IV: Heute ist Donnerstag, der 19. Juli 2012.
Wir sind hier in Weiden im Hotel Admira
und sprechen im Auftrag der Gedenkstätte, der KZ-Gedenkstätte Flossenbürg, mit Tibor Sands,
der heute in den USA lebt und 1925 geboren wurde.
IV: Maybe in the beginning you can just ah, ah tell your name?
When you're born and where you are born?
And a little bit about ah the beginning of your fa.. family, if you like.
TS: My name is Tibor Sands. I was born Tibor Munkácsi in Hungary in 1925.
Ah eventually, when I got to the United States, and I became a, an American citizen,
I changed my name from Munkácsi to Sands.
Ah my children and my wife are not very pleased about it.
Ah, but I did it before I ever knew them.
And ah, Sands is, is my, is my name now.
IV: Okay, can you tell a little bit about ah the time you grow up,
about your family, about the city where you lived?
TS: Well, I, ah, I was ah an only child from a second marriage of my father and mother.
They both widows, ah widowers.
And I had ah, oh, nine half-brothers and sister.
Ah six, six or seven of them of my father's side and two of my mother's side.
And I'm, I lived with my mother and my mother's, my sister.
And I considered them as my real ah brother and my real sister.
I was a very good student.
Ah, when I entered first grade in school I could already r..read and write.
I was bored, but I, I, I had good, good grades.
I went through elementary school and I went, entered the Gymnasium ah in Hungary.
Fir.., first year, I stud.., we studied Latin.
Ah by the end of a year, I, you could practically speak Latin,
which no.., almost nobody, there ever does.
And ah, I was a good student and ah about that time, ah the ah jew hate, jewish hatred started.
I always considered myself as a ah, ah, an, ah loyal Hungarian, born Hungarian.
Ah all this sudden, I, I was on.. only a, only a Jew.
But ah in third Gymnasium, we started studying German.
And it, the teacher or professor was a nazi.
He was wearing a swastika or a Hungarian version of the swastika, the Arrow Cross.
And we had to enter the class and raise our hand and I refused to study under him. I never even opened my German text book.
And end of the year, end of this, this year he failed me,
which, what you never thought.
So I dropped out of a school.
I ah, tried to get a apprenticeship as a photographer.
Because ah photography ran in my family. And I couldn't get one.
And ended up as a taylor, an apprentice taylor.
And I grad..graduated as a taylor, ah, just ah in 1944,
when I was drafted into the Hungarian labor force, which ran parallel to the army.
It was part of the Hungarian army, except we didn't have uniforms.
Ah the only thing you could tell whether you are in army, the ah army cap and the yellow armband.
And I got assigned to a, ah military unit.
We, we, it was ah reparing bombing sites, rai.. railroads re.. strictly railroads.
And ah I worked very hard.
I was eighteen years old.
And ah, we of, living in s.., in railroad cars and we were travelling ah from one bomb, bomb site to another ah.
And ah sometime in November or maybe it was late October of 44,
we were stationed near the Romanian border on the Hungarian side of the river, river Tisa.
When we already heared Russian troops approaching.
I could ah wipe my, can I take ah second?
IV: Whatever you want, of course.
TS: We heard the Russian troops approaching and we decided to ah
leave the, ah leave the, our unit and ah, go into hiding.
Some, some of us went to into hiding into, in a barn in a farm.
And some of us went to a railroad station and pretending that we want to get to back to Budapest.
Ah, we got a lift to Budapest in a German armored car, armored train.
And I went to Budapest, but by this time, a sort of a ghetto system existed.
That Jews had to live in marked ho.. homes.
So I couldn't, I could visit my mother and my sister in their home.
But I couldn't spent the night there, it was ah illegal.
And ah m.. many, many of my Christian friends let me sleep in their home.
One, one night or one day only.
But I couldn't do more than once, be.. one night, because ah it was dangerous for them.
