in our business. We had full time domestic help. Surrounded with a loving family, l was happy and safe. We lived in a big apartment building in the center of the city, next to the city hall. My neighbor Slawek was my age and we had lots of fun playing together. Most of our neighbors were Catholic, and we got along with them very well.

Seweryn, my oldest brother, was a senior in high school, and Moses Isaac was a junior. Szymon was a freshman, and I remember very well when he took me to school to register. I was 7 years old. The private elementary school was only one block away from our house. When I started school I spoke only Polish, and in school we had to learn Polish and Hebrew, besides arithmetic, the bible and geography. Charles, my older brother, was in third grade when I started school.

At age seven, I traveled by train with my parents to a wedding of my aunt Raizl. The trip by train was bad and I got very sick. At the wedding I had lots of fun with my cousins. I remember the good food, and the cold winter.

We had a nice family from my mother’s side, and also from my father’s side. There were twelve children in my father’s family. I enjoyed my family very much, especially Uncle David. Uncle David was always with us, either in the house or in the store and everybody liked him. He was like a grandfather to me.

Anti-Semitism was rampant in Poland. Personally I never experienced it, until one day, Sendek, a friend of Slawek’s older brother cornered me in the entrance to our house and he started choking me. He beat me up and went to visit with his friend Tadek Zelaskiewicz, who was Slawek’s brother. As soon as he left, my brother Szymon came with a friend of his. I told Szymon what happened and after he talked to his friend Abram Czarny, they split up. Szymon was waiting for Sendek at the front entrance to the house and Abram Czarny was standing guard at the back entrance. Sendek came out from his friend’s apartment, and seeing Szymon by the front entrance, ran to the back entrance where Abram Czarny was waiting for him. My brother and his friend took good care of Sendek, and he never came back to see his friend Tadek again. At that time I was only ten years old and Szymon gave me my first lesson in how to defend myself.

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The year was 1933 and Hitler came to power in Germany. His poisonous behavior and propaganda with anti-Semitic demonstrations found a sympathetic reaction in Poland. Although Anti-Semitism in Poland was rampant, it got only worse after the Nazis came to power in Germany. After the Polish Marshal, Pilsudski, died, the situation and treatment of the Jews, by the authorities, got worse. They even established a concentration camp called "Kartuz Bereza" modeled after the Nazi camps. Many Jewish men were incarcerated there, without a trial, for a lengthy time.

Jewish people did a lot of business with their Catholic neighbors but there was no social interaction between the two. Therefore, we had our own social clubs and sport clubs. There were four Jewish sport clubs in our city, and the Maccabe Club even had its own tennis courts, volleyball, ice skating rink and basketball court. Our life was still good. My Uncle David always took me to the Jewish Theater performances, and I can’t forget the "Professor Mamlock" performance. The play was about a Jewish doctor, how the “GESTAPO" closed his office and arrested the doctor. The Nazis did that with all Jewish doctors and lawyers in Germany.

The year is 1935 and after Pilsudski died, Rydz Smigly became the new “Marshal" in Poland. Under his leadership, the situation for the Jewish population got worse. Jewish students in the universities were forced to sit in their classrooms on the left side; otherwise they were beaten up. My brother Moses got beaten up so badly one day for refusing to sit on the “Jewish side” that they almost killed him. Even traveling to school became a problem. Our school was located on the outskirts of town and quite often I had to fight Catholic students on my way to and from school. Despite this prejudice, as a fifteen year old, my family still had basically everything we needed and plenty of food. We remember the bad things, but we also had very nice neighbors and friends that were Catholic. We had a beautiful family life. Our parents worked hard, treated their employees very nice, and brought us up with love and dignity. *The problems of discrimination just seemed part of life.

There was a very nice park in our city, where we used to go to relax and enjoy the spare time under the beautiful trees or by the lake. One-day signs appeared saying, "Dogs and Jews not allowed." This was Polish “democracy” before the war. One evening Seweryn came home badly beaten up and my parents wanted to know what happened. He told them that together with two of his friends, he went to the City Park, and some students he knew attacked them. The next day one of the students came in to our store to apologize. He was afraid that we would press charges against him. When he started to talk to my mother, she slapped him.

Certain memories become imprinted in your brain from childhood. In 1936, when I was thirteen years old, there was a "pogrom" in a small town called Przytyk. There were a few Jewish people killed, and one of the funerals of the victims took place in my city, Kielce. There was a funeral procession with a black caravan, and on the top of the caravan were two caskets and five little children were sitting on them. Inside these caskets were the parents of these five orphans. It was heartbreaking to watch the funeral procession going through the business district and main streets of the town.

The city of Kielce belonged to the Bishops of Krakow and until 1863 Jews were not allowed to live there! In addition to the sport clubs in our city, we also had many Jewish social clubs and political organizations. The domineering ones were the Zionist

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organizations. Many speakers came to talk, but I admired Vladimir Zabotinski the most. He was the greatest Jewish leader in the 20th century. Besides being a great political leader he was a teacher, a writer, a poet and lecturer.

In 1938, Nazi Germany seized Austria. There was no fighting and the Austrians greeted the Nazis with flowers and open arms. The Germans installed a Nazi type government in Austria, and then immediately terrorized the opposition. Many Jewish people were deported to Poland from Austria and Germany and many were arrested and sent to concentration camps. The “euthanasia" program was in full swing and many disabled children and adults were killed in Germany and Austria. At that time they had six euthanasia camps.

Dr. Karl Brandt was the head of the medical board and chief of the euthanasia program. In all these camps, the doctors performed medical and surgical experimentations on the disabled and sick people. They killed them all, and sent notifications to their families that they died. All this was known to some people and well documented after the end of the war.

In November of 1938, a seventeen year old boy named Herszel Greenspan shot and killed an official in the German embassy in Paris. After that, the Nazis orchestrated a "POGROM" in Germany and Austria, called “Kristal Nacht". They arrested many prominent Jewish leaders and professionals and sent them to concentration camps. Many Jews were killed that night - synagogues were burned and property destroyed. The streets were full of glass, which is why it is known as “Kristal” Night.

In July of 1938, two of my friends and I decided to go swimming in a nearby town called Slovik. We went to the railroad station and tried to buy tickets at the ticket counter. At that time, a Polish railroad policeman arrested us and took us to a nearby building. He put us behind bars, and asked for I.D. cards. I had a school I.D. card so he told me to go out and to bring two zlotys for each one of us. At the time we were arrested, we were not told why we were being detained. I went to my brother Szymon’s and told him what happened. He said that he would go with me to find out why we were detained. His wife Luba told him not to go because he would get in trouble. Szymon went with me, and the policeman gave him a hard time and wanted to arrest him, too! Szymon got out from that little jailhouse, but the policeman, with the help of two others, detained him and charged him with “insulting the Polish nation."

Szymon had to go to court and received eight months in jail. The Appellate Court was in Krakow and Szymon received four months with a suspended sentence. At that time, two friends and I were arrested on false and trumped up charges that we dirtied up the railroad station with cigarette butts. None of us even smoked. Kielce was the most anti-Semitic city in Poland. My brother’s case did not go to the Polish Supreme Court because a few months later, on September first, World War II started.

In the spring of 1939, the Nazis occupied the Sudeten Land that belonged to Czechoslovakia. Great Britain and France actually gave Hitler a part of Czechoslovakia in order to avoid war, which the Nazis were threatening to make! We were still leading a “normal” life in Poland while the Jews of Germany and Austria were being deported to Poland. My parents took in a woman from Vienna, Austria. Seweryn took an excellent professional accounting job as controller. My brother Moses Isaac graduated from law

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school, Szymon had his own business and I was in high school. My plans were to graduate from high school, go to Israel, and then bring my family there. I became a member of the freedom Zionist organization whose aim it was to establish the independent nation of Israel – a land where Jews could be free, equal and not be discriminated against. The coming war would change these dreams.

My three oldest brothers wanted to enlist into the Polish army, but there was a secret order not to take Jews into the officer’s school. (It had to be secret because if men graduated from high school, the army supposedly “had” to enlist them into the officer’s school.)

That summer was very turbulent because the Nazis were threatening Poland with invasion. They wanted to take away from Poland the corridor to the Baltic Sea. Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact, which actually secretly divided Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union. Nazi Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939, and occupied the territory west of the river Bug. The Soviet Union attacked Poland from the east and occupied Poland east of the river Bug. World War II had started. We were second-class citizens in Poland, a country of 35 million people, 3.5 million of them Jewish.

Part Two: World War II Begins

In 1939, Nazi bombs destroyed many Polish cities. German troops attacked and crossed the borders of Poland. You can’t compare the Polish “horse and buggy” soldiers, with the Nazi motorized army. Many apartment buildings were deliberately bombed and destroyed. My parents, Charles and I packed suitcases and prepared to leave the city. We planned to go towards the eastern part of Poland, to the city of Lwow. We couldn’t find any transportation, however, so we decided to go to our Uncle David’s house. He had a very well built basement that would be safe from bombs. Szymon and his wife, Luba, were there, also another cousin.

On the fourth day after the war started there were no people on the streets, and the radio told us of the advancing German army on all fronts. On September 5, the German army occupied our city. We lived only five blocks from Uncle David’s house. On the way home we walked through the City Square filled with Nazi motorized troops. They were dusty and dirty.

There were no more bombs; life went on. Two days later, we reopened our shoe store. Together with many prominent citizens from our city, our father was taken hostage and had to spend a whole week in the city hall. After a week he was released, and other prominent citizens were taken as hostages. In Poland, before the war, every person had to be registered in the city hall, with information like age, race, religion, occupation and residency. If you moved to a different location, even in the same city, you had to register again. This was called “police registration.”

Our city had a big P.O.W. camp and there were many Polish soldiers and officers in it. Among the prisoners was Dr. Lesinski, a good friend of our cousin, Bronia Golblum. With the help of Dr. Stapholc and a Polish priest, Dr. Lesinski was taken out of the P.O.W. camp. Seweryn put up the Dr. in the Gringras apartment. He received a new I.D. as Dr. Lesniewski. We took good care of the Dr. and supplied him with food

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and everything he needed. Two weeks later, the Dr. went back to his hometown Wloclawek.

Our store was located on a main street in town and the German army marched down our street with many Polish prisoners. The Polish soldiers looked tired, dirty and hungry. My mother brought out all the bread we had in the house and a basket with apples and handed them to the hungry prisoners.

With all the schools closed, I helped out in our shoe store. One day a German soldier came in and picked out a pair of shoes but did not want to pay, and was leaving the store. I ran out of the store, found a German officer, and told him that a soldier just robbed us of a pair of shoes. He approached the soldier and took him back to the store, and told him to pay or to leave the shoes. He gave back the shoes but five minutes later, the soldier came back with his pistol drown, and threatened to shoot unless we gave him the shoes. My father simply gave them to him.

At the end of September, the Gestapo came to our store. They were six men in civilian clothes, and one spoke Polish. They closed up the store and took away the keys. Then they came to our house and searched. One of the men asked Seweryn if he was a soldier and was in the war. When Severyn told him no, he said to him: “If you were a soldier, Poland would have won.” They took with them a nice “Egzacta” camera with many filters, and said that they would get in touch with us. Every day the Nazis had new demands and new laws for us. People had to give up radios and cameras to the authorities, so we wrapped up a nice big “Blaupunct” and put our name and address on it. We never got the radio or the camera back. It may seem odd to others why these should be taken from Jews, but it later became very obvious

The Nazis established themselves in the city and found many supporters and paid informants to help them. They took over the nicest buildings and hotels, and kicked everybody out. They terrorized people, arrested some and killed others. Life was difficult and scary. They came in like vultures to rob, steal and terrorize the local population. There was the Gestapo, S.S., Schutz Police and the regular German army. The German army came in full force and took over two large military buildings and barracks where two Polish battalions were stationed before.

In the middle of October, the Gestapo came back to open the store. A new trustee came with them. His name was Kurt Harrer. They told us that the store would be under his management and trusteeship. I asked Kurt Harrer a question and he immediately slapped my face, and told me to take my hand out of my pocket when I talked to him. I was told to have “respect” for him. He wanted to impress the Gestapo. It took two days to take inventory and Kurt Harrer put a cashier in charge of collecting the money and depositing it daily in a German bank called “Deutsche Bank.” The cashier, Krystyna Mojecka was a Nazi collaborator. Our parent’s 100 employees stopped producing hand made shoes at their factory; only the store was left in operation. We all worked in the store without getting paid.

My brother Moses who was living in Warsaw, left the city and moved to Lithuania. His friend Rachel Fridchai joined him there, and her sister, Mrs. Zakas lived there with her family a long time. Rachel worked as a nurse and Moses worked as a bookkeeper in a flourmill. We received mail from him on a regular basis. Lithuania also was seized and came under Soviet “occupation” since the beginning of the war.

