IV: Heute ist Freitag, der 19. Juli. Wir sind in Weiden in der Oberpfalz, im Hotel Admira.
Ich bin Michael Aue von der Medienwerkstatt Franken.
Und ich führe jetzt ein Interview mit Max Glauben, der am 14.5.1926 in Warschau geboren wurde,
äh, mehrere Konzentrationslager überlebte, davon wird er uns heute erzählen,
und der heute in Dallas lebt.
MG: The only one thing that you got the 26th from the records in Flossenbürg
but I was only born in 1928.
January 14 1928.
Because - probably I was very useful.
I was very good as a car.., in a carpenter shop, as a patternmaker
for the Heinkel and the Messerschmitt aircraft.
Precision work, so somebody made me older.
IV: But now in your passport is written..?
MG: 1930.
IV: 1930? You made yourself younger, coming to the US.
MG: Anyways.
IV: Anyway, we're not going to talk about this.
MG: No.
IV: Okay, may I call you Max?
MG: By all means, it's fine.
IV: I've just been to the States, and so everybody is like "Hello, I'm - "
MG: Yeah, yeah, that's - it's kind of friendly.
IV: Well, let's begin with the story. You've been born in Warschau.
MG: Warsaw.
IV: Maybe you can tell us a little bit about your family, how you grew up, the first years you can remember?
MG: Well, ah, I was born in Warsaw, Poland.
And we lived in a basically Jewish neighbourhood.
In fact, it is a famous street.
I lived on Miła 38, apartment 43.
There were two Miłas, one was narrow, where Miła 18 was.
And one was a little bit newer Miła which was wider.
We lived on the fourth floor and ah, there were close to 500 apartments there.
My father was involved with the Jewish publication, das "Jüdische Tagblatt".
And ah, that was located on Leszno 40.
And as a youngster, I used to go and loved to use the linotype machines
where you print out your name.
And you pull a lever and some letters come up.
And ah, bucket with lead comes out and spills it in and makes a column of a newspaper in a Jewish publication.
And.. my ah, dad of course was there. My mom was a housewife.
And then I had one little brother that was a couple of years younger than I was and that was a modern type of family.
The newspaper was not a real religious newspaper.
But a new way of life because people were starting to immigrate to Israel where Zionism really started.
So there was a branch of the religion that became (???).
Which means, did away with the beards and the long sideburns.
Many articles that they wore as attire for recognition according to the five books of Moses.
Everything was peaceful, we lived a normal life.
I went to school and being prepared for possible immigration to at that time Palestine, there was no Israel then.
So what they did that, when you went to a school, the school was Atid {hebrew: "future"} and it's, it's been perpetuated right now in some of the synagogues in the United States.
In my case everything was in Hebrew.
So otherwise you spoke Polish in the class
but geography, arithmetic, everything was taught in Hebrew
preparing you in the new Hebrew - like it's spoken in Israel.
Everything was fine and then the, we were middle-aged family.
We had ah, somebody that took care of my brother and me when my mother might have gone shopping.
Then immediately on September 1st 1939, without any notice, of course Germany invaded Poland.
Within one month and a couple of days,
after us being aware that they destroyed 85% of all the structures in Poland and Warsaw was hit worse than that
because its population was 30% Jewish.
And the Germans knew it and we lived in a German neighbourhood.
So everything was pretty bombed out.
And ah...
One can not image what it is to have your house or a part of the apartment, you know, damaged.
So even though we may not have been the actual casualties
but all our equipment that is necessary to sustain life like utilities were taken away from us.
So.. during the period later on that the Ghetto was established,
we drank water that was run off of the roof.
We loved snow because everywhere you want, you can pick up the snow.
And put it in your bathtub or in your sink after plugging it up and you had clear water like that.
Electricity - no. We used candles.
Then we were making carbide lamps.
And I don't know if you know carbide lamp, you know, there's carbide on the bottom
and then the water drips down, then the flame comes out.
And we manifactured those in the ghetto later on.
But anyways, life became miserable because first, the Germans made us register.
Then, if you did register and you were below a certain age, they didn't want you.
The kids couldn't go to school. And they were the first victims.
And the same with the elderly and the handicapped, they became the first victims.
They were the roots of Judaism.
They obeyed the Jewish laws of which, I don't know if you know how many we have - 613 laws, good and bad in the five books of Moses.
So, psychologically, they picked on them and they were the first victims with the kids.
Because if somebody hurts your family, everybody in the family gets humiliated and hurts.
So that's what they did with Judaism, so all the Jewish people can feel depressed.
They were mistreated on the streets.
