SB: We live in Tel Aviv but the recording was in Yad Vashem, in Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
That's why it is important to me that through Mr....
IV: Urban.
SB: No, it's Mr. Ulrich, isn't it?
IV: I am Mr. Urban. Urban.. (???) works in the memorial.
SB: I see, pardon me.
I was asked whether my children are interested in my past, am I being recorded? I can begin talking now.
IV: Yes, of course. The camera is always running, just to be on the safe side.
SB: As I said, yes, my sons, I have two sons. One son is 59 and the younger one is 50 years old.
They are very interested, as are the grandchildren, yes, very interested in my past and the older grandchildren, we have nine, five and four divided between the two sons, and three great grandchildren.
The eldest have all been in Europe, but mostly in Poland, to visit the concentration camps.
So I speak about my past and when the children of our grandchildren are interested in learning about my past.
On the contrary, when I speak about various things today, they remind me of details that I have told them and that I had kind of forgotten.
IV: That is the next generation that can pass it on.
SB: Exactly.
IV: ...even when they have only heard it from you.
SB: Today, in Israel, in recent years, there is a certain tendency to save from the past what can be saved to get primary source information.
Because before long the primary source won't be...
IV: will no longer be here.
SB: No longer here.
IV: Do your children and grandchildren speak German?
SB; Not my grandchildren. My sons understand German but we don't speak German, our language at home is Hebrew.
IV: Good. Let's return to Poland... your first station of forced labor.
You also said the conditions were almost worse than in the concentration camp. Could you speak about the work and everyday life there?
SB: The work that I did was mostly for the company I worked for, the Fischer company from Mörfelden, that was the name of the company, Fischer company from Mörfelden. Near Frankfurt.
I remember it.
And when we worked we were guarded by the head foresters from the company, who were from Germany.
There was one head forester, Knott, the second. This Knott was head forester but he ended up in Auschwitz by the way.
And forester Schmidet and forester...there was another one there that I don't know anymore and the guards were mostly from Poland.
But the Polish guards were exact, they were not very friendly either.
There was a minimal amount of food. We were given a bit of soup in the evening, mostly water, and a small piece of bread and that was all the food for the entire day.
The next day we went to work in the morning to the forest, we cleared out forests and prepared the wood to be sent to Germany.
Peeled off the bark, chopped up the branches, but the work was terrible.
We had to fulfill a certain quota and when we didn't then we had to stay in the forest for as long as it took until we had completed the work.
All the while being beaten by the guards and as I said, minimal food.
The only way to get food was if someone had a chance to buy food from the farmers.
But for those who didn't, it was bitter, for example for me.
I didn't have any chance, I had been separated from my parents, I didn't know where my parents were and didn't have any.
But I trusted in God, I was young at the time, 15, 16, 17 years old when I was in that camp, at different sites.
IV: Could you list the different stations?
SB: The stations, the first station was called Biesiadka, it was in the vicinity of a military, in a military zone.
That is how it was called then, Biesiadka. And later we came to a different place near Huta Komarowska and then to a third place called Edemba {poss. Dęba}.
From one place to the next, where we cleared forests and performed this forest work and I fell ill with typhus, spotted fever.
And was in the sick barracks and on the whole journey until my liberation after the war, thank God, God stood by me.
I have to say that.
For instance when I fell ill with spotted fever in 1942 and was lying in the sick barracks and I heard a car drive up one day.
Yes, with 42 fever I had the presence of mind to get out of bed and crawl away from the sick barracks to hide somewhere.
The sick were loaded onto the car and brought to the woods and were shot there.
I was basically the only one who survived.
And so, thank God, God stood by me the entire time.
Until 1943 when the camp was closed down by higher authorities from Germany, this work camp, and I was sent to a concentration camp in Poland called Mielec.
Mielec is a city and there was an aircraft factory in this city back when it belonged to Poland and we were housed in this camp.
That was a concentration camp, connected to Plaszow.
Plaszow, which was also in Poland. And we worked in this aircraft factory, produced the Junkers there.
Junkers aiplanes, right? The same thing, the conditions were not, not rosy.