Ah, they could have been jailed or even shot for doing it.
By this time the Hungarian nazi party ah took over.
They were in full power that, that time.
And ah I single handedly f.. changed my i.., in.., identification card,
my birthday card, where, in Hungary religion was part of your, your birth certificate.
I changed it to Roman Catholic and I changed my mother's maiden name.
That was Sobo, that sounded very non-Hungarian.
And ah I got away with it.
A few times I got stopped on the streets and I could show this fake ID and I got away with it.
And some friends of mine, ah, ah myself found a, a coal cellar, ah, where they sell coal and, and firewood.
Well, they let us s..spend the night.
And somebody saw us go in there and the Hungarian Nazi
civilian Nazi guards caught us and took us out.
And I showed my s..fake ID.
Unfortunately, one of this Nazis was, has recognized me.
He was one of my class mates in ah, in ah in school.
So they tore up my paper and we, took us to a school yard, nearby, nearby school yard and four of us,
was, were lined up against a brick wall with a firing squad sending there.
Ah somebody notified the ah local army ah that was also in charge of a, a different group of Jewish labor.. laborers.
Just like my friend.
And the lieutenant from there came in and said: "I am gonna, I'm in charge of here, here.
And I'm gonna arrest, arrest these men.
And we go.., we are going to punish them.
And ah came down and hit everybody, ev.., all of us.
He came to me {coughing} and hit me and, and whispers, he said: "Fa.., fall down, fall down, fall down."
So I fell down and he, he took us from this school
around the corner in a street, a couple of s.., streets away.
And set us free.
So, again, ah I was free.
I had no more ID {coughing} and ah had a hard time hiding at night.
D.., during the day I had no problem, I could walk on the street.
I was, I looked much younger than I was.
Ah I looked like a young kid.
And ah I was captured on ah early December.
And locked up in a building and I gave up.
I said, I, I, I escaped so many times and on the my birthday, December 9th they took me,
marched us into a railroad station and put, put us into a railroad car.
And ah, that was December 9, and it took us eighteen days in a railroad car to reach Buchenwald.
I always said, I could have walked faster than that.
And in this car I had a f..few chances of escaping,
but I thought, somebody told me that my mother and my sister
were also on the same train.
It was a very long train.
And I wanted to stay there with them.
Ah the fact was they, mother, my mother and sister were not on the train.
So we arrived in Buchenwald.
And ah first put into a quarantine lager
and then moved into the working lager eventua.. ah, after two or three weeks.
And ah I was assigned to a (???) commando, we go out and
we were hauling building materials and bricks and lumber and whatever.
And ah, one day I was back there, and
I don't know, if I mentioned that.
I, I, I became a ah, a taylor wh.., after dropping out of school.
I went to the Kapo, who was in charge of the Schneiderei.
And asked him in my broken German to hire me. And he did.
I worked in the Schneiderei and that saved my life,
because standing out in the cold weather ah just wearing a
thin shirt for hours and hours in ah appell while you counted bodies alive and dead.
Ah I didn't have to do it.
I was in.., insi.., inside there, a warm environement
and they were even feeding us.
We're a little, probably a little better than the rest of the prisoners.
And I was in the Schneiderei until one day they announced it
that all Je.., Jews have to go to the appell, ah to the meeting place.
And ah they were evacuated from Buchenwald.
I didn't go.
Our Kapo in the Schneiderei was,
he was a German prisoner himself, ah, said: "Don't go."
To all, not to me, but to all of us, we didn't go.
And ah that trans.., that group left and next day he couldn't save me,
I had to join the ah group that was evacuated from Buchenwald.
We marched through villages and towns to some very distant railway station.
I have no idea why, because there was a railroad track ah right at the camp.
This march, the, some of us were too weak to walk.
The, anybody who fell behind or sat down
was immediately shot in the head by, by the SS-guards.
And to tell you how bad it was, we walked through a village
where women were lining the sidewalks and giving us food.
