IV: Many people who came here, they've been -
SI: Historically, what would you want to know?
I came here the first time and quite frankly, I'm regretting coming
because memories come back that I don't want to have back.
I have them - but as the doors said, by this:
I left Flossenbürg but Flossenbürg did not leave me.
This is a truth that is forever inscribed in us.
I came here for one reason,
because I was going to Poland to say goodbye to my parents where they were shot.
And Anna Andlauer was probably one of the nicest people and very persistent,
sort of talked me into coming and
I wanted also Susan to see how and where I was
because she's young, she's American, she's not Jewish.
She didn't know or she didn't - or she heard but didn't see of the pain we went through.
So.. that's why I came but, ah, it's, it will be a great pleasure leaving.
Never to come back.
IV: Never to come back?
SI: No. No.
IV: Okay, maybe you can tell us a little bit about your history, where you grow up.
SI: I was born in Krakau, Poland, I have a family, the youngest of six children.
We lived in Krakau on Kasimir, Kazimierz, which was 99% Jewish, maybe 95% Jewish.
I had a very good childhood, till September 7th 1939.
When the German army marched in and I stopped being a child and began to grow up.
Because the minute, they came into Krakau, trouble started for the Jews.
When the Jewish holidays, I think, either Yom Kippur,
when they started killing and -{coughs} excuse me - beating people.
And one time, they came from, they made the house - the hourse search and they take everything of value.
Whether silver or gold, anything, any was of value, nice.
Ah, Esszeug, you know, spoons, knives, forks.
And we had sort of a middle class, upper middle class lives.
So, they cleaned everything they could.
And then Krakau supposed to have been judenrein end of '39.
So my father packed us in and we went to a city called Tarnow.
And then, and from then on, it got worse and worse and worse till they,
and this I don't remember, they took us to be, ah, tested for our Untermenschlichkeit.
I guess, measured and weighed and ah, whatever needed, I don't remember that, ah, Jenis, professor, brought that to my attention.
And then, three months later, my parents, my two siblings where shot in Tarnow, Poland.
Ah, I and, my brother and I run, we lived on the Partère.
And I run with my brother and my two sisters, had the Ausweis, stamps, that they apparantly were to live.
Everybody else was shot.
I believe, if I, my numbers are correct, there were about 10.000 Jews killed that day in Tarnow.
And of course then it got from bad to worse to worse, then.
The ghetto came about, we moved in the Ghetto, my two sisters, my brother and I.
Not together because there was no room to live together.
And one of my sisters went on arische Papiere, but she was captured and killed.
My brother and sister were taken, I believe to Auschwitz,
When the last - what we called "Action", die Aktion.
I on the other hand, got a job as a Kutscher to the ahm, Oberscharführer Blacher, who's the head of the Ghetto.
I was his Kutscher.
So I stayed there, I was the last Jew to leave Tarnow.
We went to Płaszów. Płaszów was not good for me and I saw kids,
the minute you saw children around you, you know they were take steps and kill them off.
So I volunteered to go to a place called Mielec.
This was a camp where they produced Heinkel, bomber planes.
And we stayed there till the Russians started coming.
They took us from there to Wieliczka.
Aah, Wieliczka, we didn't stay very long because they, they were unable to build the factory that they wanted.
And they sent us by train - Wieliczka - Auschwitz.
Auschwitz they didn't take us out of the train because apparently, they had a little uprising there and they didn't want any problems.
So, they sent us on to Flossenbürg.
We came here, we stayed in the - what is it called - isolation barracks.
For one week, stark naked, as we were created, we came out of our mothers.
They kept us from morning to night outdoors.
In the evening we went to the barracks, which had nothing, not even straw to sleep on, just wood.
And I think we were in the barracks from eight in the evening to four or five o'clock in the morning.
IV: What time of year was it?
SI: I, I believe, I don't know whether I'm right or not, I believe it was either late spring or early fall.
It was very cold, it was bittercold.
The fortune I think for me and a lot of my fellows, was that we were young.
Some of the younger people can withstand.
Those who were older - I mean older, end of 30s and up - died.
Then they took us out, they registered us, and I had a problem.
The German turned on us, they always asked "Mother's maiden name?"
My mother's maiden name was Wolf.
The Oberscharführer that entered the books, didn't like that - "He was Wolf?"
"I didn't know it." And my mother's gone - so he asked me "Bist du Jude?"
So whatever I answered, there's no good. When I say no, it's no good.
If I say Ja, ist auch nicht schlecht. So I said: "Ich weiß nicht."