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Life Under the “Judenrat”

The Nazis formed a Jewish Council called “Judenrat” and appointed Dr. Moshe Pelc, as president. The Judenrat functioned as a Jewish authority with its own police force. They really had to fulfill all the Nazi orders. In one word, they worked for the Nazis. The Nazis had everything figured out according to their plans and instructions from their government. The chief rabbi, Rabbi Abele Rappaport, went into hiding. We did not have schools, sport clubs, movie theaters and no assembly place like synagogues. Life was getting harder every day. The Nazis confiscated many businesses and it was hard to get a job.

At the end of November, a new decree came out that all Jews have to wear a Star of David on their left arm. Seweryn said it was discriminatory, and decided to leave town and cross the border into the Soviet occupied territory. He took a few suitcases with the most necessary things and left the city on December 10th. He was smuggled across the border at the city of Belzec and arrived safely in Lwow where he found his friends, the Gringras family.

Soon after, the Nazis killed the city mayor, Mr. Artwinski, a very nice Polish man and installed their own German Nazi mayor, a Nazi by the name Rotter. Hauptman Geier was the chief of the German police and together with Ernst Thomas, the chief of the Gestapo, they terrorized the population of the city, especially the Jews. They took over the nicest and most modern apartment buildings and gave the people only a few minutes to get out. The Nazis needed the apartments for Germans that moved to town from Germany and Austria. Many German and Austrian Jews came to town, they were kicked out of their homes and homeland. These people needed jobs in order to support themselves and their families, but there were no jobs available except as informers or in German institutions like the S.S., Gestapo, or factories that the Nazis confiscated.

The Nazis operated with spies and informers. There were many ethnic Germans living in Poland that became very useful to the Gestapo. Also, many Poles became collaborators and informers, and there were even a few Jewish informers. Most of the Jewish informers were immigrants from Vienna. They started to work for the Gestapo and later became paid informers. We knew most of them, but not all. The winter of 1939 was very harsh. We usually prepared for the winter by buying lots of potatoes, coal, and wood for starting the stove. Our appliances were not as modern as we have today. We had a tile stove in the kitchen, and in order to cook a meal, a fire had to be made in the stove. Our bathrooms were also not as modern as today. We had no cars, telephones or TVs., only radios. We walked a lot, but everything was in walking distance. There were telephones, but not too many people had them. Life was nice, but more primitive.

My school was interrupted when I was a junior in high school, so I was working in our shoe store. So, in my spare time I read lots of books and studied hard at home. My parents were supporting four other families who did not have the means of supporting themselves. We were selling lots of shoes every day, but daily deposits had to be made into the "DEUTSCHE BANK".

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One day my father asked an older German soldier who came to our store if he knew why in World War I the Polish population greeted the German soldiers with flowers when they came to Poland. After the soldier looked around to be sure there was nobody else in the store he answered, “In World War I we came to free you, but today we come to enslave you.” The soldier had remembered. How much was different now!

We corresponded with Seweryn and Moses on a regular basis. Their mail and our mail were censored by the authorities and we had to be very careful what we wrote. The city of Kielce had 75 thousand residents and a third were Jewish. It was spring of 1940 and the Nazis had new rules for the Jewish population. We are not allowed to walk on certain streets, we could not go to the movies, and we could not “assemble” with more then three people at a time.

We also got a new trustee for our store (his name is Waclaw Roclawski), and a new cashier (Irena Lesiak). All Jewish shoe stores and factories were confiscated except three. Our store was one of the three that remained in operation. All the merchandise from the confiscated businesses was taken by the German authorities and shipped to Germany. The occupation force engaged in stealing and robbing the Jews of their possessions. In the month of January 1940 the Jewish population living on the main street, "Sienkiewicza," covering an area of 6 blocks on both sides of the street adjoining the railroad station, are given four hours to move out! Those buildings are the most modern and new. My brother Szymon and his wife are among them. They moved in with us, and Luba’s sister with her family moved to her parents.

Taken For Slave Labor

The war continued and the Nazis invaded and occupied Belgium, Holland, Luxemburg and France. The British kept fighting, and were bombed by the Nazis. At the end of July there was a roundup in the city. Our Polish neighbors Halina and Lotka Januszek pointed to our apartment, telling the S.S. “Jude”, which means Jew. A S.S. man with his machine gun knocked on our door. When we didn’t open the door, he was ready to break it down. It was early in the morning and our father was dressed in his prayer shawl saying his morning prayers. We opened the door. The S.S. man took my brother Szymon, Charles, and me out and led us to the city square. From there we are led together with many other young men to the Synagogue.

In the Synagogue are a few hundred people and more are brought in. We are surrounded with hundreds of S.S. troops, German police and Polish police. Hauptman Geier came inside the synagogue accompanied by his German shepherd and desecrated the holy place with his dog and bodyguards. He told us that we would be sent away to Lublin. Over 600 young boys and men were kept in the synagogue for two days.

On the third day we were marched under heavy guard toward the railroad station. Polish people were watching and some were very happy to see what was going on. We were put into cattle cars about 80 people to a car and the doors were closed; even the little windows were closed from the outside. It was almost impossible to breathe. The train traveled away from the city, and inside the cattle car it became unbearably hot. It was the end of July and it was hot even outside. We had no luggage, only the clothes on our bodies.

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After traveling a day and night we arrived in Lublin. The Lublin S.S. under the command of "Odillo Globocnick" were waiting for us. The fresh air felt good when the doors of the cattle car opened. We were driven and beaten with horsewhips through the streets of Lublin for five miles, until we reached the S.S. barracks. We were running for about four miles and were very tired. When Szymon took off his shirt his back was bloody, black and blue from the horsewhip the S. S. men hit him with when we were running.

The next morning we found out that the S.S. took out 60 boys and sent them to Belzec. At that time we thought that Belzec was a labor camp, but after the war we found out that Belzec was an extermination camp. Already in the summer of 1940 the Nazis were building such extermination camps.

After spending three days in the S.S. barracks in Lublin, we were transported again by cattle cars to Chrubieszow, and from there, by trucks to Mircze. Driving through Chrubieszow on a Saturday afternoon we were greeted with a hail of apples, pears, bread and challah that were thrown at us by the Jewish residents of that wonderful city.

When we arrived in Mircze, we were split up in different buildings, and my brothers and I ended up in the penal camp. It was a building with dirt floors, and lots of rats. We stayed in that building a few days and were moved into a barn. There were 50 of us in that barn. We slept on straw, and were guarded by ethnic Germans and Ukrainians. The camp Commandants were two Ukrainians by the name Chyra and Kozupski. We were building a highway. The camp had over 2,000 people, and was not too bad except that there were no bathrooms and facilities to take a shower. After we lived in the barn for two weeks we had lice. They were big, and you could not get rid of them.

The postmaster, a Pole by the name Eligjush Lyda, needed help in the post office and Szymon was picked for that job. Eligiush Lyda was a very nice man. He had a wife Myszka and two children.

While we were in the camp our parents were ordered to move the store to a different location. It was a big job to move the merchandise and fixtures a mile away, but our parents rented a store and with some help accomplished the job.

We received enough food in the camp, and we could buy some better food from the local farmers or in a store. After being there five weeks, Szymon’s wife Luba came with release papers from the Nazi authorities. Szymon went home and made arrangements with the postmaster to hire Charles and me. We worked without pay, but it was a better job than working on the highway. Charles and I moved to a private home in the village. Our landlady, Anna Kowalska, gave us a bedroom and some food, which was much better than the camp food. We paid rent and also for the food. The Kowalskis were nice people.

Help for the Married Men

We were in the camp seven weeks when a delegation from our city came. Dr. Pelc, the president of the Jewish council, sent the delegation with two assignments. The first one to distribute shoes, all kinds of clothing, soap, blankets and food. Charles and I received the delegation. We all distributed the clothing to the inmates from our

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city, and we asked our landlady if she would be willing to make supper for our four guests. Mrs. Kowalska agreed and we invited them for supper.

Our guests enjoyed the food very much, and wanted to have a private meeting with Charles and me. They had an idea to bribe the camp commandants, so that they would release 85 married men that had families to support. We told them that we would be happy to make the arrangements with the commandants. The Ukrainian commandants needed money to buy vodka. We arranged a meeting between our delegation and Mr. Chyra, and the next day he released 85 men as sick people. Everybody was happy - especially the families at home. What an experience for a 17 year-old boy that should be a senior in high school, instead of doing slave labor in a Nazi camp. Charles and I became heroes at home, and the people were very grateful to us.

The First Return Home

We were in the camp a total of 11 weeks when the weather started to get cold. We bribed Mr. Chyra and he let us go home. Our parents sent us money while we were in the camp and we bought from the farmers, lots of products. We sent home big containers with honey, poppy seed, flour, lima beans and a few products that were hard to get. Charles and I took a train and went home.

It was Saturday when we came home. Our mother was waiting at the train station for us. We took a carriage and drove home. We lived about one and a half-miles from the station. At home our father was waiting for us. He was afraid to wait for us at the train station. It was a Saturday and we are not allowed to ride, but we ignored that law, it’s a religious law. We washed, changed our clothing, and ate. There was a big celebration. Many relatives came to visit, and many friends. People came to find out about their sons and brothers. In that camp we received mail and packages, and we could send mail home. It was not the worst camp that I have been in. We were happy to be back home.

It was November and very cold. On Monday Szymon came and we went together with him to our new store. The store was nice and very well set up. The cashier was there, and we started to work right away. Our parents did not work in the store anymore, since we were there. Our father did not like to work for the "Trustee". There were many German customers. The Germans bought shoes and sent them home, because at home they could not get any. German officers from the army and police bought shoes for their wives and children. In the store we met a very nice police officer by the name Harold Kaessler from Hamburg. At home he had a chocolate factory. We befriended him and he treated us very good. He brought us food, and later on even brought food to us into the ghetto.

Life At Home

At the end of December 1940 our mother got sick. She had a kidney infection and the doctor was giving her shots to clear it up. One day after Dr. Pytel gave her a shot she got sick and unconscious. There were a few people in the house and everybody ran out to bring a doctor. I came back with Dr. Levinson pretty fast, because it was winter and I hired a sled to bring him to help mom.

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Before we knew it, there were seven doctors in our house. They examined my mother and went in another room to have a consultation. Dr.Szmeterling decided to take a pint of blood out of her arm. When this was done she opened her eyes. We were very happy, the doctors left instructions for us what we had to do. Szymon stayed up most of the night with her, my dad helped and Charles and I helped, too.

It took her a few weeks to recuperate, but her health was not the same, especially her memory. She went through a lot, raising five sons of which two were in exile and in one day the Nazis had taken her other sons to a slave labor camp. It was too much for her to endure. It was a real tragedy.

After Szymon and Luba had to move out of their apartment, they lived with us a few weeks, then rented a nice room from Salomon Kaner, a friend of our parents. Salomon Kaner had a jewelry store and was friendly to our family.

When the Nazis occupied Poland, we lost our domestic helper. It was against the law to employ a Catholic as a domestic helper in a Jewish household. When our mother got sick, we needed somebody to cook, because we did not know how. In Poland, men at that time did not help in the kitchen. This was a bad tradition, because everybody should know how to cook and prepare a meal! My sister in-law Luba came to our house to cook. That winter in Poland was unusually bad. One day in January of 1941 Luba slipped on the ice and fell in our back yard. Szymon saw her, picked her up and carried her to our apartment.

Outside was very cold, below zero. Luba had broken a leg and needed an orthopedic surgeon to take care of it. Dr. Kalish was one of the best surgeons and he took care of her. She was laid up for a few weeks. We made for her a special pair of boots that laced up to the knee. During Luba’s recuperation our Aunt, Esther Rachel, volunteered to help us out.

The Gestapo arrested Salomon Kaner’s son, and because he would not tell the Gestapo where his father had hidden the diamonds and gold jewelry, they beat him up so bad, that a few days later he died. Luzer Kaner was the first man buried in the new Jewish cemetery on Nowy Swiat. The death of Luzer Kaner was a big tragedy for the family and friends.

The Gestapo had an informer planted among our people that gave them vital information about business, industry and personal possessions that only a local man would know.

The Second Roundup and Escape!

In February of 1941 a Polish family kicked us out of our apartment. Our landlady Miss Stachowicz was nice and gave us another empty apartment in the same building.

We lived in that house for 24 years, 8 years before I was born. The landlady was Polish and very nice. We had many Polish friends in that building, especially Zyqmunt and Irena Kinastowski. They were brother and sister. They were wonderful people and helped us a lot.

Our new apartment was very big and had two entrances. One early morning there was a knock on the door. Outside stood a German policemen. I ran to the other door, but there was another German policemen standing there. They took Charles and me to the usual assembly place - the synagogue. In the yard of the synagogue were many young men, and Hauptman Geier was asking questions where everybody worked.

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I started to talk to him and he hit me over the head with his nightstick. Then he asked where we worked, and we told him that we worked in the shoe store, for our trustee. He said one of you can go home and the other will go to camp. Charles went home and I was sent by truck to a stone quarry about 15 miles away. A few trucks transported about 200 people to that quarry, called Wisniowka.