Giving bread and ah little bowls of soup. And the SS didn't like it.
They were chasing the women away forcefully.
So the women went away and they were throwing the bread,
the bread over the SS's head at us.
Some of them. And ah we got into some railroad cars, somewhere, ah this is a, I can't really tell you
where it was, but it was some railroad cars.
And started going more in, in, in I don't know where, ah, probably towards ah Flossenbürg.
A.., at one time, I think it was Jena, where the train stopped and let off one person from every car to bring water.
And every cattle car had maybe f.., fifty to eighty or hundred people in it.
And one, I, I was the one that volunteered and I jumped out
and ran back and forth with buckets of water from a, from the, from the pump and until they stopped it.
And then I suddenly realized that in the big excitement I forget to drink myself.
Ah we got back in the train, and ah, now this is ah coming back after so many years.
It's, is not clear to me, how we got to Flossenbürg, ah but we did.
And in Flossenbürg I ended up in a jail cellar, br.., brick
like a regular prison, not in the barracks, like most people, but in a jail cell.
Now, each jail cell that was originally designed for two or three or five people had at least fourty or fifty people.
We all had to stand, there was no way you could sit down or lay down, because
there was no room for that.
We had to stand. And we stood there at, sleeping standing up I guess.
And ah, I don't believe that we ever got fed any food.
And next day they told us, that we mo.. we're moving on a,
we got, got out of the jail and we got into trucks, I believe.
This is very faint, maybe it was truck, maybe it wasn't a truck, ah.
And we went to a railroad track.
And, and we got into a train and ah, ah maybe this was before that?
They, fighter planes came and shot out the engine of this train.
They, they were very carefull not to shoot at the,
tr.., the rest of the train only at the engine.
And ah they brought another engine in eventually, hours later.
And, as soon as they put the other engine in, the pla.., fighter planes came back and shot that one out.
Then they made us march.
Ah, we walk, we marched ah along the highway, along the roads towards Dachau.
And now I know the date, it was April 22nd, we arrived at the small town.
And ah the farmer, who had a barn about a hundred meters of the road
allowed this group to sleep in his barn.
And we, we went in and SS were outside
and they said, if anybody comes out of, of the barn, gets shot immediately.
And we, we could sleep in the barn on hay and whatever.
In the morning, we heard distant gun fire,
ah canon fire and ah one of us had d.., dared to open a barn door and stick his head out.
And there were no SS men around.
So we all came out and all the SS disappeared and up on the highway
American vehicles were coming, ah t.., armored cars and jeeps and so on.
So, we were free.
Ah we were free, but not free, because ah,
we descended on the local population and took their food away to eat.
And we raided their homes.
And I say we, ah probably I myself too and this little village prob.., had maybe a dozen homes
and there were two or three thousand prisoners in, in this group where, where I was.
So, from then on it was ah stealing food or begging for food or
going into a farmer home or a home and demanding to be fed.
And it was going on and on and on just like that
and it wasn't satisfactory, for, for me it wasn't.
And ah, I had a problem, I had a pair of boots that broke a hole, di.., dug a hole in my foot.
And ended up in a field hospital run by a Polish doctor
under the army's guidance, US army's guidance.
And ah he did whatever he could.
Later on we heard that he wasn't really a doctor, he was only a nurse.
And ah I could walk, but with difficulty and ended up in some clinic, some, in some town
where a nun did a magic job.
There was a hole in I, in my calf and she, wi.., which the doctors couldn't fix,
she use, use a styptic pencil, the one that men use for shave, a cut when they shave.
She inserted that into this hole in my foot and rubbed it and bank my foot {laughing} healed.
And so, I was wandering around and ah living in ah, in barns, living in stables, living in attics.
One day, some UNRRA people came.
I thought they were US army, because they were ah wearing US army uniforms
with, with UNRRA tag on it.
And ah, said ah that: "We gonna take you to ah children's ho.., camp, a children's home."