The Oberscharführer Schwammberger came to Plaszow from Floss---to Mielec and was head of the camp.
But the camp, the internal control was in Jewish hands, but the leader was Schwammberger.
By the way, in the 1970s, he was discovered in South America and was tried.
We worked in this camp, we worked until 1944 and that was where we were tattooed with this mark, KL.
That was the only camp, the only concentration camp, both in Poland and in Germany, that tattooed this KL.
All the other ones used numbers. I didn't have a priosoner number.
IV: The KL stood for concentration camp.
SB: Concentration camp. That was Mielec and Plaszow. SInce we were connected to Plaszow.
IV: And that was a tattoo that everyone could recognize...
SB: Exactly, exactly, it was also supposed to prevent escape attempts.
We were marked. For example in Flossenbürg, we were, everyone had a prisoner number, but in addition to the prisoner number, I left Flossenbürg, we were totally shaven, all off.
IV: Let's try to take a look at Mielec, that was somehow...
SB: From Mielec in 1944 then the Russians were approaching and as the Russians came closer we were evacuated from Mielec towards Germany.
They said to an aircraft factory in Wieliczka.
Wieliczka, near Cracowq, there is a well-known salt pit there.
There are world-famous salt pits there and they said that this factory was to be moved there.
But that never happened, for reasons that I learned later.
First because the building slips from Mielec, where the aircraft was assembled, were too heavy to move down into this salt pit and secondly that the salt acid would have damaged the metal.
So although we had come to Wieliczka and to the camp, we were there for 8 or 10 days but then were transported on to Flossenbürg.
That was summer 1944.
IV: I believe you arrived in August.
SB: Yes we arrived around August.
We were connected to Plaszow, but I wasn't in Plaszow personally.
By the way, Plaszow no longer exists. The camp was totally wiped out. There is only a hill there.
With a monument on the hill, that's all.
As I said, we arrived in Flossenbürg. That was in summer.
We were the first Jewish transport, or a transport made up entirely of Jews, that went to Flossenbürg.
Flossenbürg isn't very well known, in Israel, yes, but as I have heard, not throughout Europe.
People don't know where Flossenbürg is.
We arrived in Flossenbürg and were put in quarantine there.
And quarantine, that was a closed-off camp, separate from the rest of the camp.
We were stripped down, we moved around naked, we weren't allowed in the barracks during the day.
We were allowed in at night to sleep and we were given some kind of cement bags made of paper to cover over ourselves.
And in the morning they said we had to go out again. We were in this quarantine for around 14 day, 3 weeks.
But once in a while health officials from nearby camps came to request people and they regarded us just like cattle.
Yes, we were totally naked, whether we were able to do work or not and selected these people and they stayed in the camp.
I was one of the last if I'm not mistaken, to leave this quarantine and head to Hersbruck.
We were sent to Hersbruck and worked in tunnel construction in Hersbruck.
This camp was still under construction because I don't recall that a camp existed there.
There were just a few wooden structures where we were housed.
And during the day we worked in the tunnels.
We were not in this camp very long because evidently we were called back by Junkers, becuase we were basically skilled workers in aircraft production, and we went back, were transported back to Flossenbürg, registered there.
That is when we were first registered, my registr.. my number was 14311, which proved true, and I have it on me and we were housed, if I'm not mistaken, in Block 9, and I think Block 7
Block 7 and Block 9, were mostly Jews, there were also Russians there in the camp and also older inmates there.
Mostly from European countries, Germans and Czechs and so on.
We worked, we began working for Messerschmitt, in the Messerschmitt factories, as skilled workers and that was until the end, until we left the camp in 1945 on April 15.
For me personally, the conditions in the camp were not good.
First, the camp was intended for a certain number of prisoners and it became overcrowded.
So we were housed in this Block 9, slept there four to a bed that was only made for one.
We were squeezed together like sardines.
When one person turned over, the other three had to turn too.
That is how we were housed, worked in shifts for Messerschmitt.
We had one day off, usually Sunday, where we stayed in the camp, were usually assigned to duty in the camp.
But sometimes we had free hours that we weren't allowed to spend in the barracks.