I was very well dressed, I had a nice pair of leather boots on and a light brown leather jacket. An ethnic German with a gun called me over and told me to follow him into a barrack. He liked my jacket and boots and I knew that he would shoot me in order to get my clothing. In the barrack he told me to build a fire, so it would be warmer. When I came into the barrack I saw a Polish man that used to work for my father. I said to him, “Kazik Kaleta you must help me, because this guard will shoot me and I have to run away from here”.

Kazik Kaleta told me: my truck is standing on the highway and as soon as it gets dark, jump on the truck and lay down. Thus I escaped from the camp before I was even registered. Before we came to the city Kazik told me to jump off the truck because German patrols were checking cars and trucks. I knew the city well and walked home through side streets. When I came into the apartment my parents and Charles were eating dinner, and the Sabbath candles were lit. It was Friday night. They thought that they were seeing a ghost, because I came home the same day. I was determined to escape from this slave labor assignment. After all, I had a little experience from the other camp. I was not afraid of anyone, I was born free, and would not bow down to anybody.

Our Move to the “Ghetto”

In April of 1941 our family was ordered to move into the ghetto. It was one week before Passover, when the Jewish council assigned to us a two-room apartment. The council assigned the same apartment to another family. There was nothing that would solve that problem. Both families had to share the apartment. They got the bigger room, there were eight of them and only four of us. We got the kitchen.

The Gestapo arrested Dr. Pelc and sent him to Auschwitz. He was a proud man and did not fully cooperate with the Nazis. Herman Levi, an industrialist, was appointed as president of the Jewish council. About 28,500 people moved into the ghetto that was located in the slums of the city.

Across the hallway there was a family with only two people. My father made a deal with them, he would pay rent for the whole apartment if they would give us the smaller room, also that he would buy a stove that the apartment didn’t have. The Isaac family agreed to that, and the Braitbort family was very happy, because we would move out from the kitchen and we would share the kitchen with them. Szymon and Luba rented a room from another family. Szymon was the only one that received permission to go out to work in the store. The ghetto was surrounded with a fence, with Jewish police inside and Polish police on the outside. Szymon had an I.D. that allowed him to go out in the morning from the ghetto, but he had to be back in the evening. Szymon was running the store and the cashier was there, too.

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Wladyslaw Zimnowoda became the chief of police, with 125 policemen. The informers from Vienna that were working for the Gestapo had to be given jobs in the Jewish police by Herman Levi. The Gestapo was “playing the music” and Levi “had to dance” to it. The undertaker had the busiest business in the ghetto. There was no way to make a living. There was no medicine if somebody got sick. Many people died from hunger and disease.

There were secret schools for children, in private homes. Maintaining our studies, even here, was important! Uncle David had a hard time - he was a rich man and now had to live in somebody’s kitchen. He once had a big house with tenants and had lots of money in the bank. Now everything was gone! We supported him and his wife, we helped uncle Samuel and his family and also aunt Eva and her family.

Many young people who lived in the ghetto found jobs in the factories and sawmills that the Nazis confiscated. They had to go out in groups to work, escorted by Polish or German police. They came back to the ghetto the same way. The workers were getting paid very little, but it was better than nothing. When they came back into the ghetto they brought with them certain food and products that they bought from the Polish people.

My brother Szymon was very talented and constructed a hiding place in the basement of the house where he lived. This hiding place could hold eight people and we used it several times during “roundups” which took place in the ghetto. We never were discovered when we used this, but during the final deportation in all of the confusion, our family did not use make use of this hiding place. One reason, perhaps was that the Nazis lied to us and told us that we were being resettled to the district of Lublin. If we had used the hiding place, perhaps we could have saved a few lives.

The Nazi police were making raids in the ghetto and stealing all they could. In June of 1941 the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. We were receiving packages with food from my brother Moses into the ghetto, but all that stopped in June. The mail from Lithuania and the Soviet Union stopped completely. Before we were sending large packages with clothing to Seweryn. He received two packages, but a third one came back to us while we were in the ghetto. Wladyslaw Zimnowoda, the police chief, was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Auschwitz. There were so many tragedies that occurred in the ghetto that it is hard to list them all. The Gestapo targeted educated people like doctors, lawyers, bankers, CPAs and wealthy businessmen. During the summer six men came into the ghetto, from the Soviet territories. They were all arrested and send to Auschwitz. After the war we found out who the informer was. It was a medic called “WLADEK”, who worked for the Gestapo five years and gave them vital secrets and information. Wladek worked in the hospital and he was the one that was purchasing medication in the Polish drug stores outside the ghetto. Wladek worked in the hospital inside the ghetto. The hospital was organized by Dr. Pelc. When Wladek went out from the ghetto, and that happened quite often, he met with his Gestapo contact, and gave him information about the activities inside the ghetto. He was the most damaging informer that lived in the ghetto, later in the small ghetto, and finally in the Henrykow camp, until we came to Auschwitz. There, the political division at Auschwitz took Wladek to their headquarters, and we never saw him again. The Nazis used people and then got rid of them because they didn’t want to have any witnesses or people that knew too much of their operations.

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Home Again !

We did not receive any mail from Seweryn and Moses for a long time, and our worries grew. Life in the ghetto, however, went on. The council gave us a two-room apartment and we moved in with our furniture and belongings. It was nice to have privacy. On Passover night of 1942 the Gestapo killed many people and arrested others. Among the killed were Dr. Szatz, Dr. Serwetnik, a banker Marek Rosenberg, and many others. Among the arrested were our cousin Gustaw Rawicki, the brothers Sercarz, Epstein, Spigle, Dr. Szmeterling, Dr. Klainberg and many, many others.

Gustaw Rawicki worked as head bookkeeper in the office of the stone quarry at Kadzielnia and was needed there. Therefore Mr. Maslowski intervened on his behalf with the Gestapo, and our cousin was released. A few others were also lucky. Mr. Maslowski worked as assistant to Anton Klotz, a German with a high position and an executive officer at Kadzielnia, and he was released. Another man who was released was Helmut Spigle. Helmut Spigle was released in order to become an informer for the Gestapo.

The rest of the arrested people were sent away to Auschwitz. After the Nazis sent Wladyslaw Zimnowoda to Auschwitz, Bruno Schindler became Chief of Police. He was from Vienna. In April of 1942 Charles and I got sick from “typhus”. We were hospitalized for three weeks and went home. Szymon took us home with a carriage. While we were in that hospital, visitors were not allowed because it was an infectious and contagious disease. At home our parents’ nursed us back to health. We were very lucky. Hundreds of people died every week in the “hospital”.

The last letter we received from Moses, came in the spring of 1941. In his letter he told us that he was planning to get married to Rachel. They did get married in March of 1941, and on September 1, 1941, he and Rachel were murdered by the Lithuanians, together with all 7,000 Jewish people of Mariampole. This I found out after the war was over.

Return to Work

Four weeks after we came out of the hospital, Charles and I were forced by the Jewish Council to go to work in the stone quarry called Kadzielnia.

Luba’s father, Luzer Aronowicz, was a carpenter and worked very hard in order to support his family. He got very sick and two weeks later died. He was a prince of a man, a wonderful husband and father and only 51 years old. We were all sad and felt sorry for the family, especially our sister in-law Luba.

We worked in the stone quarry very hard, made friends with some Polish people, and some took advantage of us. We bought grain and food and took it home after work. My memoirs are accurate but it is very hard for me to explain the great tragedy that happened to us under Nazi tyranny and oppression. I am shedding lots of tears as I write these lines and remember all the wonderful relatives and friends that I lost only because of human cruelty.

August 20, 1942: Mass Deportations Begin

Our ghetto is surrounded with S.S. troops, Gestapo, German police, Ukrainian and Lithuanian “Einsatz Commandos”, and Polish police outside the ghetto. They are

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making sure that nobody escapes or jumps the fence. It’s like a war zone. The city is divided into three parts. People are being chased out of their homes and marched toward the train station. Over 6,000 are deported that day. Many people that cannot walk are shot.

The people are assembled, have to sit on the ground, and must give away their jewelry, watches and money. The Nazi professional killers terrorize the people and force them into cattle cars, 120 to a car. When the doors of the cattle car closes and the little windows are also closed it becomes a torture chamber. You ride in that train for two days until you arrive to the destination place. When the doors open, half of the people are dead. The gas chamber is a relief from the torture and suffering when riding in a car without air, water and sanitary conditions.

On the 22nd of August the second part of the city is deported. It’s a Saturday and our rabbi who was in hiding for 3 years, comes out of hiding. The rabbi is dressed in his holiday outfit, with a white shawl and top hat, like he usually wears on high holidays. In defiance of the Nazis, Rabbi Rappaport is leading his congregation on their last and final walk. The Nazis do not bother him, he holds his head high, and as a proud man and leader of a wonderful community.

The third and final deportation is on Monday the 24 of August 1942. My family and I are going with the third deportation. On the evening before our father opened up the last bottle of champagne that we had in the house. We drank “L’chaim” which means “to life.”

Our parents give Charles and me our mother’s rings and our father’s gold watch with chain. Evidently they knew more than I did but did not want to scare us. When I packed our knapsacks my father told me: “If you don’t have enough room for anything else please put in my TALIT and TEFILLIN first”. That means “Prayer shawl” and “phylactery”. Because they did not trust and have too much faith in the Polish and German currency, they took with them 6,000 American dollars and 40 twenty dollar gold coins. We were supposed to be resettled into the district of Lublin and not sent to a gas chamber. The Nazis lied to us, because they did not want to have an uprising. It was all planned and organized - systematic and scientifically carried out torture and the brutal murder of innocent children, women and men by the evil empire of Germany and Austria.

When we left our home, we faced an army of professional killers, GERMANS, AUSTRIANS, UKRAINIANS and LITHUANIANS. Hauptman Geier was in his glory together with Ernst THOMAS. We walked in a column ten people across. Our parents were in the middle of the ten and Charles and I on each side of our parents, holding up their knapsacks. On Okrzeja Street Nazi officers pulled out Charles and me. We did not have a chance to say good-bye to our parents. Our eyes met. Our father said, "Live and take revenge."

Charles and I joined a large group of people, and the big column of people proceeded toward the train station. Hauptman Geier and Ernst Thomas were standing in front of our group and were asking for work I.D. cards and were sending people to the left and right.

When Charles said “Kadzielnia” (the name of the stone quarry), Geier told him, “Now you work for H.K.P” - a German supply house for the military. When I said “Kadzielnia”, Geier send me to the right. After the selection Geier counted the people in Charles’ column, then he came over to our group and pulled out ten men and sent them over to the other column. I was number four, and at that time we did not know why he

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pulled us out. After the ten men moved over to the people on the left, Geier send the other group towards the train station, and we walked to the synagogue.

Szymon could have stayed with us but he would not stay without his wife, and he chose to go with her. Dead people were lying on both sides of the street. There are no words to describe the atrocities and barbaric and inhuman treatment of innocent people, just because they were of a different religion.

About 1,500 people were left in Kielce after the deportation, and we had to move into a small ghetto. That day we became total slaves to the Nazis.

During the third deportation I watched how Hauptman Geier was beating and slapping Bruno Schindler, the Jewish chief of police. Geier then promoted his informer, Helmut Spigle, to be the new chief of the Jewish police.

While we were living in the big ghetto, the council organized workshops that worked only for Germans, civilians, and the military. Employed in these were tailors, shoemakers, electricians, gardeners, stove makers and seamstresses.

Among the 1,500 people that were left in the small ghetto, were the policemen and their families, doctors and their families, some people from the workshops, Herman Levi with his family, and about 900 regular workers that were employed in German factories. Charles and I were among them.

I accuse the following Gestapo personnel, S.S. members, 305 Police battalion, Nazi mayor, and the Ukrainian and Lithuanian “Einsatz Commandos" of genocide:

•Ernst Thomas - Chief of Gestapo in Kielce;•Haupman Geier - Chief of 305 police battalion and lv-b-4. ;City Mayor - Rotter;•Hanisch and Balhorn - Gestapo executioners;•Erich Wolschlaeger, Matias Rumpel and Karl Essig - police executioners;•Wirtz and Tomschytz, business and industry confiscators;•also Schoefele Hauptman Geiers Shofer.

During the third deportation Hauptman Geier killed Bruno Schindler. A total of 1,400 were killed during the deportations.

Slave Labor for the Nazis

Charles and I moved into a two-room apartment with about a dozen of strangers. The next day we had to register, including the place of work and our new address. We still worked in the stone quarry. We did not get paid, we only received a bowl of soup in the evening after we came back from work, in the ghetto kitchen. Our job in the quarry was very hard.

One day we had to unload a railroad car with powder coal. It was a windy day and we were black, and dirty, from top to bottom. When we came home it started to rain hard. We took off our clothes and went out to the yard and had a good shower. There were no bathrooms in the slums where we lived. A ghetto is a place where you can not come and go freely. You are walled in and go out under supervision and guard, through a guarded gate. Under the Nazis we lived in a police state.

In the middle of September 1942 Hauptman Geier came into the ghetto with his troops and arrested Herman Levi, his wife, his two sons, his daughter in-law and three

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people that happened to be there. (Jerzyk and Lunek Szmulewicz, and Manela the butler that worked for the Levis.) Helmut Spigle became the president and another “rat”, Otto Glatstein, became the chief of police. Hauptman Geier once again put his informers in charge of the ghetto.