About this time, by the way, it was announced that anybody all nationalities had to,
displaced person, had to go home to their native country.
The Poles had to go back Poland, the Ukrainians, Russians to their,
and I, there was no way I would go back to Hungary.
I hated them wha.., after what they did to me.
They did more harm to me almost than the Germans did.
And the, so UNRRA invitation was very welcome.
I we.., went with them in the, in a truck or a jeep or what, to Indersdorf.
And in Indersdorf the UNRRA team welcomed me, ah,
clean rooms, civilized food, cl.. ah hu.., real humans and, and ah I was no longer a, a minor criminal.
Because I felt guilty what I did up to then, but I had to to survive.
And ah there were nuns who were absolutely the ah, the best in the world.
They were, cared for us, they fed us.
So I stayed at, stayed with this ah UNRRA team in there.
And one day a film crew came to film the children in, in the cloister.
And ah I went to the director of the film crew and said to him:
"You know, I have a brother, who lives in New York City.
Ah, do you know him {laughing}?"
And he laughed, he said: "There are ten, eight to ten million people live in New York City.
How would I know your brother?"
And, when I mentioned my brother's name was, was Martin Munkácsi,
this guy jumped out of his seat.
He said: "He is one of my best friends."
Martin Munkácsi was the world famous photographer, still ah, ah photo journalist, still photographer.
And telegrams went back and forth and ah he said he wants me to come back,
come back to the United States and ah, then a, a chance, opportunity came, to go to England.
The first transport out of ah, Indersdorf was going to, to England.
It took a long time, because the weather was ra.. wrong and the,
the fly.. the RAF {Royal Air Force} who was to take us couldn't land and so on.
So, finally, end of ah October of '44, I flew to England.
It, in a long run it turned out that, because I ah, flew to England I was no longer a,
a displaced person or a homeless person, stateless person.
I, I couldn't go to United States on ah, on, on a special visa.
I had to wait for the Hungarian visa to come up.
It took five years before I could go to the United States.
IV: In those five years you stood in Great Britain, in England?
TS: Pardon?
IV: Those five years waiting for the visa you had to stay in England?
TS: Ah whi.., while I was waiting for a visa, I went to,
I got a job in, in a photo studio, where I, I bo.., I became an apprentice
with others young people.
I, I learned photography and I am very glad for it, because, ah,
up to, even today I think the English photography industry is the world's best.
Ah, I learned everything I, I could from ah this company.
Ah five days a week, I went to evening classes,
every night in a week evening classes about photography.
And Saturday our company had classes for all the apprentices about photography.
And ah I was very satisfied what I learned and I went to,
five years later, I me.., when ah my visa came,
I went to the United States and ah
by this time my brother, who was actually a very, very rich person,
was in bad s.., state, because he had a heart attack.
And couldn't work and he was financially very insecure.
And I couldn't work for him.
And it took me a long time to find a job as a photographer.
I worked as a photographer and ah my, ha.., I had, actually three brothers in America.
The, my other brother, half-brother, they were half-brothers.
Ah worked in the film industry.
He helped me to find contacts in the film business
and ah I was making still photo.., still photographs on movie sets.
But I couldn't get into the labor union.
So I could only work when a union member was available, not a.., avail.. not available.
As soon as the union member was available, I was kicked off the job.
I did ah still, stills for Westside Story.
But I got o.. sent off ah sen..
And ah I was very happy doing still photography,
but I had a chance, somebody suggested that I become a Motion Picture Camera Assistant.
And I did, I, I was, I was able to get into the union
and over the years I developed a very good reputation in New York.
I worked at a.., a.., almost ever big movie ever came into shooting New York.
Not in Hollywood, but in New York.
I worked on (???) and I worked ah documentary films I did.
Worked interviews, I worked commercials and ah, I became very, very popular.
And after th.., thirty years doing this, I retired.
I retired for about ah two weeks.