And ah, there may be little known facts, that if a German soldier went into the Jewish area
and walked on the sidewalk and let's say, I was walking towards him,
if I had a hat, I had to take it off.
And if I came close to him, I had to step off the sidewalk
and let him - {walking cane falls down} there you go.
And let him, and let him, ah, you know, pass by like that.
And looting became a daily routine when the soldiers would take anything away from you that you have
because the laws that were made in '33 and '35 by the German Third Reich with Hitler, took away any right
that a Jewish person had, away from them.
We couldn't own any property, we couldn't go for higher education.
We couldn't hold, CEO positions in Germany and the same thing when...
The stores were sometimes blocked, not to allow anybody to go in.
And sometimes people were made - the stores were taken away and sold to somebody else.
Then, with some of the money that was confiscated and looted (???) and they could come in in the middle of the night, you know, into our apartments.
And take people for immoral purposes and also do that.
With that money, the bricks that were used for the Jews to build the wall around their own Ghetto
was money that was confiscated from the Jewish people.
Then the people that lived in that area had to build the 10-foot-ghetto
which had approximately 24 openings which were guarded by a German soldier, a Polish policeman.
And during the period of the building between '39 and '40,
there was a typhoid epidemic in the area where the Ghetto was designed.
It's a one square mile area and that was designed by the Germans right next to the Jewish cemetary and also the railroad yards,
then that's designated as a "Umschlagplatz" for gathering the people, then putting them on boxcars.
When the epidemic started and my brother and I - may he rest in peace - had typhoid.
The Germans were not allowed to go into that area.
So they made the "Judenreich" {means: "Judenrat"} which was like a city council of a rabbi, Czarnecki {means: Czerniaków}, there was one person that was the head.
They made him appoint 2000 Jewish Kapos, policemen,
to do the internal works of the Ghetto under the German command
because they didn't want to catch the diseases in the Ghetto.
And some of them were worse to us than the SS because they feared for their own safety.
Or maybe they were compensated with food or other things or blackmailed that their families would be killed if they don't perfom the duty.
What can I tell you. There were no stores to buy anything in there..
There were markets inside, there was bartering with diamonds, something of value could be exchanged for a piece of bread.
The ration that a Jew got in the Warsaw Ghetto if he was allowed to be a living human in the Ghetto, because if he was a child or an elderly, they couldn't work or they had to hide, got 184 kalories a day.
Sometimes a family of eight - two sets of grandparents, a mom and a dad and two children - had to eat on the two rations
that the mum and dad could bring in from a factory
or from being on a job where they give him a little slip to go to a commissary and pick up that food
if it was brought in to be distributed.
Because into that one sqare mile, they placed fif- five- half a million, 500.000 people.
A half a million people.
Each room in the Ghetto six, seven people. Each Room!
There were no apartments big enough to hold a whole family.
Because it was only eight people, so you always had (???) or children
that were left in hiding by the people that they took on boxcars to the two places from Warsaw.
That was Treblinka and Majdanek.
We lived like that until 1942.
In 1942, there was declared at an early part of the year,
I cannot give you all the details, but I'm just going chronologically,
the "Final Solution" came out and you know, the "Final Solution" was of what Hitler wrote in jail
while he was there after he tried to do a party to overthrow the new democratic German government after the Kaiser.
Well, he didn't say he's going to kill us all, he said "I'm going to destroy you all."
That's why "Kristallnacht", that's why burning of the books and that's what he was doing to us.
It's just taking all our possessions, burning our places of living,
burning our businesses, burning the synagogues.
Completely to destroy us.
Well, anyways, the command came out and ah, sometimes, you don't know what is going on
but there's also a part of history that we sometimes don't disclose
because if you go back to 1939, when Germany invaded Poland without any notice,
what did Russia do?
Germany took the eas-, the western part of Poland.
Russia took -
Germany the western part, I got west and east mixed up -
and Russia took the Ukraine and the eastern part of Germany.
The two armies met, signed an non-aggression pact.
Germany broke the non-aggression pact, invaded Russia, went up to Stalingrad, lost a whole Panzerdivision.
Italy invaded before 1942, before France, there was an invasion in Italy.
And they got with Mussolini and Italy, they started fighting over there.
So, maybe the command thought that the German government was crumbling, you know.
That had an attempt on Hitler's life, you know, with internal problems.
So that's why declared and started taking out more than five to six thousand people daily from Warsaw - that's all I can tell you about - to Treblinka, Majdanek.
Treblinka operating on, with, and why I noticed from my trips each year there.
They were gassing people with disassembled Russians engines out of the tanks, put pipes to them.