The Levis, Szmulewicz brothers and Manela were taken to the old Jewish cemetery and were all shot. The Nazis did not need any trials, juries or judges.

A week later Janek came into the ghetto. Janek was a Pole who was working for the Gestapo. He was selling Polish I.D. papers to people that were willing to buy them. In order to make the papers he needed the peoples ages and names. A few days later all these people were arrested, among them Kopel Zloto, his wife Sonia, Majer and Mundek Eisenberg, the Janowski family and many others - a total of 62 people. The activities of the Jewish council and the Jewish police are a black page in Jewish history.

What happened to the sick people that were in the hospital is a tragedy in itself. The hospital received orders to kill the sick. Wladek, the medic-informer, and a helper that worked in the hospital, Jacob Zylberberg, injected the sick with gasoline and killed them. There were 82 sick people in the hospital. Charles and I made the best of it, but we had a very hard life to adjust to the conditions imposed on us. We were worked hard, but we had to sell our very clothing in order to buy food to survive.

1942-43 was a bad winter for us. We were cold and hungry. And we got some bad news. Two months after the deportation the first “witness” came back to the ghetto. It was Josek Wasser, who escaped from Treblinka, who told us the horror stories that were hard to believe. A few days later Moniek Mydlo came back from Treblinka. Then a third man came back, and they all told us what the Nazis were doing to our people.

Our hopes of reuniting with our families and loved ones were gone. The reason it took them two months to come back, is because Treblinka is about 200 miles from Kielce. They had to walk nights and hide during the day. We never heard the name Treblinka, and did not expect, no matter how evil the Nazis were, that they would gas people and exterminate them. Before they cremated the people, they even extracted their gold teeth. It is very hard to believe, how the Nazis terrorized, humiliated, tortured, and disgraced, the people before they killed them. It’s beyond human imagination to understand the suffering of the victims, in the cattle cars and during the short time when they arrived at the extermination camp, before they were gassed.

The news that the escapees from Treblinka told us was devastating. At that time it was unbelievable.

Our oldest brother Seweryn was once the best-dressed man in town. During the deportation, Charles and I took some of his clothes with us. We sold these clothes to the Poles in order to buy food. Many Poles were nice and honorable, but some took advantage and did not pay us. They just robbed us.

March 1943 - the Holiday of Purim

Hauptman Geier and his killers came to the ghetto, assembled all the doctors and their families and told them that they would take them to German factories, where they needed doctors. One of the doctors, Dr. Sztainbach, and his beautiful wife were ready to jump the fence and escape, but Spigle stopped them and didn’t allow them to escape.

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The Nazis always punished the Jews on Jewish holidays. All the doctors and their families, except two, were taken by trucks to the Jewish cemetery and killed. The two doctors that were not taken are the director of the hospital, Dr. Reiter, and Wladek Proszowski, the medic-informer.

May 1943 – Final Deportation

The little ghetto is being liquidated. Everybody has to go to the assembly place. We are selected to go to work in different places and all the little children that are still there are taken away from their parents. These are the children of the policemen and people that worked in the workshops.

Charles and I are walking with a group and as we turn a corner I see Ukrainians in black uniforms with machine guns. There is no time to talk, so I pull Charles by his sleeve and run back to the assembly place. There I stay in line and tell Hauptman Geier that I work in Ludwikow. Next to Geier stands the foreman of Ludwikow, Sam Bialystok. Sam knows me, he was our neighbor, and lets me go through. While at the assembly place when the Nazis are taking away the children under 16, Mrs. Hofman, the wife of a tailor, gives the Nazis a hard time. She calls them “murderers”. They were.

During the liquidation of the small ghetto in June of 1943, the Nazis took away all the children from their parents, to be executed. My heroine is the young Jewish mother, who would not give the Nazis her two children. She screamed and insulted the Nazi chief, calling him a murderer and baby killer. Many mothers deliberately went with their children. They knew very well what would happen to them, but they did not want to live without their children. My hero is a young father who hid his two-year-old baby girl in a knapsack, saving her life for nine months, until the next selection. It was heart breaking.

Charles was sent to a bad concentration camp called Blizyn while I remained in Kielce. I worked in a slave labor camp named Henrykow. There were three camps in the city and we lived and worked in these factories. One was Hasag, the other Ludwikow and the third one was Henrykow, where I was. While we were working in the quarry I bought a little six shot Belgium gun from a Polish friend. I had the gun hidden in the small ghetto and did not tell my brother because I did not want him involved or endangered. Spigle became the camp leader in Henrykow, and Wladek the doctor. Otto Glatstein became the camp leader in Ludwikow. Dr. Reiter became the doctor in Ludwikow.

Each one of the three camps had 300 Jewish people working, beside many Polish workers. The day after the liquidation of the small ghetto, a few people from our camp went back to the small ghetto. They stopped in the house where the Nazis had kept the children, and found three little boys, nine and ten years old. These three boys hid in the attic, when the Nazis took the other 42 children and some of the mothers to the Jewish cemetery. They were all shot. The three were brought back to our camp. (One of the three boys survived the war and his name is Kivy Zyto.)

Henrykow was a wood working factory, with 300 Jews and about the same amount of Poles. We were producing small wagons for the German military to carry ammunition. The wagon was called "Plescau”.

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We lived in a horse barracks, worked 12 hours a day, and the factory ran day and night. The director was a Nazi by the name Fuss. Whenever he walked by the latrine he was shooting. He was a German and had an office worker and informer by the name Helfant. Helfant lived in our barracks with his two sons. Wladek the informer was with us too, and was still giving information to the Gestapo until we were sent away to Auschwitz. Next to the barrack was a kitchen and latrine. After the liquidation of the ghetto Jewish people tried to live as Poles or go to the underground and fight the Germans. None of these people survived, because the Polish underground killed all the Jews. The Jews were their number one enemy.

Escape !

The supreme law for the Nazis was total and blind obedience. They operated their evil empire with spies and informers. Wladek was still doing his dirty work, and a few people were arrested. The few that ran away were killed by Poles or the Polish underground. Spigle was the king in the camp and he did not want anybody to escape. A young Polish girl, Janinka Halon, offered to help me, and on December 5, 1943, I escaped at night. I jumped the fence, and cut a wire fence. Because I was a condemned man I had to take a chance. The meeting place with Janinka was at seven in the evening. I had to spend a whole day in enemy territory, my old city, where I was born and grew up. It was early on a Sunday morning, but there were not too many people on the streets. I went to our old house, and visited with two old neighbors. Then I went to see another neighbor that used to wash laundry for us. She was nice to me, gave me some food, and asked questions about my parents and brothers.

Another neighbor lady (Janka Lapinska) came in, did not recognize me and said: “A Jew escaped from a factory and four women were arrested.” This was bad news for me, but I did not react. Although it felt good to walk the old familiar streets, it was strange at the same time. There were no familiar faces and nobody to say “hello” to.

At 7 p.m. I was at our meeting place, but Janinka was not there. Two children came out from her house to a little water pump across the street where I was standing, and I asked them if Miss Janinka is home. The answer was: “She was arrested this morning.” In case of trouble I had to go to my plan “B”. I went to Jozef Witkowich and was hoping that he would help me. December is a very cold month in Poland and it was freezing. Jozef was surprised to see me and I told him that I would like to join the Polish underground and fight the Nazis. Jozef said that he had connections to the smaller Polish underground called the “People’s Army”, and that I should join them, instead of the A.K., because the A.K. was killing Jews. In order to join the underground I needed a weapon. In the small ghetto I had a little pistol hidden and I would get it. “Stay another day until I will make the proper arrangements for you,” he said.

Jozef had a wife and six children living in one large room. For that reason, he was afraid to keep me in his house, and he made arrangements for me to sleep in a neighbor’s barn. I slept in that barn next to a goat that kept me warm. What an experience to sleep with a goat, but it could have been worse. On the seventh of December I walked the streets of my city and passed many German soldiers. Nobody knew who I was. I was dressed like a Pole, looked like a Pole and spoke Polish just as good or better then a Pole.

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Near my apartment in the small ghetto I saw a Pole (Janek Wlochinski) who recognized me. There was no one else on the street. I was ready to get my gun, when I heard a voice saying “Mr. Piasecki.” Then suddenly I saw five Polish policemen. They approached me very slow, thinking that I was armed. They took me to the Henrykow factory.

Spigle came with his helper (Jake Zylberberg) and they savagely beat me. I could not fight back. Spigle took away my clothing, my father’s gold pocket watch with chain and a diamond ring.

Dressed like a clown, Spigle took me to the German police. Entering the waiting room I saw four Polish women of whom I knew three. There was Janinka, Mrs. Kulis and her daughter Aniela. The other woman I did not know. Inside the office behind a desk was sitting "Meister Bruno” and next to him another uniformed police officer. Spigle put down on the desk the gold watch and ring and Meister Bruno started to ask me some questions.

He asked: “Why did you run away from the factory?” and I answered: “I thought that the war is over and I wanted to go home.” I played dumb.

Second question: “Where did you stay and sleep for two days and nights?” I answered: “In an empty deserted house.” Meister Bruno was nice to me and

gave me a tiny apple. I went back to the factory, I was lucky that they did not hang me. There were many hangings in Henrykow.

When I came back into the barracks, Zylberberg shaved my head and Spigle’s Assistant Feinmesser beat me up. Later on a fellow that I hardly knew came over to me with a bowl of soup that I enjoyed very much, and said to me, ”Piasecki, we are with you.”

In the factory I now got the hardest and worst job. A few days later in the factory I approached a fellow that was one of my best friends in high school. He said to me, “Abram, I can not talk to you. You are being watched.” It hurt me badly that my best friend could not talk to me. When times are bad, that’s the time when you need a friend. I never forgot that.

Hanukkah 1943

Late in December for the holiday of “Hanukkah" we had a little play and one fellow was singing a nice Jewish song. The title was, “Where Should I Go?” Two boys performed the “Dance of the Dead”. When all the lights were turned off, all you could see was shadows. There was not much to celebrate that year.

In January of 1944 one of the buildings caught on fire. The whole building went up in smoke. Next to the building that burned up was the tailor shop, and Jake Zylberberg “exterminated” the shop that day. The Nazis, however, blamed Zylberberg for sabotage and hung him in front of all the people in the camp.

In March, ten men escaped from the factory during the day. Among them were four Zajaczkowski brothers and their brother-in-law, Sosnowski. They were caught by the German police. Sosnowski committed suicide by shooting himself. Six of the boys were shot and killed by the Germans, and the last three boys were arrested. A few days later the three men were brought back to the camp under heavy guard. Bulu Zajonczkowski, his brother Moshe and Sewek Szwarcbard were hung, and the entire camp was forced to watch. It was a sad day in camp.

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A man named Essig of the 305 police battalion was in charge, and our camp was surrounded with many policemen, armed with machine guns. A few days later l asked Spigle if I could have Bulu’s pants. He gave them to me, and I was proud to wear them. I was wearing them when we were sent to Auschwitz a few weeks later.

The Nazis built a watchtower next to the camp, and the S.S. watched the camp 24 hours a day. We knew that something was wrong because the watchtower was built one day before a large group was planning an escape. Wladek and Spigle were “at work” again.

Our camp got surrounded with Ukrainian S.S. A few boys who ran away were killed, and the rest of us went in a cattle car train to Auschwitz. All three camps in our city were liquidated and transported to Auschwitz. Hauptman Geier was in his glory. After all, he “finished off” a city with 28,500 Jews – none of whom now remained in Kielce! The next morning the train rolled into BIRKENAU. We had heard of Auschwitz but never heard the word “Birkenau”. This was the biggest camp the Nazis operated. It was built on 50 square kilometers of swampland. I would not have gone there if Spigle had not betrayed me and told the Nazis whom to arrest. My Polish friends were wonderful people, and I did not involve them at all when I was arrested and interrogated.

(I kept, however, a “black list” of people to deal with if the time ever came. Topping that list was Hauptman Geier, Ernst Thomas, Mathias Rumpel, Helmut Spigle and Jake Zylberberg, who was hung by the Nazis. There were many others who contributed to the torture and killings of our people, like the Lithuanian Nazi leader "Klimatis" and the Polish A.K. leader, "Rataiski.”)

In Birkenau we were immediately separated from the women, and taken to the Canadian Commando. There we had to undress. While naked, we were shaved and forced into the shower room. To our surprise water came out, not gas. After the shower we received striped clothing and wooden shoes. Then they took us to the “Gypsy” camp. A few days before we arrived, the Nazis killed 10,000 Gypsies that were in the camp. The next day we went through a “selection”, and the majority went to the gas chamber. We were naked when the S. S. doctor and officials checked and looked us over.

We had to line up in alphabetical order, and the tattooing began. It hurts when they stick you with the needle, and I was slapped in the face when I pulled my arm away.