We weren't allowed to be in the barracks, we usually had to stay outside the barracks.
We only went into the barracks in the evenings to sleep.
A personal experience for me, I was sitting one afternoon, leaning against the barracks, with a window above me.
And the window opened and someone asked me if I was inmate 14311.
I said "yes" and he told me I should report to him in the evenig in German.
It later turned out he was a prisoner, came from Breslau.
His sin was that he was a Jehovah's Witness, his first name was Fritz, either Gensch or Jänsch.
I have to inquire about that in Flossenbürg, look into it.
I believe he worked in the office and he discovered me there, from my data.
And when we met in the evening he told me about his past and asked me things.
He didn't want too much contact with me, perhaps he didn't want anyone to notice that we had too much contact to one another.
But we did have contact so that I....yesterday I asked Mr. Ulrich that we...I noticed as we were working there in the Messerschmitt factory.
We could see the entire camp from the window, I noticed that one afternoon a convoy of cars...from the Red Cross drove into the camp and then after a few hours the convoy left the camp again.
In the evening he told me that a delegation either from the Swedish or the Danish Red Cross was there to conduct negotiations, I can't remember, with the head of the camp, to take over the camp.
That was just before the liberation.
But nothing came of it and the convoy left the camp.
When I was here last year, I was here last year as I said.
That was 8 or 10 days after the meeting of former prisoners. I didn't attend the meeting.
So on this day there was no one from the office to speak to, just Mr. Fritz, Ulrich Fritz was there.
I spoke to him and told him about this and he was not aware of this and he looked into it later and confirmed it in writing.
That he had inquired with the Red Cross in Geneva and sent me an excerpt from the article that a delegation had been here from the Danish Red Cross and engaged in negotiations to take over the camp.
But nothing came of it.
This Fritz Jänsch had always encouraged me to be brave, to hold on, that it would not go on much longer.
Evidently he had his information sources but he couldn't say any more.
So that gave me courage to hold on a bit longer. Yes.
IV: You spent the last camp winter here. The whole time, until the liberation.
SB: Yes, the last...
IV: You spoke a little about where you were housed.
Could you say something about the food, the work conditions, with Messerschmitt, during this time?
SB: The work conditions...my foreman was a prisoner too, a gypsy.
Yes, we got on well. I looked for this gypsy and also for Fritz Jänsch after the liberation.
I met him in Neunberg in front of the forest, I visited him but we didn't have any further contact.
So both of them survived the war.
The work was...I worked on the elevator, on producing the elevator.
As I said, everyone.. after completing certain work...a work phase, the work was examined by an inspector.
What could be improved was improved, but when a prisoner made a mistake, it was seen as sabotage and he got his reward for that.
And the reward was to be pulled over the trestle and to land a few on his bottom, it depended.
The cudgel was a rubber hose wrapped in wire with electrical wire to make the effect better, a hollow hose.
And I was fortunate to get a portion, three times.
Once I was given five beatings, once ten, once fifteen, but it ended up alreight.
Because there were people there who got more, 50 to 75, even 100.
Depending on who carried out the punishment and depending on how the work "mistake" had happened.
The work conditions were like in the camp.
We also had night shifts, worked during the day, when there were alarms, and alarms happened often.
We had to keep on working but at night they said lights out and everyone hid in his corner.
To doze off for a few minutes and wait for the bombing but not even this plant was bombed.
There is a big question as to why is wasn't since everyone knew that there was a factory here.
Yes, if I'm not mistaken, at the very beginning we had three shifts, but later it became two shifts.
That means we worked three shifts of eight hours and later two shifts of twelve hours.
When we got back from work there was roll call.
Roll call, there was early roll call, before we went to work, and evening roll call when we came back, depending.
And it could go on for hours until the count was right. Until it was right.
If someone was missing, no matter what the weather, wind, rain and snow. Yes, we had to stand outside.
And in the camp, in the barracks we only had time to sleep, a few hours of sleep.
Because early in the morning we had to leave.
And the work, the food, the provisions, was very minimal, we were starvedwere ill..the entire war years.