So he asked me how old I was.
And I bluffed and I tried to tell him that I'm 18 but I was - I have a picture.
When I was liberated, I was still very short.
And they put me on the Jugendblock which at that time - see, this was my liberation.
CM: Can you show it to the camera?
SI: I was liberated not far from there and I stayed with the American army.
And ah, then I went to Indersdorf, I wasn't there very long, I went to Konstanz at Bodensee.
I ended up in Paris.
Paris - Canada, Canada - States.
So since '49, I'm in the States.
IV: So maybe, let's go a little bit back to past. So, for you remember very clearly to -
SI: Unfortunately, yes.
IV: to talk about some details.
SI: Jah.
IV: So, ah, you said, in Plaszow, you've been the Kutscher of -
SI: No, in Tarnow.
IV: In Tarnow. You've been the Kutscher.
SI: Yeah.
IV: And then you went to Plaszow.
SI: To Plaszow, when they finished with the ghetto.
We cleaned up the ghetto. The 150 Jews and I, 149 Jews and I, we cleaned up the ghetto.
I had nothing to do with the clean-up because I was driving the horses and him. And his family.
When they liquidated, they shipped us on to Plaszow. But I didn't stay very long.
IV: Can you remember how was the situation in Plaszow for the people?
SI: Terrible, terrible. I was going, ah, I had they warned that my leg from my horse stepping on me and I couldn't go to work.
So the Jewish police grabbed me and were taking me to be punished.
Fortunately for me, Blacher was there.
And saw me coming with the police and said "Was - was machst du denn da?"
So I told him: "Sie wissen doch, dass das Pferd mir auf den Fuß getreten hat."
"Oh, ja ja, gehen los." And he sent me back.
If not, I wouldn't have survived the beating that the SS applied to the others.
And that was my luck and then, after that I volunteered and I escaped Płaszów.
Because the lice were eating me.
Young people were around, young children, and the moment they are around you knew - no good.
At least in my mind, I knew - I don't want to stay.
So I volunteered as I said, I went, nobody knew where we were going to.
Ah, we thought we were going to death but I didn't care where we went.
I just want to get out of Płaszów.
IV: And how did you - you - you had to walk or they put you on transport?
SI: On transport on freight trains. And ah, could quite a while, apparently. Mielec is not too far from Krakau-Płaszów.
But it took quite a, quite a couple of nights, quite couple of days to get there.
They unloaded us, they put us into barracks that they had prepared and we stayed in.
Oh, there were people already there, from other camps called Budzyń.
And these were mostly Jewish prisoners of war but, ah, Jews were not treated as prisoners of war, they were Jews. So.
We were there, I don't know, I cannot remember the length of time.
IV: Milic was kind of -
SI: Mielec.
IV: Arbeitslager, Arbeitslager. You had to work -
SI: Oh ja, everybody had to work. There was no prisoner that didn't work there.
Everybody, I worked in a "Halle", with a, I used to work in a bomber, the tanks, the fuel tanks,
where they had to have shooting, ah, explosives, neets, I don't know how I'd say in German, the Nieten.
IV: Nieten, yeah.
SI: And we worked with the Hartkolbe and they exploded, self-exploded in the bag.
That was my job at night, one week night, one week days.
IV: So you remember about the food, the housing, how you -
SI: The food, the housing. I mean, look.
Considering, the barracks were not bad, as opposed to Flossenbürg at the end, or Płaszów, the few weeks I was there.
Food was miserable, food, like everywhere else but it wasn't as bad as you got here at the end.
Or as bad as Płaszów was. But it was survivable.
They treated us halfly decent because we sort of helped them produce the plane. So.
And we worked with a lot of Polish people and a lot of German civilians.
You know, engineers, technicians, and so on. So.
It was not as bad as other camps and from there on, unfortunately, they brought us here.
IV: Can you remember the transport from there to Flossenbürg?
SI: Sure I remember the transport.
IV: Maybe you can tell us a little bit about it.
SI: Well, when we left Mielec, we were going, ah, well, within the reason, normally, 60-70 people in the car.
And German women and children were begging to come with us because they were afraid of the Russians.
The Germans said: "No, das ist nur für Häftlinge." They said.
So we left and we went through Wieliczka.
Wieliczka, we were maybe two weeks, three weeks.
We began to prepare in the mine, the work that we did in Mielec.
But I guess it wasn't feasible.
Between the Russians coming and taking all the stuff down, they decided "No", and they sent us on to Auschwitz, to Flossenbürg.