It was early June 1944. There was an “obercapo” in Birkenau named “Schlesinger". He was from Vienna and in Kielce he worked for the Gestapo. In our ghetto, he became chief of police in Okrzeja. Early in 1942 he was sent to Birkenau with many other people from Kielce. Schlesinger blamed Spigle for his arrest and now had a chance to take revenge. He sent into our barrack four Polish “Capos” who beat Spigle without mercy. Spigle, beaten so badly, begged them to let him go to the electric wires.

The next day we were sent to Trzebinia. While walking toward the trucks to take us to Trzebinia we walked by the gas chamber and crematorium. The people there were ready to take us in, but the guards told them that we were assigned for work. Trzebinia was an oil refinery only 16 miles away from Auschwitz. Auschwitz controlled 200 camps in a radius of 100 miles. The camp was surrounded with electrified wires and watchtowers. The S.S. guards lived next to the camp. The oil refinery was confiscated by I. G. Farben, from its rightful owners. Next to the old refinery we were

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building a new refinery. We worked there 12 hours per day, 7 days per week, and even after work whenever they needed us. We were there one week when American planes bombed the old refinery. One bomb hit the corner of our barrack, but no one was injured. The camp commandant was Willie Kowal, an S.S. man. He had two assistants who were called “block fuhrers.” There were about 40 S.S. guards, and inside the camp were 14 German prisoners who ran the camp. These German prisoners were professional criminals, political prisoners, homosexuals and one Gypsy.

We had to get up at five in the morning, get dressed and go outside for coffee, which was really dirty, artificial coffee, called “ersatz”. In rain or snow we had to wait outside for the roll call. After we were counted, work groups went to the refinery, under heavy guard. We worked all day and, in the evening, came back to the camp. They gave us a little soup and one slice of bread. This was our daily diet.

The Nazis worked us very hard and kept us hungry. People prayed to have a loaf of bread and die on a full stomach. I always kept my eyes open and looked for a chance to escape from this hellhole.

Another Escape

At work I got acquainted with a Polish guy who worked there, and I told him that he should help me, because I was half Jewish and half Polish. My mother was Jewish and my father was a Pole, and with a name like Piasecki, he believed me and agreed to bring a bike and civilian clothing for me. Jozef Zajac was a nice man. He brought me some food, and I trusted him. We had to wait for the right time, however, when he would have the right arrangements. People were starving to death, and ate up the grass that was growing in the camp when we first arrived. I also got acquainted with Ernst Tauber who was the secretary in the camp. He made all the reports in the camp. Ernst Tauber was an old prisoner, had been in many camps since the Nazis invaded the Czech Republic. He was Jewish and a prince of a man.

By the time I made arrangements with Jozef Zajac the camp was being liquidated. January 17 in the evening we had to assemble and were told that we would have to march to Auschwitz. It was bitter cold, and under heavy S.S. guard we walked all night. Many people who could not keep up were shot. In the back of the column walked an S.S. guard from Rumania. He shot the men who could not walk fast enough. Early in the morning we arrived in Auschwitz. The S.S. asked the people who could not walk to step out, and we were sure that these people would be sent to the gas chamber. They were lucky because the Nazis didn’t have time to kill them. After I later escaped from the death march, I stopped and visited the downtown camp in Auschwitz, and found these people in the hospital.

During our night march we stopped in Pszczyna, a small village. Many inmates had been killed during the march, and in this village we planned to overpower the guards and disarm the rest. But the strong boys said that we had to wait, evidently they were scared. There was no time left because we were not far from the old German border. I decided I had to try to escape.

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Our camp was divided in five barns to rest for the night. Ernst Tauber and I were plotting to escape. Because he was the secretary in the camp, he had to check if all the inmates in the five barns received food.

He took me along and an older S.S. man escorted us. We wanted to overpower him, take away his pistol and also his uniform, but a young S.S. man joined us and we had to rely on another plan.

When we walked back to our barn, instead of going into the barn we went behind it. There we faced an 8-foot fence. On the top of the fence was barbed wire. I walked toward the fence and Ernst said, “I am afraid.” I walked a second time, and Ernst said again, “I am scared.” Then I told him if you don’t go I will go by myself. I jumped the fence and Ernst got stuck on the barbwire. I ran back and helped him get untangled. We were in a open field, and were running in a zigzag line instead of a straight line. Lucky for us, it was snowing heavily and the guard did not see us. We walked and walked. When we saw a truck we laid down in a ditch. We saw the trucks first because of the lights. These were German cars or trucks.

Help from Some Germans

We walked for a few hours until we came to a small village. We picked a little house and figured that Polish people live there. Through a little window we crawled into the barn and dug ourselves deep in the hay that kept us warm. We hid there for five days and nights without food or drink. Finally we took a chance at night and knocked on the door of the house. We had to because a person can live only one week without food.

A very old lady opened the door and let us in. Inside we met two of her married daughters, whose husbands were in the German army. These people were ethnic Germans living in Poland from before the war. The woman knew right away who we were because of our striped prison uniforms, but did not know that we were Jewish. We pretended that I was Polish and my friend was Czech. These ladies were just wonderful. They gave us plenty of food, razors to shave, and did not ask too many questions. This was the village of Chechowice and one sister’s name was Mola Johanna.

When we escaped we put on another striped outfit, so that it would keep us warmer. We asked the ladies if they would dye for us one uniform, and they agreed to do that. We went back to the barn for the night, and the next morning they brought breakfast for us. Bread, butter and hot milk! We had not seen such food for a long time.

They told us to come back into the house when it got dark. Again they fed us and we ate a big dinner, because we were hungry. At that time I was thin like a skeleton and weighed about 90 pounds. I remembered when I was strong and powerful, and could carry a bag of brown sugar on my shoulders that weighed 330 pounds. I used to walk up a few flight of stairs with it. I survived the camps because I was healthy, strong, and a guardian angel watched over me. I was born to live and see the downfall of the brutal, inhuman and evil Nazi regime.

The ladies showed us the uniforms that they dyed for us, but the stripes were still showing. Because of that they offered to us civilian clothes from their husbands. We got dressed in work clothes and looked like Polish farmers. They even gave me a cap

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and Ernst got a hat. They told us that we had to leave their place tomorrow morning. We left our striped uniforms with them. In the morning very early they brought for us five loaves of fresh bread and lots of butter, and even gave us directions how to go towards the Russian front.

We said goodbye and left. These people were afraid to harbor us and I cannot blame them. They were saints to risk their lives, to feed us, and give us civilian clothing.

We walked trough fields in deep snow, and nobody would let us in to warm up. We walked into a coal mine by mistake, then walked right out. The guards did not stop us. That was pure luck. While we were walking we saw how German farmers were packing their trucks and wagons to flee towards Germany, away from the Polish farms that they had earlier confiscated. Up to our hips in snow we walked all day through Polish farmland. Not one farmer would let us in or give us something warm to drink.

Finally it started to get dark and we saw a light far away. When we came to that farm the Polish owner was happy to see us. He came back the same day to his farm, because the German farmer that occupied his farm fled, and had stolen most of his pigs and cows. There were only four cows and two pigs left on what used to be a very big farm.

Jozef Kowalski was the farmer’s name and he lived in Dankowice number 27. The farm was located right on a highway, and there was a lot of military traffic. The Nazi army was retreating, and we could hear the Russian Katiushas.

The farmer brought his brother-in-law to help him slaughter a pig and we also helped him. Jozef Kowalski did not know who we were. For the first time in my life I saw how a pig is slaughtered, and when they cut up the pig into big pieces, we helped to carry the meat up to the attic. The attic was cold enough to serve like a freezer.

The next morning it was still dark when the S.S. came into the house and asked for I.D. papers. I put on my pants and walked out through the back door into the barn. In the barn there was a rest room with a window. I saw two soldiers with lanterns talking and heard one say, “He ran away.”

I had on only a shirt, shoes and pants and had no place to go. I would soon freeze to death in this cold, below zero weather. I went back the same way that I walked out, and the officer asked me, “Where were you?” I answered in Polish that I had to go to the rest room. He did not ask any more for papers. It was the 30 th of January and the Germans were gone, and Russians came in. The Russians were there one day only and then the Germans came back. We were sorry that we did not go with the Russians, but we did not know that they would leave. The next day the Russians came back and stayed. We remained for two more days on the farm, where we had plenty of good food. A Russian captain who was very friendly was there and we told him who we were. We asked that he should give us some kind of letter, so that we could walk back to the city of Auschwitz, and from there go home. This was needed because Russian patrols were checking the people who were walking on the highway. This the officer did for us. We said goodbye to Jozef and to the captain and started to walk. There was no other transportation at that time. Many people were walking on the highways during this time.

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Part Three - After the Liberation

We walked toward the city of Auschwitz, and when we arrived there we went to an office that issued us temporary I.D. cards. Ernst Tauber had a friend in the city of Auschwitz, a Polish painter whom he used to work with. We stayed in his house and the next day we went to see the camp of Buna. Buna was completely destroyed, probably because it had a big factory run by I. G. Farben, which produced artificial rubber and synthetic gas. Over 12,000 Jewish inmates slaved in that factory, and lived no longer than three months, because of starvation and chemicals.

After the visit to Buna we come to the camp in the city of Auschwitz. This was the main camp that contained the political division and all the S.S. offices. In these brick buildings that once housed the Polish military, the Nazis established the most brutal of all the camps. In this camp we found over 100 people who could not walk during the death march. The S.S. did not have enough time to kill them; they had to run because the Russians were coming. The S.S. were cowards when they had to face somebody armed that could fight back. They were powerful only against unarmed civilians.

From there we went to Birkenau. This was the killing factory for the Nazi government. Here they killed people from all over Europe. They brought them from France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Italy, Bulgaria, Greece, Rumania, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Czechoslovakia. Not only Jews were murdered here. They killed Russian P.0.W.s, Jehovah Witnesses, Gypsies, homosexuals and anti-Nazis. They killed Catholic priests that spoke against the Nazis. The gas chamber and crematorium worked around the clock. The Nazi cruelty cannot be described in words. Ernst Tauber and I, however, cheated the Nazis and death.

In Birkenau there were a few people that we spoke to. Ernst spoke perfect five languages: Czech., German, Russian, French and Italian. He was a well-educated man. From the warehouse we took a few pieces of clothing and some blankets and we loaded these on a little sled. Walking back to the city, we had to cross a little bridge, and on that bridge was standing Polish police, checking everybody. They took everything away from us and said that all this belonged to the Polish State. We showed them our numbers tattooed on our forearms, but that did not help. My number is B-3266, tattooed in Birkenau extermination camp. We said goodbye to the painter and his family and started our journey towards the city of Krakow.

Not far from Auschwitz we stopped in Karniowice where my friend Jozef Zajac lived. He was happy to see us. He opened up a bottle vodka in our honor and fed us before we left. Our next stop was Trzebinia, our former camp. The camp was still there - only one barrack had been burned.

The city of Trzebinia had been a very nice city with a large Jewish population, and now it was a ghost town. It took us five more days to come to the city of Krakow. Krakow is a very old city, and at one time it was the capitol of Poland. During the Nazi occupation the Nazis made Krakow the capitol again. Here, Hans Frank, the Nazi governor of Poland, had his office. The polish kings were buried here in the Wawel. We found a place for refugees and stayed there overnight. Ernst found a few friends from his hometown and decided to stay in Krakow until Prague was liberated. We said “goodbye” and I went to the highway leading to Kielce. I never saw Ernst again.

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On the highway a Russian truck gave me a ride to Jedrzejow, which is only 20 miles from Kielce. There I caught a train for the last part of my trip. When I was in the train I knew that this was a mistake trying to get back to my hometown. I overheard Polish women talking that Hitler did not kill all the Jews, and one said, “that’s too bad”. It was dark and I was sitting in a corner with my head down and they did not know that a Jew was listening to them on that train. There was a curfew, but I paid no attention to it as I walked to the home of my friends, the Kinastowskis, who lived in the same building with us. I stayed with them over night and the next morning went out. On the main street a former neighbor recognized me and said, “Piasecki, are you still alive?” This used to be a very good friend of my brother, Szymon. His name was Kazik Popiel.

Home Again!

When I came back to my hometown Kielce, in February 1945, after my successful escape from the death march, I spent the first night with our friends the Kinastowskis. They were honest and wonderful people. The janitor Andrzei, was so happy to see me, that he kissed my forehead, and asked about my parents and brothers. I was born in this house, and so was Charles, and we lived there for 26 years, a few years before I was born. I saw my old friend Slawek, and other neighbors. For the Poles nothing had changed, they lived as before.

Then I went to see Janinka Halon, the girl that tried to help me after my escape from Henrykow. She lived on Zagnanska 26 with her aunt and uncle. She was happy to see me. We had a nice visit. She knew that when I was arrested I did not involve her in my escape. (All four of the Polish women were later released from the police station.) Her uncle, Mr. Patrzalek, was at that time Vice President of Kielce. She offered me lunch, and the visit ended with a hug. Nothing remained for me in Kielce but bad memories. In Kielce during the deportation, Polish women were standing on both sides of the street where the Jews walked toward the railroad station. They took away their suitcases and said, “Where you are going you will not need this.” Kielce was always a very anti-Semitic city. The city appeared to me like a big cemetery, and I could not live there. After three days I left with a friend of mine and we moved to Sosnowiec. There we got an apartment in the same house where my wife used to live.