And they were gassing the Jews with Russian engines, so it wasn't such an efficient way.
Then was Auschwitz-Birkenau and their capacity was maybe 300 or so people an hour.
The ovens were not, you know, burning not fast enough or disposing of the bodies fast enough.
So, they put the people in the barracks and they put them in stalls like cattle with barbed wire.
Portable buildings, that's how we were brought in out of the Warsaw Ghetto, into Majdanek.
IV: Excuse me, Max, maybe I ask you a favour.
So, you know a lot of history but for me, it would be better to focus on your personal experience.
MG: Okay!
IV: I think that's the interesting - you were a witness.
And so that means just telling what happened to you.
What you remember being a child in the Ghetto and the personal, the way of you and your family.
MG: Well, I told you, well, we lived in the Ghetto and on Miła Street.
And I lived during the duration in the Ghetto but why I lived there,
all these things were happening, so what I was bringing up that some of the people started escaping back to the Ghetto.
In the meantime, myself with the elderly, we become smugglers.
And all during this time, we tried to bring in additional food to the Ghetto.
My father is involved with a.. a.. it's a wood - ah, the word has escaped..
There, on the Miła 38, there was a coal and wood supply.
They had a horse and they had a waggon, so they were doing smuggling on this waggon.
And I was instrumental with that to bring in smuggled foods on the waggons.
The waggons would go out with wares that were made in the Warsaw Ghetto by the Jews for Germany.
And bringing in materials that would be converted in the boxes that resembled the materials that they were bringing in,
we would put in items that were dehydrated that could be used for food in the Ghetto.
So, this was part what I did.
My father was instrumental in going out sometimes as a coachman, sometimes just sitting next with a trip ticket of the items that we were doing.
So, when the people started again escaping from the place, they told the Underground and the smugglers and everybody of what was happening.
Thus, we started bringing in items that could be used for military warfare into the Ghetto and I was instrumental in that.
With my family.
And we all lived together.
In fact, one of these aunts that lived with me is 93 years old and lives in Philadelphia now.
Because she lived with us and after 42 years found me in Dallas.
Cause she was taken to an ammunition factory.
But anyways, so we lived in the Ghetto until the uprising on April 19.
When the uprising occured, we all went into camouflaged basements.
My family and I and my aunts and everybody.
And in this camouflaged basements, we did have some supplies, like sugar cubes that we could chew on to eat.
And then we turned day into night.
We slept in the daytime, went out in the evening and with the rubbish that we collected from the ruins, we would start fires
and cook maybe - Poland is real big for potatoes, so we had potatoes and some of the rice and beans that were smuggled in into the Ghetto.
That's how we lived until the, the Germans tried to penetrate the gates of the Ghetto.
From the beginning, there were twenty-some, by that time, when the uprising occured, there were only 15 gates.
But they couldn't penetrate, so in the end, they got an order, around May 26,
they came in with flamethrowers, napalm flamethrowers and burned
so many of the places where we were hiding became gravesites.
And we hid there and hid there and hid there.
Finally, we got discovered by them listening with listening devices.
They threw a handgranade, either to finish them off or to create an opening.
They got us out, raised our hands up, disrobe- disrobed us and searched us in crevices of our body.
Mom, dad, aunts, uncles, grandparents, just humiliation.
Allowed us to get our clothes on, then took us to the "Umschlagplatz".
Marched us there, and put us on a boxcar.
The boxcar was placed on a siding after riding on the tracks for a while.
And we stayed there for five days, without any food, without any water.
More than a hundred people on there, not quietly.
No facility for any human waste.
But I looked out a little window and there was a tree with birds chirping, sky blue as ever.
I'm inside here, with no food, for nothing. I didn't do anything.
It's just like, if you are accused of doing something and you didn't do it.
But the things were so noisy and unbelievably, you could never think that one human being can do something to another human being.
In fact, the roof was like a lid on a boiling pot of water with little pieces of water.
And people were trying to wet their lips in order to just - it's harder to die from thirst than it is from there.
So finally, after five days, the train stops and I personally see "Lublin".
So all the time that I was in Majdanek, I thought I was in Lublin.
Because there was no sign "Majdanek".
So we were off-loaded.
Then we waited, for - they off-loaded us at night, maybe like two kilometres from the main entrance to Majdanek.
As they loaded us off, they put us five abreast, women, children, everybody, and waiting.
We didn't know why we were waiting.
They were setting up a checkline with requisitions of how many people here and how many people there.
And as we were going down, they pick up - first, they say "Women and children".
So I proceed and my father stopped.
And I'm in front of my father, he grabs my hand, says "stay with me."