IV: And then you, you went by train -
SI: By train, by train.
We did, the only march I had on foot, a long march, was from Schwarzenfeld on to the liberation.
Those was the longest march.
IV: And maybe can you tell a little bit about the transport to Flossenbürg. How many people were situated -
SI: From, from, from Wieliczka there were already many people, 60, 70, 80 people in a car. Maybe more.
They took us in, as a matter of fact, we were, on the train, the one guy through the, ah, little window, so-called windows, whatever it was,
ah, asked the Polish railroad worker: "What does it say on the car? Where are we being shipped?"
He said, he answered in Polish: "To death." That was that, so.
And we came to, fortunately for us, to Auschwitz, where they couldn't take care of us, either gas chambers or anything else, they sent us on.
And we ended up in Flossenbürg. Again, the ride was very long. Very long.
Ah, they stopped every 20, 30 kilometres, put us on the side, so the German miliary trains could go by, to the front.
But after a while we came here, unloaded, and I cannot find the station here.
And, I remember the reception as, as clearly as it was yesterday.
The guards with the sheperds, with the dogs, all dogs barking, all Germans screaming.
And we were, for one thing, we were sitting in the train for about a week, two, I don't know how long.
Coming off the train was like, and all of a sudden, here these, these people, the guns, the dogs.
And they walked us here, to Flossenbürg. And they kept us then in this isolation for a week.
IV: And in the beginning, you had to go the this Häftlingsbad -
SI: Ja, ja, ja.
IV: Do you remember, maybe try to -
SI: Yeah, we went, after the isolation, they took us to baths, stark naked as we were and they gave us uniforms.
And shirts and, I don't remember if underwear, I don't remember, wooden clogs, wooden shoes.
And then they assigned, they registered us.
And they assigned me to the block 19, it was Jugendblock.
At first, it wasn't too bad, they kept the promise at least,
they told us we will get extra bread and extra soups which we got for a month or two.
Then our situation got bad, worse. They had more prisoners coming in.
They had the Polish prisoners coming in, that had the uprising in Warsaw.
They had other people coming in, you know, you committed a crime as a labourer or you flirted with a girl, whatever it was, so, they brought them here to.
So, the barrack got tighter and tighter.
They brought Italian kids whose families were, ah, with me slept on my Pritsche.
A young boy, an Italian boy whose father was a general.
And his division surrendered or went over to the allies.
So the rest of his whole family and he came to Flossenbürg.
He did not survive.
Cause as we talked about, Flossenbürg was very cold.
Barracks were certainly not heated and you didn't have much of a cover. So.
He lived about two months. He died right on the bed.
IV: And in day-time, you had to work -
SI: We had to work six days a week, sometimes seven if they decided that we are to carry stones from one place to another.
They made us work on Sunday.
But we had to work six days a week.
I was fortunate enough, I didn't work in the quarry, we worked the assembly, wing assembly for Messerschmitt. So.
We were dry and not too bad. We were so-called technicians, we knew the job, I mean, so.
IV: Because you already had -
SI: Had, that's right, in Mielec.
IV: In Mielec. This kind of work... And had also some of the young people, of the youth block, they had to work in the quarry or - ?
SI: I don't, I couldn't tell you, I don't remember.
Although I spoke to a Czech man, now, with a picture, who was a couple of years older than I, he was on the block.
And he said, he worked in the quarry, so it's possible.
I don't know, I had to stay with my group to march out to the halls here to -
IV: So, how have you been treated here, in your block, the Blockälteste, the Kapos?
SI: The Blockälteste was a criminal, and they know the name, I don't, I didn't even know his name.
He was called Herr Blockältester. Was old, grey-headed man.
And his assistant as a Blockälteste was a nice, young Czech man.
I had the misfortune of staying on the German side.
So if any infraction, he slapped you around and beat you, kicked you.
We stood on the Appellplatz, being counted.
If God forbid, we were miscounted and they thought that somebody ran away, which was almost impossible, ah, we got, we could stand on the Appellplatz for a whole night.
First, he counted, then the Germans came to count and nochmals and nochmals.
And then, maybe by two o'clock they let us in and by five o'clock, we had to go back to work.
So it was, wasn't very nice. It was not a nice time to spend.
IV: So did you see any executions or torturings?
SI: Yes, yes, executions.
The official executions that we have seen, was, there were six Russians.
They were prisoners of war, young boys.
Never forget it, on the Appellplatz, they put their scaffolding.