And then the manufacturer of Motion Picture Cameras based in Mu.., Munich ARRIFLEX
approached me to work for them.
And I went to work for ARRIFLEX in New York for sixteen years or thirteen years,
then I retired there also.
Then I, they called me back and I work another two or three years.
And then I retired from there and here I am.
Anything I left out {laughing}?
I got married, I got married twice,
the third time is the, is the, is the only, only one that counts.
Very successful that my little wife is here and I love her and she loves me.
Ah, from my first marriage, I have a son and a daughter and three grandchildren.
IV: Well, that's, ah it's a good ending story {laughing}.
TS: It's a long story {laughing}.
IV: It's a lot {laughing}. Like..
TS: Do you have any questions on it {laughing}?
IV: Yes, I have, just to go ah, coming to, to Indersdorf,
so did you find out what happened to your mother, your sister, the rest of your family?
TS: I'm, I'm sorry, you see, this is my hearing coming.
IV: Okay. Ah being in Indersdorf ..
TS: Yes.
IV: Ah did you try to find out what happened to the rest of your family in Hungary?
TS: Well in Indersdorf in that camp there was no way to communicate with Hungary.
The only way I could have found out, if I got on, hitch-hiked or took a train
or it was, and went back to Hungary and look for them.
Nobody came from Hungary at all.
And it was no mailing, I couldn't mail, write.
I couldn't write until I got to England.
When I got to England, I wrote to my mother
and my sister and I found out that they well.
And w.. I was corresponding with them and some ah charity workers
from England went back and forth to Hungary.
And I send them gifts and they send me back food {laughing},
because they thought I was starving in, in England.
And ah, ah, at one point, because my American visa didn't come.
I waited, waited, I, I said, it took five years, but I didn't expect,
I was very impatient after a year or two.
I wrote to my mother, I'm, I, I may want to come back.
And she wrote to me: "Under any circumstances,
don't come back to Hungary!"
And I didn't.
Ah, since ah 19 ah 68 or so, 66,
I've been visiting Hungary on and off, quite a bit.
I have an, my nice there and a nephew.
IV: And another question, did I get right,
you just have been one night in Flossenbürg?
TS: One night.
IV: Just one night. So, they didn't register you..?
TS: No, no..
IV: They just packed you in this cell where..
TS: They, they just, we came in and I think, my, is my estimate, they were so overwhelmed with
a thousand newcomers coming in one night, one day. They couldn't handle it.
I don't think they could handle the paper work.
And they just shut us into a cell.
Maybe the plan was to do it slowly next day or so.
But next day they said: "Everybody out. Everybody out."
Ah I understand the cell we were in was,
was the death cell that was the last step in, in, in
in this camp, before they shot people and hung them.
IV: So going up today, ah did there any things come back to you?
Did you recog.., could you recognize anything?
TS: Ah, I, I've sort of recognized it, but maybe it was just ah intuition, I don't know.
But I found a cell, which was about the size of the cell that I was in.
And I was with a group.
And I tried to get everybody in a cell.
At, I, I asked everybody to come in there, see what it feels like to be, crowded, but
some people just didn't want to come in {laughing}.
Yeah, but we're, we were about twenty of us in a cell and it was half full.
Ah, I couldn't get, w.., couldn't get everybody else in.
I was trying to direct them.
IV: Yeah, so ah up to now, you've been talking, ah telling a lot of facts.
So, what about, ah at this time ah sixty-five years, seventy years go back..
TS: I.., I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm sorry?
IV: Ah, ah, what do you think, how did you survive all these problems,
these terrible, saw the people dying and sort, had to march..
TS: I, I think I survived, because as a young man I was very active.
I used to go hiking in a hills, in mountains for days
and d.., and nights and m.., marching or hiking or walking wasn't th.., something new for me.
I was used to it.
I, I c.., even today I w.. I at my age, I, I walk five, six miles a day or
almost te.., eight kilometers, every day, I walk.