And they didn't object and they selected 150 people that were working in a manufacturing place, aircraft manifacturing in Warsaw.
And they sent him and me to Budzyń and this is documented on the Internet.
I just looked it up..
Budzyń, the worst camp that I was in.
And we went there and I'm not going to tell you about the indoctrination.
But everything that I'm going to tell you now is going to be personal.
It's the Warsaw Ghetto, we lived as a family, so we had to obey by some of the rules
that were made for the others that's why I was telling you the story of what brought some of the (???)
So anyways, there, we would, there would...
First, when we came in, we came into a room, you had to disrobe in a corner.
Then they had volunteers or people maybe that were barbers that would shave the hair under your arm and around you whatever.
And then clip it with a Number One on top of the head and a Zero in the middle.
Then, we would go into the showers and get a little soap with lye or with, old brown soap.
And then, you may get a minute and a half or two minutes water, five or six or seven people under one shower.
Then they give you a little bit more water and then if you didn't wash off, they took a fire hose.
The pressure killed some of the people, all of them were laying on top, it was a mount of human beings.
So that's what I went through.
Then after that, you went to a room and they had DDT which is outlawed now and sprayed it all over your body.
But you never used a towel to wipe yourself off and that stuff stuck to you and then made sores afterwards.
And then you went on to another room and they threw you a shirt and a pair of pants if it was May.
In the winter time, maybe a jacket.
And a pair of clogs because you left your good shoes over there.
Now the procedure would be if we would have the time to get bathed, which was maybe three or four weeks, I don't remember how long,
but we'll take our clothes off in the barracks and walk in the nude to the barracks with the showers.
When we had to go to the bathroom, one {knocks over his glass of water} ah, that's alright, you shouldn't move this...
Jah, I'm, I'm talking with my hands, I'm very emotional.
But anyways, we would, there were two counter slabs with a lot of holes for both sides to be able.
And washing the hands was like the cows that are eating in the thing, was with the faucets and pipes, faucets and that's how we washed.
And at the end of each one of the toilets, there was the place for cleaning.
And if you didn't behave, then they put you in there, for cleaning.
So this is what I did.
When we got up in the morning very early, the man that was in charge, it was about five or so early in the morning, was in charge named Feix, come out on a white horse after the reporting.
He'll go behind us, we five abreast, like military, into the Appellsquare where we would be, facing it,
he go in the back with a whip, singled out on a white horse.
As many people as he wanted, sometimes five, ten, fifteen, sometimes two or three.
And kill them in front of everybody in inhuman ways.
And sometimes "Killing, shooting and hanging too good for you!"
Then we march in sections to the aeroplane factory in Budzyń.
And it was the, and it was the twin engine Heinkel that I worked on and I became a patternmaker.
I'm very good with my hands, that's why an older age, so they wouldn't kill me.
The master of the carpentershop did this.
So anyways, so, we would march and we had to sing and keep cadence like soldiers.
Three weeks, we go out on a Friday.
Three weeks, we go out in the morning, come back in the evening.
The guards say, there are three people missing.
They take 30 hostages, my father becomes a hostage before they count the people in the morning.
So in the morning, I get up, half of the people are gone, only their shoes.
My father's shoes are there, killed my father without me knowing how they killed him.
So, from then on, I'm on my own and I do real good work, so they let me live.
I'm transferred - I don't know why - to Mielec.
I work again for the Heinkel and there, they tattoo me with a "KL" which stands for "Konzentrationslager".
And I stay there for a while, then I'm on a train again in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
And evidently, the cars are full of people and the tracks are taking up with cars.
No room, I go to Wieliczka, salt mine, 15 kilometres on the other side of Krakau.
I stay there for a while, stay there for a while.
Finally, I'm on the train and they tell us "You're going into Germany, as the first Jewish transport."
I don't know it it's right or not.
But it was just rumors among the people because the guards never told us.
And many of them were Ukrainian guards, you know, that worked under the SS.
So, I'm taken to Flossenbürg.
And recently, I received my original paper, I received copies of my papers and I just saw my name in there.
So I got five records, work records, clothes records,
my number record on one page with thirty-some names, only six alive, all the others the day, that they died and where they died on the right-hand side.
And I stayed there till - and worked over here in Flossenbürg on the Messerschmitt, again patternmaking, very precision.
I had to put my number on and on my work record, on my work record, there's only my number, not my name.
On the others, in the most beautiful handwriting "Glauben, Mendel".
I stayed till the 16th.
In the middle of the night, they come in: "Jews only! Fall out!"
On a train, I get on a train, it leaves for a little while.