It was the middle of February, and the Polish population was different than in Kielce. In May of 1945, my future wife, Sala, and her sister, Erna, were liberated from a concentration camp called Gabersdorf in the Czech republic. They came back to their hometown and I was lucky to meet them. My wife did not find any more of her family because they were all sent to Auschwitz in the summer of 1942. We met one another with friends, started to date and went out to eat. In a very short time we fell in love and decided to get married.

We left Poland together with her younger sister and five of our friends. We wanted to go to Israel, to start a new life. I received a draft notice to join the Polish army, but did not wish to remain there. Poland was too anti-semitic. In Poland, we would always be second class citizens. Even though there were many nice people in Poland, there were too many who hated us. Many of my friends were killed by the Polish people. When they reported Jews to the Nazi authorities, they received a pound of sugar. Jewish blood was “cheap” in Poland. I remembered how my three older

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brothers wanted to go into the Polish army, but were not accepted. I was determined I would not enter that same army. On the day in early June when I was supposed to report to the army, we crossed the border into Czechoslovakia. We traveled without passports. We visited concentration camps looking for relatives. In Theresianstat, someone stole a little suitcase with all the pictures from my wife’s family.

From Czechoslovakia we went to Austria and when we arrived in Lintz, we found the “Jewish Brigade”. The Brigade who was attached to the British Army, took on the added responsibility of rounding up all of the survivors and preparing them for a new life in Israel. We encountered much difficulty in trying to board a ship to go to our homeland. The British were blockading the shores of Israel, and every shipload of refugees was sent by military escort to Cyprus.

Married Life

During this time, Sala became pregnant with our first child. We did not want to go to Cyprus, to yet another concentration camp run by the British. Some of the ships that were trying to get to Israel were sunk by the British. They sold their “souls” for Arab oil.

We went back to Germany after spending four months in Italy. My wife’s sister had remained with her husband in Mittenwald, a small town in Germany on the border with Austria. On the fifth of May, our son, Herb, was born. This was a lucky day because on the same day a year before, my wife was liberated from a Nazi concentration camp by the Soviet army. Five years later, on the fifth of May, we arrived in Goshen, Indiana.

At the end of December 1945, my brother Charles found us in Mittenwald, after spending a few months in a American military hospital. In the summer of 1946 we heard from my brother Seweryn, who was back in Poland. Our celebration when our son was born was tremendous. After all, he was the first Jewish boy born in Mittenwald, a beautiful mountain town and a winter resort place. Skiers from all over were enjoying the slopes there. We lived in a house of a princess, Victoria Von Bentheim. She saved the lives of two Jewish ladies. (Mrs. Gutman and her daughter Stefi, were hidden in her house, and survived to come to the United States after the war.)

We enjoyed our baby, and spent lots of time with him. While we lived in Mittenwald I worked for the “Bricha”. This organization moved people through many borders to southern Italy and France, on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, then to their final destination - Israel. Thousands of people reached Israel, despite the British blockade. The British caught many ships and some they sank. They were very brutal and inhuman at this time.

The Nuremberg trial was in process, and the Nazis had a “wonderful time” under the American occupation. Only 21 Nazis were on trial and thousands were running free, avoiding justice and prosecution for the crimes they committed. There was no closure, and there were actually organizations and governments that were helping the criminals. Justice was difficult to obtain. During the war, for example, an American plane was shot down over Mittenwald with two American pilots being captured. Three Germans killed the Americans, and after the war was over there was a trial, and two of the killers were freed. Only one got a two year sentence. There was no justice. The fact there was a

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cold war going on between the Soviet Union and the western allies over a divided Germany made each side want to court the Germans.

Pogrom in Kielce, July 4, 1946

It’s the Fourth of July, 1946! Our baby, Herbert, is two months old, and we get up about eight o’clock in the morning. We live in a two room apartment, in Princess Victoria’s house, and while we are preparing to have breakfast our radio is playing nice, soft music. The music is interrupted by an announcement from the British Broadcasting Company. They announce, “Pogrom in Kielce, Poland. Many are killed and wounded.” This was the city where I was born and had lived with my family, until the Nazis decimated virtually all the Jews living there. Jews were being housed there once again and were receiving training for a new life and new jobs in Israel. For the next several days, we read big headlines in the local newspaper, describing what happened in Kielce. In the early hours of July 4, 1946, the Polish people in Kielce were spreading rumors that a young boy was missing. They also said that the Jews kidnapped the boy and were holding him in a basement on Planty Street 7.

On Planty Street 7 there was a house where Jewish survivors lived. There were about 200 Jewish survivors that lived there preparing and training in different professions with plans to go to Israel. The Poles surrounded this house demanding the release of the boy. But there was no boy in the building. Soon, hundreds of Poles and military police surrounded the building. Soon after that the Poles broke into the building, and started throwing people out from the windows. They killed many who remained inside the building.

The police and the military people helped the civilians in that pogrom. They killed 42 people and there were many wounded that were taken to a hospital in the city of Lodz. The Polish boy was found, it was a fabricated lie that the Jews kidnapped him. Now you will understand more about my city: Germans were not there - only Poles, and it happened a year and two months after the war ended!

The Soviet and Polish authorities hanged ten Poles, in Kielce. These were the ringleaders of the pogrom. This was not the first pogrom in Kielce; there were other pogroms before that.

Because we could not go to Israel, we decided to register for a visa to go to the United States. The loss of our families, and hardships we endured during the war years, took a big toll on our lives. The United States would be a good country for us to start all over again. We did not want to live in Poland. In fact, we didn’t want to live in Europe. The anti-semitism in Europe is as old as Christianity. The history of the United States was well known to us, but, we didn’t know how long it would take us to get a visa. Sala and I had already lost six years of our lives, living under Nazi occupation in ghettos and concentration camps. We both had plans for higher education, but under the bad circumstances we found ourselves, it was impossible to continue our schooling. Moreover, we had few family ties to hold us in Europe.

Sala’s family lived in Sosnowiec, Poland, before the war. Her father (Chaim Dymensztain) and mother (Rivka Nirenberg Dymensztain) had six children - five daughters and a son. Her oldest sister, Mania, married M. W. Klein, a Jewish-American

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man. Klein had come with his parents on a vacation to Poland and when he met Sala’s sister he fell in love with her. Soon afterward, they were married. He opened up a factory of socks and silk stockings in Aleksandrow, Poland. They had three sons. Although Klein carried an American passport, the Nazis did not honor it. He was Jewish. The Nazis killed them all.

Her second oldest sister, Pola, was married to Icchak Pisarek. They lived in Przedborz, Poland, and had a furniture factory. They had three sons, and were all killed by the Nazis. Her brother Icek was married to Janina, and lived in Sosnowiec, Poland. They operated a furniture store, had one little girl, and were all killed in the exterminations.

Sala’s sister, Fela, was married to Israel Lieberman and they lived in Sosnowiec. They had a little boy, and were all killed by the Nazis.

Sala’s parents lived in Sosnowiec, where they had two furniture stores. In August of 1942, Sala’s family was sent away to Auschwitz, and Sala and her younger sister Erna were sent away to a concentration camp in the Czech republic called Gabersdorf. There Sala and Erna worked in a tread mill factory until they were liberated on May 5, 1945 by the Soviet Army. The camp had been under S.S. control and was run by S. S. women.

While living in Mittenwald we made many friends and tried to have a normal life. No matter to how many parties or weddings we went to, however, we always remembered our hardships and the loss of our loving families. Bad memories are imprinted on the pages of my brain - memories of discrimination, brutality, ghettos, deportations, executions, cattle cars and torture, concentration camps, death marches and escapes.

I can’t forget and I will never forgive the Nazis, their helpers and collaborators, for what they did to me and to my people.

Reunion

In 1946 Seweryn came back to Poland after spending five years in a Soviet gulag. He settled in the city of Wroclaw. Finally we were in touch with him on a regular basis, and in 1947 Charles went to visit him. The visit was planned to be a short one, but it turned out to be a long visit, about a year and a half!

Sala’s sister, Erna, and her husband, Al Rose, were now spending lots of time with us. We saw them almost every day. They played with our little boy and enjoyed every visit with us. The Holocaust survivors in Mittenwald lived in a hotel or in private homes. There were about 150 survivors living in that mountain resort place. Some of the native citizens in Mittenwald were farmers, some were wood carvers, and many owned villas and hotels, which accommodated skiers and winter vacationers. It was a very nice little town, in the German Alps, right on the border of Germany and Austria.

Our stay in Germany was temporary, and all we had to pack was one suitcase. Our little boy received the best care, despite that we did not have the conveniences today’s parents have. Sala had to prepare food for him, because you could not buy formula in the store. The diapers had to be washed, there were no throwaway diapers available. It required more work to raise a baby then. We were young and very happy to have a opportunity to raise a Jewish baby after all the bad things that we

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experienced. Charles came back from Poland after his lengthy visit with Seweryn. Our celebration was tremendous when, in 1948, the state of Israel was established.

A thought comes to mind that if a Jewish state had existed, there might have been no Holocaust, because Israel would not have hesitated to retaliate against Berlin. In 1948, many survivors moved to Israel, the homeland of our dreams. Others moved to Australia or Canada, and many left Germany for the United States. My brother Charles emigrated to the U.S. in 1949, and so did Erna and Al Rose, Sala’s sister and brother in-law. Charles settled in New York City, and Erna and Al went to Goshen, Indiana. We were stuck in Germany for another one and one-half years. Finally, it was our time to go to the U.S. We sailed from the German port of Bremerhafen, where we left Germany at the end of April on a military ship "General Stewart”. We had forever left Europe and the unknown cemeteries of our loved ones.

Part Four - Our Life in the United States

Sala, Herb and I are traveling on the ship General Stewart to America. We were migrating to America to rebuild our shattered lives. It took ten days for the ship to land in Brooklyn harbor. After a turbulent voyage across the Atlantic in May of 1951, my wife, our son and I were warmly embraced in this land by the Statue of Liberty. Lady Liberty had tears streaming down her face - she had reason to weep, a million reasons, for all the oppressed, “huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.”

Men, women and children emerged from the darkness of the ghettos, concentration camps and gas chambers, as normal human beings. With broken hearts, but healthy desires to rebuild homes and families, they had lofty ideals to live as free people. My brother Charles, and other relatives were waiting for us. They embraced us and took us home. We spent two days with them and, then traveled by train to Indiana. It was nice to see this big and beautiful country, untouched by war. Arriving in Elkhart, Indiana, a red convertible car was waiting for us, with Erna and her friend Sarah Sapiro greeting us. It was a happy day, Herb’s fifth birthday, to be celebrated by relatives and friends. We had the pleasure of meeting our little niece Rena, who was three months old.

There was happiness and great pleasure. The small apartment we shared was filled with love and hope for a great future for all of us. This is a new beginning to live as free people, in the “land of the brave” and with the wonderful men and women that helped us to be free - - free of hatred and oppression, discrimination and genocide.

After resting for a few days I found a job in a woodworking factory, and later in a metal factory. A bakery advertised for a machine operator and I applied for the job. In this bakery I worked five years. It was a strenuous, physical job and I enjoyed it. The people in Goshen were nice to us. We had two great sponsors, Bill and Bess Katzinger and Louis and Luba Tenofski. After only three months in Goshen we bought, together with Al and Erna, a big house with four bedrooms.

When Sala became pregnant with our second child, however, we wanted to have our own home. We had saved enough money by 1952 to buy a house divided into three apartments. By that time we already had bought our first car, a 1946 Oldsmobile with automatic drive, for 450 dollars. For one dollar of gas I could drive a whole week!

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Before we moved into our home, lots of work had to be done, but by early December of 1952 we were able to move into our apartment! Harry, our second son, was born at the end of December. Herbert now had a little baby brother.

We were busy people who had a lot to learn. First of all, the English language. Then, how to drive a car and to shop for groceries. Most importantly, we had to learn the customs of our new country. English we learned together with Herb when he started kindergarten. His picture books helped a great deal. When we came here Herb spoke only German, but it did not take him very long before he could speak English. Also, when we came to Goshen we changed our name from “Piasecki” to “Price”.

My brother Charles and his fiancée invited us to come to their wedding in New York City. They had a beautiful wedding and we stayed a few extra days, to visit and see the city. We visited the Empire State Building, the United Nations, and Radio City Music Hall, where we enjoyed a good show. Herbert was with us and he had a ball.

Herb liked his school, he had many friends, and was involved in sports and music. Herb played basketball and chose to play the clarinet and piano as his instruments. He was involved as a Cub Scout, and later became a Boy Scout. It did not take long to integrate with the community and to become completely “Americanized”. We enjoyed the little town of Goshen, and after five years, we became U.S. citizens.

In June of 1956 our third son, Sidney, was born. By that time Sala’s sister and her family were living in Buffalo, N.Y. Al had an offer for a good job, and he took it. Because Sala was busy with our children and could not work, the triplex helped us very much to pay for the mortgage. In 1957 Severyn came to visit us from Israel. I had not seen him for 18 years!