We were given a soup in the evening, yes, and the breakfast portion of bread. I think eight portions of a bread loaf.
And sawdust was mixed in with the bread and in the morning only coffee was handed out, just coffee and I usually did without that.
Because I didn't want to push and later the people usually attacked the canister to get the last portions.
To scrape out the coffee grounds with their spoon, to eat it and I wanted to avoid that.
IV: There were also escape attempts here.
SB: There was one escape attempt, there was an escape attempt here.
I remember. I remember when they caught the escapee and hanged him when we returned to the camp in the evening.
That was a few days, passing by the gallows and seeing the people hanging there, yes, I can remember that.
IV:: And there was also the crematorium down here, many people died. Do you remember that too?
SB: I don't remember that because as I said, I didn't know the grounds of the camp.
I only knew marching in, that we went up to the roll call square.
Block 9 was further up and the place I stayed when I had an hour off, was between these two blocks, 9 and the one before, I think it was 6 or 7.
Or when we were forced to go to work, except when we had to go to the bath.
We didn't go to the bath very often. I have very little memory of taking showers.
When we showered we had to hand over our clothes and on the other side we were given different clothes, that had been deloused sort of, but only sort of.
That was in quotation marks, the delousing didn't help.
Once before the showers, but it wasn't only before the showers, also elsewhere, when we had our free hours, we were disinfected with lysol.
We were first shaved on all the areas of the body with hair, and then disinfected, with lysol. That burned.
And we were shaved bald, yes, and occasionally a hair machine was run through our heads.
That was the so-called lice street, to prevent any escape attempt.
We were given a prisoner number on the left side of the upper chest and on the right side down by the pants.
The people who worked outside the camps, for example in the quarry, wore striped prisoners clothing.
Those of us who worked in the camp were given the civilian clothing of the prisoners who had just arrived in the camp.
I remember the transports that arrived in the last months before the end of the war.
For example transports from Warsaw after the Warsaw Uprising, from the Christian Warsaw Uprising and the people who came from other camps, but that was shortly before the end of the war.
IV: And it got more and more crowded.
SB: It got more and more crowded. Until one day, on the 15th, although I saw on the signs that it was the 16th.
I believe it was on the 15th, a Sunday, when they said: "All the Jews, all the Jews out."
It was the first transport that was assembled to leave the camp.
Now I am coming to the evacuation and on this morning we left the Flossenbürg camp by foot to Floss.
We were put on trains in Floss, some were open, some open cars, some closed cars, and we left Flossenbürg by train.
After the first few kilometers planes arrived, flying low and shooting at the locomotive, bringing the train to a halt.
At this first attack all the prisoners, we jumped off and ran away to hide.
Because this attack came unexpectedly, both for the prisoners and for the guards. We were not prepared for that.
When the new locomotive arrived and was ready to move on they said that the next time there is an attack the prisoners would not be allowed to leave.
We could only hide under the train car, under the axle and the guards had to take position on both sides of the train with the guns pointed at the train.
IV: You already described this escape, the evacuation story.
SB: I told it already.
IV: What was it like during the last weeks and months here. Did you have information, did you sense that the end was approaching, that a liberation might be coming?
Did people here know that or did you know how things were developing...
SB: I personally had the feeling, through that middleman, the Jehovah's Witness, who was a prisoner, yes.
He reassured me: "Samuel", he said, that is my first name, "Samuel, don't lose courage, it won't continue much longer.
I can tell you one thing: don't lose courage."
I was young, I was young and lived with the belief that I mustn't give up. Not to give up.
And so I...with God at my side, helping me.
IV: As you told the story, at the death march, you were healthy, were among the stronger ones, right?
You also said there wasn't anything to eat.
SB: For a while I was one of the stronger...I was young, I was 19 then, right?
By the way, we were freed on April 23, the next day, on the 24th i "celebrated" my 20th birthday.
And then, but everything else appeared later.
Later in Schwandorf I was stationed for about 6 weeks in a hospital and in Israel i was in a hospital for more than a year because I had fallen ill with...
I had symptoms that appeared later, that surfaced later.
IV: You tell the whole story quite...