Maybe 2400 of us, come the American fighter planes.
There are two locomotives, one in front, one in the back.
They shoot it up parallel, kill over 400 of us, some of the guards.
No way to go.
They bring another train, come the British, but they disable the locomotive and start shooting down.
The Germans see that every 5th bullet, there's a tracer and I'm looking at him, they jump off, we jump off.
The pilots fly away, they see who it is with the stripes.
So then we go on a death march.
From Flossenbürg till April 23rd and we ended up somewhere around Stromfield or Schwarzenfeld.
I never looked for what places and what I'm telling you is hindsight.
But I know that I ended up in Regensburg.
And ah, what happened is, they left us on a little hill and told us "You are surrounded with machine guns."
And out of the whole group were maybe less than 500 left, in its small community, on a little hill.
So, eight of us kids decide, let's run through the machine guns and go back to the town that we came because we heard a roar of certain engines.
When we did that, the machine guns were abandoned and it were American tanks.
Immediately, we got C-ration, K-ration, food.
And a couple of days later, we tried to find a displaced person camp
because most of the people that lived there on the area were afraid to let us into their homes.
Nobody ever thought about that but they would bring out some food outside but no, we had to sleep outside!
So the Allies started building up displaced persons camps.
So, I was looking for one of the camps, on a farm road close to Schwabach, Germany, Nuremberg, Germany.
And behind us came the 179 signal corps of the United States Army, picked eight of us up, put us on the truck, put me on the jeep.
And said: "You're not strong enough to go to a displaced persons camp, we're going to use you as helpers."
So we roamed until I hit Nuremberg, Germany.
They were assigned to the Neumeyer Cable works, it was a city within a city.
It had everything that that company needed.
They were assigned a company of Polish guards and I don't, I can't tell you how many German prisoners of war.
And I became their mess sergeant from '45 to '47.
And I lived in Nuremberg.
And in 1947, I was ah, picked up by the US committee, after I got recommendation paper from the Germans.
And they identified us, made all the necessary papers to take us to the United States.
Only if we were under the age of 18 and lost the whole family.
So, I qualified, I was brought to the United States, placed in an orphanage in the Bronx on Cauldwell Avenue and lived there.
And was taken to many places and I, kind of got very depressed.
So, they ah, had an opening in Atlanta, Georgia on December 31 1947.
I was placed on an Eastern Airlines plane and flown to Atlanta, Georgia where I lived for the next year and a half.
Then I became 18, registered for the draft in the United States Army.
And I was drafted during the Korean War, so I'm a Korean Veteran.
And then, I was stationed in Fort Hood where I became a mess sergeant.
I was the understudy and the First Armour Division of the US Army was being reactivated.
So I went and.. I went to school, to food service school and I was an understudy so they gave me stripes and put me in the company that was being reactivated.
Which means they had to be in full strength, so the made me a mess seargeant immediately, but I never went to Korea.
Stayed stateside in Fort Hood and would come in on weekends
where I met my wife and I'm married to somebody that's a native Texan, born in Dallas, Texas.
And I have three children, two males and one female and seven grandchildren right now.
And ah, ages from 14 to 28.
The 28 is a liaison between Dallas and the Galilee in Israel, the Jewish Federation of Dallas in Galilee.
And her brother is with a cardealer in Dallas, then my youngest son in Houston has a wife and two children, one is a cheerleader in Michigan.
And the other one is in Rhodes College and he is a baseball pitcher
that was a freshman and became on the varsity team which means he is very good.
And then I have one that's starting in Texas A&M and one that's finishing in Texas A&M and the others are going to highschool and so forth.
IV: So, you seem to be a lucky man and a proud grandfather and father today.
MG: Yes, I am. It's all sometimes being in the right place at the right time and sometimes..
Some of your deeds also might be rewarded with an angel or so on your shoulders.
When you walk into a place that's really bad, I ah, I'm not advertising it.
But I'm also, I'm a cancer survivor, 17 years ago, I lost my complete stomach to cancer.
But I'm able to sit here and talk and..
Also, I'm not an educated person but I do have a diploma from Eastcentral College of Streetsmart, Hard Knocks and Streetsmart. You know, a diploma, so.
IV: Now we are right here today, but I would like if it's okay for you, to go a little bit back in the past because we're here in Flossenbürg.
Especially this interview is ah, for the memorial site.
So I would like to ask some more questions about your time in Flossenbürg.
MG: Okay.
IV: You told me, they put you on the transport to Flossenbürg.
Can you remember how many days it cost to get here and..
ah, when the first day, when you arrived, maybe you remember what happened here.