And they hang them all at the same time. We had to watch.
What their crime was, I don't know.
And I don't know that anybody knows. Whether they tried to escape or they tried to kill a German. I have no idea.
But they were executed. But people were executed, beaten, for no reason at all.
You had to take your cap off when an SS-man passed.
Sometimes he didn't like you taking your cap off, he beat you up.
You didn't take it off, they beat you up, so.
They knocked my tooth out because I wasn't fast enough to take my cap off.
That's, that's how it was in Flossenbürg. And ah..
IV: Remembering this time here, what do you think was, what was the hardest and terrible thing for you?
SI: Everything.
From people laying next to you and not waking up
to people going to work and dying while marching to work or coming back.
These were mostly young people.
I spoke to a Polish man, cause I speak Polish,
and asked him: "What do you do here?" Since he was here, I told you the story, he was here with his 39-year-old father who perished here.
Perished from hunger, from Typhoid, from God knows what.
And as the kids died in my block,
they put them into the latrine and then the people came and collected them to the crematorium.
There were everyday, every single day, there were bodies,
brought to the, ah, what was it called, the bathroom, the bathroom, no, the latrine.
And, that's where they laid there while we washed ourselves.
So you lived and died with death.
IV: So and there also was, we just passed the Krankenrevier.
SI: Yeah, I was there twice.
Once I had my testicles frozen.
I couldn't walk, they were so big. I couldn't walk, they put me there.
And once I had this thumb, I got a piece of aluminium
and they debated whether they cut my hand off.
And I started crying "Don't cut my hand off. If they, you cut my hand off, I'm dead. They will kill me, I couldn't work."
So this French doctor did this, cut off and cleaned it up.
And I stayed a few days.
While staying there, they made me carry food from the SS-kitchen
which was there in Kommando, Kommandantur to this prison that they had here.
You know, they had a lot of big people. Schuschnigg, Canaris, I don't know.
And we carried food to them and we carried food to a Hurhaus that was here to be used by prisoners mostly Germans.
And then when more people came, they were not Germans, they allowed certain people, Czechs, not Poles and not Jews.
Czechs, I think, the French, if they wanted to use the Hurhaus.
And these women, the poor women, were all prisoners but forced into prostitution.
IV: And the people who went there, they had some money to pay the whores?
SI: Well, they paid, they paid people, not the Jews.
They paid people three or four marks a week or month or I don't know whatever.
They had a canteen, the canteen was for everybody but not the Jews.
So, with that money, they could either buy in canteen whatever, I don't know, cigarettes, maybe chewing gum or something like that.
And - or go to the house, to the Hurhaus, and pay for that.
So. Choice was theirs.
IV: Okay, wie weit sind wir mit der Kassette, bevor ich eine neue Frage stelle?
SI: So silly.
IV: Yeah.
SI: Okay, we marched out on a Monday, I think, it was April 16th.
Or April 17th. I think 16th.
We were all standing on the Appellplatz. The whole camp.
And they yelled: "Juden raustreten!"
Well, first of all, the night before,
they took Russian prisoners and they executed them, someplace. We heard shots.
We didn't know where.
So, then they said: "Alle Juden raustreten!"
So, I tried to sneak my way in to stay with the non-Jews.
Little Polish kid, "Hey Jude - they call you!"
So I had to go and we marched to the station,
wherever the Flossenbürg station was.
And they had these open cars, flat cars.
And they put us up there and we went a few kilometres.
And fighters came, American fighter planes, shot up the locomotives.
In between they took few of us,
because, you know, a plane cannot see exactly,
are they prisoners or are they not prisoners?
So they shot up.
And they brought new locomotives and we went another few miles and boom, again the same thing.
Till by Schwarzenfeld, the Germans had enough and they started marching us out.
And we marched till we were liberated, my group went, was led, we were, first of all, we were marching at night.
Because they were afraid of the planes.
And they took us in, into a forest, at dawn, after the march.
And we thought that's it, we get executed there.
But most of our guards were ex-prisoners, that means Germans, gypsies, and some Ukrainians.
They gave them - they swore their allegiance.
And they got uniforms and guns and they were our guards.
And some of them were the biggest bastards, bigger than the SS, so bad.
And we, on the 23th of April,
we saw in the morning, when they brought us into the forest,
they began to throw bullets out of their bullet, you know, cases.
And, all of a sudden, nobody there, no guards.
IV: They run away?
SI: Disappeared. Like - and I had some friends that, we were held together from Mielec still.