I enjoyed working in the commercial bakery for five years, and while working six days per week in the bakery, I started to work in a department store part time on Saturday. Mr. Katzinger liked my work and offered me a full time job to manage the shoe department! In one year I doubled the sales, and I became assistant manager of the store.

Since we wanted to live in a bigger town I took a job in South Bend, Indiana, only 25 miles away. I became a salesman in a shoe store that belonged to a chain. The company operated one thousand stores and I had a good chance for advancement. There was another reason why we decided to move to South Bend. In South Bend I could work days and in the evening go to school. Indiana University had an extension campus there and I enrolled for evening classes. I took English composition. We lived in Goshen for one year longer and I commuted to work daily. Because we had two tenants in our triplex in Goshen, the mortgage from the bank was paid off quickly, after only five years!

We took out a new mortgage in order to have a down payment on a new house in South Bend. I was already working in South Bend, and commuting every day from Goshen. Our new house in South Bend was a ranch house with three bedrooms and a dining room. The house was three blocks from Edison elementary school, so our children would not have very far to walk.

We moved to South Bend in 1958 and a few months later we celebrated Herbert’s "Bar Mitzvah". When a boy or girl is 13 years old, we have a celebration in the Temple or Synagogue. The boy becomes a man and the girl becomes a woman.

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They are now responsible for their own sins. (Before that the parents are responsible for their sins.) For this occasion Seweryn came from Israel, and all our relatives and friends were invited to a dinner and dance party. Herb’s two younger brothers, Harry and Sidney had the same parties and celebrations when they had their Bar Mitzvahs.

The most important role for us was to give our sons the best possible education. They had a good home with lots of love and security. All three were involved in sports. Herb played basketball, Harry played football and Sidney played baseball. They were good students and enjoyed tennis, swimming, and ice-skating. Herb played clarinet, Harry took piano lessons, and Sid was the first drummer in high school.

Remembering the Holocaust

While we lived in Goshen I gave a few presentations about the Holocaust. I talked to the Rotary Club, Chamber of Commerce, Junior Chamber of Commerce and other adult groups. It was not easy for me to talk about my past and not to cry. In South Bend I gave lectures for students at the University of Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s college. Professor Meyerhofer encouraged me to tell his college students what really happened during the Nazi occupation of Europe. In 1968, I was invited to a criminal trial in Germany. There were four Nazi officers on trial and I was called as a witness. In August of 1968 I took a plane from New York, and from there to Frankfurt, Germany.

In Frankfurt two German ladies were waiting for me. They were my hosts during my stay in Germany. I was invited by the German government to be a witness for the prosecution. Four Nazi criminals, officials in Kielce, were on trial. Two were from the Gestapo and two from the German police. I know the German language well, but requested a translator. The defense attorneys tried to give me a hard time, because they were Nazis themselves or were paid lots of money to defend these criminals. Anyhow, the trial was just a show for the world to see that the German government was doing something about former Nazi officials. Of the four, three went free and one received a two-year sentence. It was hard for me to sit in the courtroom facing four criminals that took part in the destruction of my people in the city of Kielce.

Soon afterward in the states, grandchildren started to arrive. This was a bonus - our family was growing! David was our first grandson, and then came Monica, David’s sister - these two are Herb’s children. Then we had more weddings - Harry and Lori got married. There was happiness in our house when Herb graduated from Indiana University and three years later from the school of optometry. Harry and Lori got their law degrees from Indiana University, and the same day Sid graduated too, and went to study dentistry in Indianapolis. There he met Patti and they fell in love. After graduating from dental school, Sid and Patti moved to Columbus, Ohio. They got married before they moved to Columbus. To Patti and Sid’s wedding came Seweryn from Israel and an old friend of his was invited to the wedding. It was Gunia and a year later Gunia and Seweryn got married. A few years later we got two more grandsons, Jeffrey and Jonathan, the sons of Sid and Patti.

We have three wonderful sons, three beautiful daughters-in-law, seven very talented and gorgeous grandchildren and one great-granddaughter, and another grandchild on the way. No words can describe our love for our three daughter-in-laws.

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A few years ago we lost Gunia, Seweryn’s wife, and two years ago we lost Sala’s sister Erna. These losses hurt us badly, as we are a very close family, and we miss Gunia and Erna very much.

South Bend was a good city for us. Our boys had lots of friends, good schooling and a nice home. I managed a shoe store for 24 years, and was involved in many activities, like distributive education, where high school students attended school only a half-day and the other half they worked in the store. They got paid the same as regular salesmen and got school credits at the same time. We trained at the same time a few students, boys and girls, juniors and seniors. Our company promoted this training, and gave many students the opportunity to become store managers.

Our son Herb bought a condo in Naples 19 years ago, and Sala and I started to come here during our vacation time. In 1981 I retired from the shoe store and became a real estate associate, in an Indiana and Michigan Realty Company. My retirement from the shoe business was due to Sala’s illness. She became diabetic and I wanted to spend more time with her. With Indiana and Michigan Realty I spent four years, and I took another job, as assistant manager in a men’s clothing store. There I worked for four years, until I retired.

We liked Naples, the people and the weather very much, and started to spend six months here and the other six months in South Bend. We did that for a few years, until three years ago we decided to move permanently to Naples. We love it here. Through a friend of ours, Mr. Robert Coplan, I got involved with the schools in Naples, lecturing about the Holocaust. The students are very nice and smart. The educators are wonderful, and they encouraged me to talk to the students about the atrocities and facts that happened during the Nazi occupation of many European countries. My youngest son Sid gave me a typewriter 15 years ago, hoping that I would someday start to write my autobiography. My wonderful wife also encouraged me to write, but I could not write then, about the bad times and the loss of my loved ones. The pain was too close to home. Last year my son Herb, however, again urged me to write my memoirs. I decided to finally write about my experiences after I spoke with students in various Collier County public schools. Many students asked why the Jewish people did not fight back and why more of them did not hide from the Nazis. I feel it’s important to inform them how difficult this time was – that the Jewish people did not have weapons to fight with. They were civilians with families to support. There were no places to hide. When Jews were relocated to the ghettos, they were isolated from the rest of the world. All communication with the rest of the world stopped. Because the Jewish people were very religious, they believed that the miracles that had happened in the past would help them again. Many of them went to the ghettos and gas chambers with the Sh’ma prayer on their lips, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Many did not know they were being “selected” for the death chambers. Others, like my brother Szymon, chose to remain with their loved ones even though they feared the worst. I witnessed mothers who stayed out of love with their children and walked hand in hand with them at gun point to the cemetery where they were all shot to death.

For these reasons, I will continue to visit schools whenever I am invited to talk about my experiences. Young people must know about the Holocaust, the systematic annihilation of eleven million people, six million of them Jews. If young people can understand, perhaps they will become the responsible citizens who will guard against it ever happening again. I also want to tell young people that they, unlike many of my

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relatives who did not survive, control their future. They, through hard work and further education, can truly become whatever they wish!

The United States is the best country in the world. We are lucky to have come here, to become citizens, to be able to raise a family with loving neighbors and a good government.

Our story is a successful one because we studied, we worked hard, and were lucky to have good children. Our lives, however, no matter how fulfilled, will always bear scars from the hatred one human being can direct towards another. As a small token of gratitude to our adopted country, my wife Sala and I sing a song every day, and the song is “God Bless America”.

For all of the above, my mission is and will always be…..history and Holocaust education.

Abe PriceFebruary, 2001

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PHOTOGRAPHS

A

Abe Price, high school graduation picture (1939).Author is standing, second row, third person from right.

B

Abe’s sophomore class with Dr. Oscar Paist. Taken in 1936-37, only 3 students and Abe survived the Holocaust. Abe is seen wearing eyeglasses, directly above Dr. Paist.

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Above: A 1918 picture of the Piasecki (Price) Family. The only family members to survive the Holocaust were Abe (who is not pictured here because he was not yet born)

and his two brothers. All other family members died in German death camps.

Above: Piasecki Hershel and relatives walking on the streets of Kielce, Poland, prior to Nazi occupation. Notice the quality and type of clothes being worn.

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Left: Instead of being sent to a work camp with his brothers, Szymon Piasecki chose to go with his wife to the Treblinka Death Camps.

Right: Moses Isaac Piasecki (Abe’s brother), an attorney, murdered in Meriampole, Lithuania on September 1, 1941, together with his wife Rachel Fridchai. They were executed by Lithuanian Fascists together with approximately 7,000 other Jewish citizens of that city.


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Picture taken in Kielce, Poland, 1936 or 1937. From left to right:

Moses Isaac Piasecki, an Attorney who was Abe’s brother

Julia Rawicka (Abe’s cousin)

Seweryn Piasecki, an Certified Public Accountant who was Abe’s oldest brother. Seweryn survived

Picture taken near the town of Mariyskaya, U.S.S.R. Abe’s brother, Seweryn Piasecki, worked as a slave laborer. Seweryn was arrested in the Polish city of Lvov in June, 1940, for refusing to apply for Soviet Citizenship. He was transported in a cattle train with hundreds of other Polish citizens to a slave labor camp in central Russia. He was finally


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From left to right: Junia Piasecki and Seweryn Piasecki (Abe’s brother and sister-in-law), Sala (Abe’s wife), Charles Pierce (Abe’s brother), Libby Pierce (Abe’s sister-in-law) and Abe. Picture taken in 1983.

Mr. Price today, a retired resident of Naples, Florida.


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Right: Picture of Abe and Sala, his wife, taken in June of 1945.

Below: Abe Price and his wife Sala, with their sons, Herb, Harry and Sid.


As evidence of the human tragedy caused by the Holocaust, Mr. Abe Price and his wife had approximately 300 family members who perished from 1939-1945. Mr. Price arrived in the United States in May 1951, with his wife and oldest son and only the clothes on their backs. He and his wife are seen with their three sons, three daughters-in-law, seven grandchildren and two great grandchildren in this picture taken on December 29, 2000. All three sons graduated from college. One is an eye doctor, one is an attorney and one is an orthodontist-pedodontist. The daughters are also professionals. One can only wonder at the tragedy of the lost lives of those other family members who were unable to survive this great calamity of the twentieth century.

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Glossary

IV - b - 4 - Gestapo division for Jewish affairs and destruction

Aktion - A German word meaning "action7' or "plan of action." The term was often used by the SS or Gestapo to mean the planned, mass roundup, deportation, or murder of Jews.

Anti-Semite (or, anti-semitic) - A person who hates Jews.

Antisemitism- Hatred of Jews.

Aryans - Originally, a term referring to speakers of any Indo-European language. The Nazis used the term to mean people of Northern European background, or members of what the Nazis termed the German "master race."

Challah - egg bread

Chanukkah - Festival of lights, Jewish Holiday

Concentration Camps - Labor camps set up by the Nazis to house political prisoners or people they considered to be "undesirable." Prisoners were made to work like slaves and many died as a result of starvation, disease, or beatings. Also called work camps, work centers, and prison camps.

Crematorium - A building in the camps that contained the ovens, where the bodies of victims were burned. The term is sometimes used to refer to an oven itself.

Deportation - The shipment of victims to the camps, usually by train in cramped and unheated cattle cars.

Der Sturmer - A virulently anti-Semitic German newspaper ("The Great Storm”) published by Julius Streicher.

Einsatzgruppen - "Special Action Groups" or killing squads. Part of the SS, their main purpose was to kill enemies of the Reich, especially Jews and Communists.

Ersatz - Artificial

Euthanasia - In general terms, this practice means killing something someone as an act of mercy. Under the Nazi regime, the terms was used to justify the T-4 Program, which involved the murder of mentally and physically disabled persons.

Extermination Camps - Death camps built by the Nazis in German-occupied Poland for the sole purpose of killing people. The most common method of murder used at these camps was poisonous gas. The victims' bodies were usually burned in ovens in

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the crematoria. The six extermination camps were Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka. Also called killing centers.

Final Solution - "The Final Solution to the Jewish Problem" (or Jewish Question), the Nazis' term for their plan to exterminate all the Jews of Europe. The term was first known to have been used at the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942.

Genocide - The deliberate and systematic murder of an entire race, class, or group of people.

Gestapo - The Nazi secret police who were responsible for rounding up, arresting, and deporting victims to ghettos or camps. The Gestapo were part of the SS.

Hauptman - captain

Holocaust - A term for the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. While Jews were the primary victims, with approximately 6 million murdered, many other groups were targeted, including Romani (Gypsies), the mentally and physically disabled, Soviet prisoners of war, political dissidents, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals. It is believed that perhaps as many as 4 million non-Jews were killed under the Nazi regime.

Judenrat - "Jewish Council," a group of Jews selected by the Germans to run the ghettos.

Judenrein- "Purified of Jews," a German expression for Hitler's plan to rid Germany of all Jews.