Maybe what was the difference comparing to other concentration camps.
MG: When we were placed in Wieliczka, they must have received an overflow of people.
Not only from Mielec but maybe from other surrounding areas.
So we lived under horrible conditions, in barracks that we were stuffed in with human beings.
So, there was one time that we went down with a lift.
Just to see where they were working because they had some facilities.
And I know there was a church underneath, in the underground that visitors come and see.
But I don't know in which shaft we were taken down there.
But we could.. there was an overflux of people we couldn't do too much there.
So this was like a transit, they put us on there.
And I remember that they put us on a boxcar that didn't have a top on.
You know, one of those that maybe coal or something was being used that was off-loaded in a different way.
So I was riding in a boxcar like that with some of the people too.
Maybe because we were professionals, I don't know.
You know, there was no reasoning.
So I went - and I'd say, about three or four days, you know.
And maybe, once or twice, this was around April or May, and maybe one time, it snowed, I can't..
You know, this kind of thing, but sometimes the weather's not cold enough for real snow so by the time it goes down,
it got down on us, it was kind of water.
So I remember that.
Then I was off-loaded, it was.. you know, the camps that I was in, at the beginning, were death camps.
Some of them were labour camps.
But you know, the commanders were either prisoners, taken out of prisons, or people that were real bad.
So Budzyń the worse, Mielec had more intelligent guys because aircrafts.
The other one was parts here aircrafts in a hangar for the planes, so he..
The condition's the same, but the treatment, the punishment and the whipping a little bit less.
Wieliczka... I told you, we lived there just to sustain as some human beings to be killed later.
Then when we went to Flossenbürg, we went into nicer facility for the showers.
But the procedure was the same - disrobe but not so much, ah, cruelty as in the other one.
And I don't even remember if I got the striped clothes or whether I got mixed clothes.
And on the mixed clothes it would have, with a red paint, you know either "KL" or "KZ".
Now, "KL" would be from maybe clothing from another camp that they brought over there to distribute.
And when I was on there, then, ah, the.. disinfecting was the same.
And the giving of clothing was the same.
But then we were led on stairway.
You know, we have to go up to the thing.
And immediately, the commander of that barrack, says: "Come on, I'll have you sleep in a better place."
So I don't know what he did with me.
You know, but he gave me better quarters.
But we were so {coughs}, we were so treated badly that once we lay down to sleep, we were probably dead.
And you didn't know what was happening to you.
So, I remember that.
Now I remember going and marching again but in a little bit easier way than in the other camps.
Because there, if we didn't keep cadence and march and sing, you got killed.
You never reached the destination.
But over here, it was a little bit more leisure.
And when I got first to that place, there was.. the head of the carpentershop.
And I was sweeping the floor.
And when I was sweeping, he was building a trunk and that was a little bit later in the year.
Because I was ha-, at the beginning, I had odd jobs at the carpentershop.
And then sometimes, it's just sweeping.
So he was making the top for a wooden chest.
And I stood on my stool and I was just tired and I was just like that..
So he says: "What are you doing?" I say: "I'm looking at you."
Because I was afraid to say I'm just sleepy.
So he says: "Why, you think you can do better than this?"
And he was trying to either probably pick with me.
I say: "I don't know but I can try."
So he says: "Well, go and try."
So I took one piece of wood and a big long plane and I centered it and I squared it on the piece and I made one slide.
I looked where it needed and it fit perfectly.
He took my apron off and says: "You're a carpenter now."
And after that, I was able to do everything that I was.
But he was a very bad person.
He would break a chair, a wooden chair and beat people up with the leg.
Sometimes.
But he send me in to the kitchen, to do repairs but more so, so, somebody there will give me some food.
Or I went behind the barracks and got potatoe peelings.
And we not only had to work in the carpenter but we also had to have certain - like, KP details.
Sometimes peeling potatoes in the kitchen, and..
This guy, as bad as he was, he sometimes arranged for the guy in the cook to ask for the little,
I was in barracks 11 of there, which is above some of the German things..
So, ah, I remember once or twice, I was unloading boxcars of bread.
So they had a human chain and the first, the first loaf of bread like that.
So I knew where I was, some of the bread going like that {making gestures}.
So I was an organizer and I did, ah, what I thought would save my life.
And ah, when I worked in the place, I worked with civilians.
Which was maybe different than some others that were right under a German.
You know what I mean.
There was a - I was that good on the machinery, and there might be records over there.
They brought in some Polish Youth - that was like Hitler Youth, in some other places - and they brought in also Hitler Youth, to work in these factories.
They went to school, they went there.