And they were older, so I decided, we better move out of here.
So I got my guys and we started marching in.
And nearby, was a town, and up the hill, where we were going,
was a German Major with a Panzerfaust.
And with a pair of binoculars, so, I came over, I spoke decent German.
And I said "Major, wir bitten um Erlaubnis, in das Dorf rein."
He got scared, says: "Okay, I'm coming with you."
Because he wanted to surrender.
And he was with us, he hoped that he won't get killed.
And we went into town, he got taken prisoner.
And we got food thrown from each and every tank that passed.
I told my boys not to eat.
We went to a farm house, the farm woman thought we were going to kill her because
I mean, we, we, were prisoners...
And ah, all I asked was some food, she made us some eggs, she gave us some bread.
We washed ourselves, we had no other clothes.
Since I was a bit wounded, they put me in a field hospital with the American army.
And they took me, I stayed there, I,
with the officer was next to me, a Lieutenant, and he took me
after he got well and I did, to the company he was with, which was the division that liberated us.
And I stayed with him, for - till they were going home.
They wanted to smuggle me to the States.
I did not want me smuggled.
I wanted to be coming to the States as a free person.
And so the UNRRA came, I don't know how they knew about me and my friend,
and they took us to Indersdorf.
At Indersdorf, I stayed a very short period of time, whether it was three or four weeks.
And then I met somebody on the train who was looking for me.
My cousin was liberated and stayed in Konstanz,
was, ah, there and his mother and sister.
They were all liberated then.
And we went from there to Paris.
And Paris to Canada, Canada - the States.
IV: So maybe you can give us some details of the march.
So, how, when you remember how big the group was you left in Flossenbürg, how many reached -
SI: Ah, Flossenbürg, the Jews, probably four or five thousand, I assume.
I don't know, you know we didn't count, we marched out and we thought this is it, the end.
When they took us on the cars, each car, flat car had about 50, 60, maybe 100 people.
With four guards on each flat car.
And we rode, as I said, to Schwarzenfeld, this was the distance.
And I don't remember how far it is.
I couldn't tell you if it's 20 kilometres from here, or 50 kilometres.
But not far, and from there, we began, they put us in as groups, you know, like we, the younger people,
so-called because we were 14, 15 and 16, marched as a group.
And we marched out and we marched through towns through.. In the middle of the night.
Some kids threw stones at us.
Some women try to offer us food, threw food at us.
But the German guards warned them if they do it, they would be marching with us. So.
And it rained, terrible weather, terrible, every single day.
Rain, rain and snow, rain.
Till we got to this place we were liberated.
IV: What happened to the people that were to weak to walk?
SI: Shot, shot.
The army claimed that they found us, following the Leichen that were laying on the streets.
And a lot of us, a lot of them were buried at Schwarzenfeld, for instance.
And all the places where they collected the bodies and buried them on the spot.
I understand from the director here now that they had to exhume the bodies
and bring them here to Flossenbürg.
That's all I know.
And then we had people that couldn't walk.
They said, they just gave up, sat down and says: "Okay."
They were shot.
Other people dropped dead, so.
We probably, by the time we were liberated, our group was relatively lucky.
We were younger, we were still, we could still march and keep up.
Few of the kids dropped out, very few, but some.
But we saw other groups that passed us or, terribly decimated, terribly. So.
IV: Ah, well, seeing all this, this long time, yeah, how did you feel, seeing the people dying beside you?
SI: Oh, you know, you get, the will of survival makes you steely, makes you forget that you're a human being.
You kept on marching, you kept on living.
I know to you it may sound abnormal.
But you know, when you are treated as an animal, you become like an animal and that's what we were.
The will to survive was paramount and this..
No matter how many bodies on each side, no matter who died.
Maybe you felt badly if a friend or maybe a family member, but other than that, you were just.
The will to live was very strong. So.
We lived through it.
IV: And the day of liberation, what kind of feelings came up in this moment?
SI: Very, very - I cannot describe it.
I thought they were Russians.
Since I spoke a little Russian, because I was here with Russians.
Because we saw stars on the tanks, white stars.
And on the back of the tanks, they had red covers.
So we thought they were Russians, we didn't know America was at war.
I, the, the, exaltation of being free was unbelievable.
And I mean, you cannot describe it.
No human being that wasn't there can describe the feeling of all of a sudden sort of not having guards, not having to die, not having to suffer anymore.
It's something that will always live with me, the rest of my days.
IV: Because a lot of people -
CM: Stop!