Kadzielnia - stone quarry

Kapos - prisoners in the camps who were selected to guard other prisoners.

kosher - Dietary food for Jewish believers

Kristalinacht - 'Night of Broken Glass" or "Night of Crystal." November 9 -10, 1938, a night of Nazi-planned terror throughout Germany and Austria, when Jews were savagely attacked and arrested, and their property destroyed. Most accurately known as the November Pogroms.

Lebensraum - A German term for "living space" to accommodate what the Nazis called the "master race" of Aryan people.

Liberation - The freeing of the Nazis' victims from the camps at the end of the war.

Nazi - A term describing a member of the Nazi Party or something associated with the party such as "Nazi government."

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Nuremberg Laws - "Reich Citizenship Laws," passed on September 15, 1935. These sweeping laws specified the qualifications for Germans citizenship and excluded from citizenship persons of Jewish ancestry.

Nuremberg Tribunal or Trials - The international court set up to try high-ranking Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg, Germany, after the war.

Partisans - Groups of independent fighters who lived in the woods or other remote areas and harassed the German Army or the SS in an effort to disrupt their actions.

Pogroms - Organized, mass attacks against a group of people.

Resettlement - A term used by the Nazis to make Jews believe that they were being transported to work camps in Eastern Europe, when in fact they were being taken to extermination camps.

Resistance - A general term for actions taken by individuals from various countries, both Jews and Gentiles, against the Nazis. Members of resistance groups worked “underground," in secrecy.

Righteous Gentiles - Non-Jews who tried to save Jews from Nazi persecution, often at the risk of their own lives.

SA - From the German term Sturmabteilungen, meaning "stormtroopers." The SA were Nazi soldiers. Also called brown-shirts.

Selection - The process by which the Nazis determined which victims at the camps would be spared to work and which ones would be killed immediately.

SS - From the German term Schutzstaffel, meaning "special detail." The SS began as Hitler's personal bodyguard and developed into the most powerful and feared organization in the Third Reich. Also called black-shirts.

Star of David - The six-pointed star that is a symbol of Judaism.

Untermenschen - A German word meaning "sub-humans," used by the Nazis to refer to some groups they considered "undesirable"- Jews, Romani (Gypsies), male homosexuals, political opponents, and the physically and mentally disabled.

Zioninst - a person who is a strong supporter of an independent Jewish state in Israel.

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TIMELINE OF HISTORICAL EVENTS

Jan. 30, 1933 Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany.

Mar. 23, 1933 Dachau concentration camp opens. Its first prisoners are political opponents.

Apr. 1, 1933 A nation-wide boycott of Jewish businesses is ordered by the Nazi Party. Nazi guards stand in front of Jewish-owned stores and discourage people from shopping there. Often the German word for Jew (Jude) is smeared on the store window with a Star of David painted in black and yellow graffiti. People shopping at the stores are threatened and physically molested. Signs often stated that Germans buying at Jewish-owned shops would be photographed and their pictures and names published in the local press. The boycott does not receive widespread support.

Apr. 25, 1933 The law against "overcrowding in German schools and universities" is adopted, restricting the number of Jewish children allowed to attend. Children of war veterans and those with one non-Jewish parent are initially exempted.

Mav 10, 1933 The Nazis declare that any books they disapprove of should be banned. They burn tens of thousands of books in huge bonfires. This includes many popular children's books, since the authors were Jewish.

July 14, 1933 Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary (Genetic) Diseases is adopted. As a result, German doctors sterilize many disabled adults and children, and also Jewish, Gypsy, and Afro-German children.

1933-1935 In German schools it is officially taught that "non-Aryans" are racially inferior. Jewish children are prohibited from participating in "Aryan" sport clubs, school orchestras, and other extracurricular activities. Jewish children are banned from playgrounds, swimming pools, and parks in many German cities and towns.

May, 1935 "No Jews" signs & notices are posted outside German towns and villages, and outside shops and restaurants.

May, 21&31, 1935 Jews are prohibited from serving in the German armed forces.

Sept. 15, 1935 The Nuremberg Laws: laws proclaimed at Nuremberg stripped German Jews of their citizenship even though they retained limited rights.

Oct. 15, 1936 The Ministry of Science and Education prohibits teaching by "non-Aryans" in public schools and bans private instruction by Jewish teachers.

July 2, 1937 Further restrictions are imposed on the number of Jewish students attending German schools.

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Mar.11-13, 1938 Germany occupies and incorporates Austria as a German province called the Ostmark.

May 13, 1938 The German government passes a decree requiring the registra-tion of all Gypsies without a fixed address living in the Ostmark; by June 1938, all Gypsy children above the age of 14 have to be fingerprinted. This is a central part of the growing racial definition of Gypsies as "criminally asocial."

May 17, 1938 Special questionnaires for the registration of Jews and Mischlinge (people of part-Jewish origin) are used for the national census.

June 12-18, 1938 The Germans launch the first major wave of arrests of German and Austrian Gypsies, including male Gypsy teenagers (14 and older). They are sent to Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, and Mauthausen. Females above age 14 are sent to Lichtenburg and its successor concentration camp at Ravensbruck.

July 11, 1938 Jews are prohibited from going to German spas and vacationing at German beaches. Thus, German Jews can no longer go to the beach at Danzig, but are forced into a somewhat smaller enclave at the adjacent town of Zoppot, where oil and commercial barges are anchored.

July 23, 1938 A decree is issued that Jews older than the age of 15 must carry, at all times, identity cards that mark them as Jews. The decree goes into effect January 1, 1939.

Aug. 17, 1938 A decree makes it mandatory for Jews to insert the middle names of "Israel" and "Sara" into all official documents. The decree goes into effect January 1, 1939. Thus, Jews are always identifiable.

Sept.29-3O,1938 Munich Conference: World powers allow Germany to annex Czechoslovakia.

Oct. 5. 1938 Jewish passports must be stamped with a red "J" at the request of the Swiss Government.

Nov. 9-11,1938 Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass"): organized nation-wide pogroms (anti-Jewish riots) result in the burning of hundreds of synagogues, the looting and destruction of many Jewish homes, schools, and community offices, vandalism (including broken glass of store windows), and the looting of 7,500 Jewish stores. Many Jews are beaten, and more than 90 are killed. 30,000 Jewish men are arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps. Several thousand Jewish women are arrested and sent to local jails. This is followed by a punitive fine to be paid by the Jewish community for the damages done to their businesses and the accelerated "aryanization" of Jewish businesses (Jews are forced to sell their businesses to non-Jews at arbitrarily low prices).

Nov. 15, 1938 An official decree prohibits Jews from attending German public schools; thereafter, they can attend only separate Jewish schools.

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Dec. 2-3, 1938 Decrees ban Jews from public streets on certain days; Jews are forbidden driver's licenses and car registrations.

Dec. 3, 1938 Jews must sell their businesses and real estate and hand over their securities and jewelry to the government at artificially low prices.

Dec. 8, 1938 Jews may no longer attend universities as teachers and/or students.

Apr. 30, 1939 German Jews lose all legal protection as renters; many are expelled from their apartments and forced to move to smaller residences in less desirable neighborhoods.

June 5, 1939 2,000 Gypsy males above the age of 16 are arrested in Burgenland province (formerly Austria) and sent to Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps; 1,000 Gypsy girls and women above the age of 15 are arrested and sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp.

Sept. 1, 1939 Germany invades Poland; World War II begins. German and Austrian Jews are subjected to a night curfew and restricted shopping hours in stores during the day.

Sept. 23, 1939 Jews are forced to turn in radios, cameras, and other electric objects to the police. Jews receive more restrictive ration coupons than other Germans. They do not receive coupons for meat, milk, etc. Jews also receive fewer and more limited clothing ration cards than other Germans.

Nov. 23, 1939 Germans force Jews in Poland to wear a yellow star of David on their chests or a blue-and-white star of David arm band.

Apr.- June 1940 Germany conquers Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, and France.

May 1-7, 1940 Approximately 164,000 Polish Jews are concentrated and imprisoned in the Lodz ghetto, which is established and scaled off from the outside world.

May 20, 1940 A concentration camp is established at Auschwitz, Poland.

July 29, 1940 German Jews are denied telephones.

Mar. 22, 1941 The Ministry of Research and Education prohibits Gypsy and Afro- German children from attending German schools because of the ostensible danger to Aryan children.

Apr. 6,.1941 Germany, joined by Italy and Bulgaria, invades Yugoslavia and Greece.

June 22, 1941 Germany invades the Soviet Union; mobile killing squads accompany the army and murder millions of Jews, Communists, and Gypsies in mass graves.

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Sept. 1, 1941 German Jews above the age of 6 are forced to wear a Yellow Star of David sewed on the left side of the chest with the word "Jude" printed on it in black.

Oct. 1941 Construction begins on an addition to the Auschwitz camp, known as Birkenau. Birkenau includes a killing center which begins operations in early 1942.

Oct. 14, 1941 Deportation of German Jews to Poland begins, including the, first transports to the Lodz ghetto.

Nov. 5-9, 1941 Five thousand Gypsies are deported from labor and internment camps in Austria to the Lodz ghetto in Poland.

Dec. 8, 1941 First killing center (Chelmno) begins operation; the United States declares war on Germany. First gassing of victims in mobile gas vans.

Late Dec. 1941 Five thousand Austrian Gypsies confined in the "Gypsy camp" in the Jan. 1942 Lodz ghetto are deported to the killing center at Chelmno where they all are killed in mobile gas vans.

Jan. 16, 1942 Deportation of Jews from the Lodz ghetto to the killing center at Chelmno begins.

Jan. 20, 1942 Wannsee Conference: senior German government officials discuss the details of their plan for carrying out the "Final Solution" to kill all Jews in Europe.

Feb.- Mar. 1942 The "evacuation" of the major Jewish ghettos in the General Government in Poland begins. This marks the launching of the systematic deportation and murder of the Jews in occupied central Poland.

May 4-12, 1942 Approximately ten thousand Jews, who had arrived in the Lodz ghetto some six months earlier from Germany, Luxembourg, Vienna, and Prague, are deported to Chelmno. Before they board the trains, their baggage is confiscated.

June, 1942 All Jewish schools in Germany are closed by the government.

Summer 1942 Jews are deported from Nazi-occupied countries throughout Europe to ghettos, concentration camps, and killing centers in Poland.

Sept.5-12,1942 Approximately fifteen thousand Jews in the Lodz ghetto are deported to Chelmno, mostly children under ten and individuals over sixty-five, but also the deportations include others who are too weak or ill to work. By September 16, approximately fifty-five thousand Jews have been deported to the killing center at Chelmno.

Dec. 1, 1942 A special internment camp for non-Jewish Polish youths is opened in Lodz.

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Mar. 1, 1943 All Gypsies in Germany, with a few exceptions, are arrested and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Mar. 7, 1943 Gypsies in Nazi-occupied countries are deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

June 1943 Heinrich Himler orders the liquidation (destruction) of all ghettos in Poland and the USSR; the last to be liquidated is the Lodz ghetto in August 1944.

May 6, 1944 A soup strike by younger workers begins in the Lodz ghetto nail and leather (tannery) workshops; the workers refuse to accept watery soup rations. This hunger strike spreads and continues for several days.

June 23- Seven thousand one hundred and ninety-six Jews are deported from theJuly 14, 1944 Lodz ghetto to Chelmno, where they are killed.

July 24, 1944 Advancing Soviet troops liberate the killing center at Majdanek.

Aug. 2-3, 1944 The Gypsy-family camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau is liquidated, and its inhabitants are killed.

Aug. 7-30, 1944 Remaining Lodz ghetto Jews are deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau as Soviet troops continue their advance into Poland.

Oct. 1944 The Nazis deport some prisoners from Auschwitz westward to be used in German camps and factories for forced labor.

Oct. 7, 1944 Members of the Sonderkommando (camp prisoners forced to burn corpses) stage a rebellion at Auschwitz-Birkenau. They succeed in blowing up a gas chamber and crematoria.

Jan. 17, 1945 With the Soviet army only ten days away, remaining camp inmates are evacuated from Auschwitz; "death march" to concentration camps inside of Germany begins.

Jan. 27, 1945 Soviet troops liberate the camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Apr. 11-12, 1945 American troops liberate the camp at Buchenwald. Some of the prisoners are former inmates of Auschwitz.

May 8, 1945 The war and the Nazi regime end.

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FOCUS ON THE MAIN IDEAS FROM THE TIME LINE

1. Review the timeline of laws and actions taken against the Jews. Which laws were announced first and why? How is the order in which they were put into, effect significant?

2. The Nazi regime institutionalized deep-seated prejudices against the Jews. Comment on the powerful nature of prejudice. How are ignorance, fear, prejudice, and discrimination linked?

3. What is the purpose of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum?

4. The legalization of anti-Semitism through the Nuremberg Laws had a profound effect on children. Investigate and describe the ways in which anti-Semitism as a government policy affected the lives of the Jewish children in Nazi Germany. Elicit examples of how the laws directly impacted their everyday routines and activities.

5. Although less than one percent of Germany's population was Jewish, the Jews were perceived as a powerful group who posed a threat to Germany. What allowed Hitler's appeal to discrimination and hatred toward the Jews to succeed?

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Documents

A Be Price Auto Bio Story