And in one of the camps, one of them cut his finger, while working on the machines, on the saws and the machines.
So, a high-ranking officer came in and slipped on something, it was a finger.
So he says: "Get the little Jewish boy to do the machines."
And I was good on all the machines.
And I was doing them also for everybody.
So I did many things just to stay out of trouble.
And some of the people that I worked with would sometimes bring an extra sandwich and throw into my bucket and so forth.
IV: So what about the general situation in the last months in the camp in Flossenbürg.
I've heard it was overcrowded, nearly no food, very cold - maybe you can tell a little bit about the general situation?
MG: The thing that always gets bad is - it was overcrowded and it was on there.
But it's like, you live in a house.
And let's say you live in a confined area and they put in extra people into your place.
They are strangers, they don't know how to live.
They don't know what the situation is inside.
So you understand what I'm saying.
And after me being incarcerated for five years, I was an established person in Flossenbürg.
The ones that suffered were the ones that came in.
Didn't have a job, didn't know what to do.
Maybe even, maybe even, not documented properly. So if they went for food, maybe they didn't see their name on it.
Do you understand what I'm saying? And it, well, it's a turmoil like that, so each one for yourself.
Yes, we suffered because we had to share with everybody.
But maybe I did.. To the point where I just looked out for myself.
You become very selfish in those situation and I'm very honest about this.
And I always could..
I'm very mechanically inclined and everything had to make sense and if it didn't make sense, it wasn't so, you know.
But we had a rough time at the end.
Just like, being called up in the middle of the night and putting on the train and being shut up and being on the death march.
So it was just turmoil because.. They didn't have any plans so what they were going to do.
And so, they.. everybody did the best they could with what they got.
IV: And you never get sick during this time or weak?
MG: Well, I.. I was.. To this day, I'm 85 years old.
And I climbed the Masada this year with the kids.
No, I'm a strong individual but I had my ups and downs.
I had typhoid in the Warsaw Ghetto with my little brother.
I went through.
In one of the camps, one of the Ukrainians pulled the file off and stuck it in my back.
You know, the file goes into a wooden handle, he pulled the wooden handle on there and it got a sharp edge and do it like that.
And there was maybe.. one time when we were going for a shower and it was in the winter time going to take.
And we were marching in the nude.
And I didn't have too much hair but icicles on your mouth from the breathing you get the icicles.
And then.. but anyways.
There was an iron pipe and one of the Ukrainians - and I never mention that to anybody,
One of the Ukrainian says: "Put your tongue out, you know it'll warm you up."
My tongue got stuck to the iron pipe when it's frozen, you know.
And you stayed there, in pain but thank God that didn't affect me.
And one time, ah, I was welding duraluminium because..
before I went into the carpenter, I did many odd jobs.
And they told me that ah, you get milk to drink if you.. do, you know, weld the duraluminium.
So it was.. duraluminium.
And right next was an electric arc welder.
So the guy says: "Come here, look."
So I look.
But I don't have any glasses.
So then for a little while, maybe two or three days, I couldn't see anything.
I was, you know, sunblinded.
But came back.
Like a.. these are miracles that happened that you shouldn't but you survived.
I was punished by hanging like this.
You know by my hands for 10, 15 minutes, you don't know what.
I was, ah.. on the march..
On the second train, when I jumped off, a shrapnel hit me right between the legs.
A 50 millimeter bullet, just like that.
So I have a scar, that big, but I don't talk about it.
But it's there.
IV: So physically, you could keep your health.
MG: I made sure, this is maybe why I am a survivor that I.. I was intimidated by denying my life.
I was the only one with my name in that book upstairs with the number 14732.
And I did anything in my power, so they wouldn't kill me.
IV: So what do you think, what made you so strong, not only physically but also mentally?
I think, also mentally, you have to keep very strong to survive?
MG: Belief and be positive.
And never, never, never, never, never, never give up!
And to this day, I won't do it.
IV: So I think, you're just being ah, not a child but a young man at this time.
You saw many terrible things, I think, you saw people dying, starving, killing each other.
MG: Exactly.
IV: And what, maybe just, ah, you're sounding very positive. What about your feelings at this time?
MG: The feelings.. Number 1, in our religion and.. when as a 10 or 12 or 30 not that much, but you know.
Certain things let's say, in our religion if you save one life, it's the same if you save the whole world.
This was on my mind.
The losing of my identity, my name and if you lose that, there wouldn't be any Glaubens in this world.
And the other thing is.. is.. Somebody wants to do something to me
and I'm going to make certain that I can avoid him trying to do it.