I like to walk.
And, I was in good physical, when I ent.., when they got me.
I got, I was in good physical shape.
Ah, ah, when I told you that I worked for the Hungarian army in a, in a forced labor.
Ah and we, I developed muscles that I, I didn't even know I had.
I, I was ah very good shape.
IV: So in..
TS: And in, in Buchenwald first I lost weight, like everybody else.
But working in, in a taylor workshop you got extra ra.., rations. We got a little extra food.
More food than ev.., everybody else.
So I wasn't as ah, ah as skinny as most people.
IV: So ah the physical side is one side.
But also the mentally side.
How ah, you could manage what you see aro.. people dying and starving?
TS: Me.., mentally, a.., and I was thinking back peo.., people dying around me, it's ah
you get used to it.
I, I hate to use the word.
You, you got used to it.
People died, ah, at, wh.., you develop immunity to that after a while,
ah w.., w.., we did, people died next to me in Buchenwald and
you close you.., your eyes and you close your mind.
And ah, ah later on or anytime, during the march or anytime,
I always thought about tomorrow, tom.., no.., not yesterday or the past, tomorrow.
What, what am I gonna do tomorrow?
What I have to.. in, in camp we always use to joke this,
as soon as we got our do.. bowl of soup ration.
What, what, what kind of soup we gonna get tomorrow?
What, how, how much bread we will get tomorrow?
Tomorrow, ah, one day, one day at a time.
IV: And, later on you tried to forget?
Or you tr.., had to talk about this? Or you tried to push it away?
TS: Ah I.., right I am glad you asked that.
At, later, I tried to forget everything.
Nobody in America ever heard me say that I was a prisoner in, in a camp in Germany.
I never talked about it to anybody.
They knew I was a foreigner, I, I came from Europe.
Ah, maybe they knew, I was a victim?
But no more than that.
And up to about eight to ten years ago, I wouldn't even talk about this.
I, you couldn't have made me to tell you anything
what I told you today. I denied it.
Why I don't know, but in my mind.
My children didn't know about it and my wife didn't know about anything I told you today.
And it, I, it was out of my mind.
I, ne.., I never thought of it.
Well, if I thoght of it, I didn't know, I th.., I was thinking about it.
And I wouldn't, ah only about the American, Ho.., ah, Holocaust Museum
in, in United States found me about a year ago or less than a year ago.
Up till then, most people didn't know, I was ever a prisoner in Germany.
IV: And so, when ah the Museum found out that you have been a victim,
ah why you did decide to change, ..?
TS: I, I don't know.
IV: ..to start talking about? Or just to come here?
TS: I don't know, it's a, came up very slowly.
I, ah, even when I was invited to come to Flossenbürg and to Indersdorf I was hesitant.
I wa.. I, I wasn't sure.
I wasn't sure, if I want to come, come back, ah revive memories?
They're not pleasant memories.
I didn't, I thought, just let it, let it go.
But, my wife is more interested in my welfare than I am.
And she wanted to come here, more than I wanted to come here.
And she is responsible for me sitting in this chair right now.
IV: And do you think she did a good job, bringing you here?
TS: I, I better say she did, because she can hear me.
She, she did a good job.
Ah after I came here, I went through ah, a.., all these memories.
Ah, I'm glad I did, what I did.
I'm glad I'm here.
IV: So, thank you for sharing and telling, telling us your story.
TS: Thank, thank you. And I thank you for asking me.
IV: Okay. And I hope you will have some good days still in Germany.
When you are going back?
You are staying some more days in Germany?
TS: Ah, we'll be here till Monday; on Monday we go to Prague for two days.
Ah we, we wanted to go longer, but my wife had to get back to work in time.
Except, ah, ah two days before we came, she got fired, so {laughing}.
Ha, {laughing} she doesn't have to go back {laughing}.
She, no, no, no tragedy being fired, but she got, she got fired.
IV: It's never nice to be fired. Never.