And if one loves life and thanks that you were placed here for a certain reason, you don't know what reason..
But.. evidently, you were meant to be in this earth and why should you be eliminated?
And.. evidently, our bodies are strong enough to withstand what I and many others withstood that have survived this.
So maybe it's a good sign for the future.
We didn't go under the bridges with a sign "Will work for food" or "Will work for a drink or for a donation".
We got married, created other families, created young individuals to perpetrate {perpetuate} this world.
And maybe thought of things to make a better world to live in. So..
There a many reasons, it could be hindsight that we are saying that, but there's a lot of truth to that.
The desire to live and be somebody and accomplish something, it's all within us.
In fact, when I lecture, I say, we have the same brains as Adam and Eve, look at the advancements.
All the way to now.
But the brain has the capability of choosing whether you want to take the right path, the bad path.
What they want to do with their life, who they want to be, whether they want to teach,
whether they want to be an aircraftmechanic or a pilot.
And also whether they want to teach other children.
And it all lies there, so..
We as individuals have to take the responsibility of choosing the right thing that we want to do.
Or how we going to get on in life.
IV: Well, I think it's looking back, at your..., what you experienced, it's maybe easy to say that, so.
With a lot of experiences of life. So, some more short questions.
So when you started your new life in the United States, you immediately started talking about what happened to you?
MG: No, no.. ah.
Like I told you, that I was with the Army, you know, working there.
And then, I ah.. registered for the draft, then I was drafted but I did speak to maybe some school children.
Not to my children because I didn't want any sympathy from them.
I want them grow up as regular people, not feel sorry for me everytime I tell them a story of what happened.
But would you believe that the things that were happening to us were so horrible that some people didn't want to believe it.
And when you talk to somebody and I'm very observant, I could see in their eyes "Maybe he's telling me a story."
Like I would tell him a number that I was and: "How does he remember the number?"
Well, now I got records to prove the number.
But there was a time after some commercial pictures came out.
That showed like maybe Schindler's List and some of the others.
This is where it really started growing because people realized that it really happened.
And people were afraid to expose the public to that because these are horrible things.
And you are going to teach them the horrible things.
They put how to make a bomb on the internet but they wouldn't tell you how one acted against another.
So then I started speaking and.. thank God I became somebody that can make a difference in many, many lives
by having a positive attitude rather than a negative.
And the results are much greater and it's self-satisfaction that I am doing something.
I made a little video that was professionally made and I am an (???) that is tax-deductible in the United States.
And I don't accept any money but a donation has to be made either to me or the Holocaust Museum.
For me, goes to scholarships.
I don't have an office, I don't have a telephone.
All the money goes for kids.
And the other one, all goes to the Holocaust Museum.
Because I don't want to profit on tragedy like some people. Whatever it is, you know.. So.
IV: Did you have any problems coming back to Germany, after so many years?
MG: No.. Like I say, I.. I don't.. have any hate because the hate would hurt me.
And you people or.. whoever, you don't even know that I hate you, you know, if I did.
You understand?
And I never wanted that because I was on the other side of hate.
And you'll see that many Holocaust survivors don't want to treat somebody else the same way as they, you know, have been treated.
But no, ah, I was a buyer at Neiman Marcus in the 50s and I came back in 1959 and 1960.
And I came back to the city that I left from, Nuremberg, Germany for the Toy Fair.
And ah, I came back about three or four years ago, I went to Berlin, with the March of the Living.
And.. I got some pictures of that.
And we visited all the places, so..
I don't hold any grudge and for therefore, I'm a better person and I feel better, you know. I'm satisfied.
IV: Good to hear. Did you ever get any money from the German government?
MG: No, never. I was not in there.
But lately, when I retired, I did get something for the Warsaw Ghetto.
More like social security.
So I got very little but no, the actual "Wiedergutmachung".
And ah.. When I applied, even for anything, they said that I was too late because I was in the military and I was in an area that applied for that.
And ah.. I was making too much money in what I was doing and that's kind of pissed me off.
Because what does that have to do with what I went through, you understand.
If you are going to give me for something that happened to me then, like if somebody gets in jail and then they let them out, they pay them for the time, regardless of how much money he makes.
You know, on a book or whatever.
So, no, but.. I get a little bit now and ah..
and in fact, I have a friend that lives with me in Atlanta, that's the head of the New York Gathering of the Holocaust Survivors, that has to do with "Wiedergutmachung".
But I didn't ask him to do it.
What comes, what comes.
And whatever I get, I'm not going to get upset over it, you know.
IV: Thank you very much.
MG: It's only three, but anyways, now I'm going to take the drink that I spilled.