CM: Ok, rolling.
IV 1: Today is Friday, April 25.
We are in Weiden in Hotel Admira and are now conducting an interview with Mr. Shlomo Selinger.
He was born on May 31, 1928 in Poland in Jaworzno.
ShS: Szczakowa-Jaworzno.
IV 1: Szczak..
ShS: Szczakowa-Jaworzno.
IV1: Szczaowa-Jaworzno?
Thank you.
Uh...and after an odyssey through many camps he arrived in Flossenbürg.
CM: Yes, it's running
IV2: Could we...could you tell us a bit about your birth, your childhood, your family.
ShS: Yes.
IV2: From your education in Poland.
ShS: Uh...I was born into a Jewish family in Poland.
Uh.. in a city called Szczakowa.
Today it is called Szczakowa-Jaworzno.
Uh, in a relatively wealthy family.
Uh, the Jews in our city were not very wealthy, but my father (clears throat) worked in Katowice, in Kattowitz.
And every morning my father left by train, he needed 25 minutes to get to Katowice to his business.
Uh, so I had quite a happy childhood.
Uh, to give an impression:
on the holidays we drove to the mountains.
Um, as a child I went skiing and then we were in the mountains, in Lapka
My family was not poor, in comparison to most of the Jews in this city.
My father, uh, our city belonged to Austria before World War I.
My great grandfather had 16 children and produced vodka.
He received a medal from the kaiser because ten of his children fought in World War I.
I didn't learn this until after the war.
And, uh, when, uh, yes
So I remember that I had blond hair and when I was around three years old, I remember I was taken to a barber and my hair was cut off.
And I began attending a Jewish school called "Chaider" where I started learning the alphabet, the Hebrew letters and the Jewish prayers.
Uh, a bit later I began studying the Bible, the Torah.
And since we spoke Polish at home and the Bible in the Jewish schools had been translated literally from Hebrew to Yiddish, I could recite languages that I didn't speak.
And so I was not a good pupil.
And, uh, still, I made some progress.
We studied the Bible, then the translation, the interpretation of the Bible from Rashi.
And a little later, when I was around six and a half, we began to study the Mishnah, that means the beginning of the Talmud.
And with seven, that was the age when Polish children began to attend public school.
So I went (clears throat) to the public school.
And there...I had already gone to the Jewish school, although I was a poor pupil, in, uh, learning laws...what was in the Bible, the interpretation of the Bible.
And in the Polish school I began to learn "A,B,C" with the others.
So there was a certain discrepancy between...
But I was not an exceptional pupil in the Polish school, I was an average pupil.
And then I remember that I liked math and I'd always enjoyed history.
And, and I liked grammar, those were the things that I liked.
Uh, yes.
That was our childhood.
We went away on the holidays.
Sometimes to my grandmother in Michów.
And my...usually to the mountains.
And when I was 11 years old, uh, in September, Poland was attacked by the German army.
And I was in Michów... at my grandmother's.
Uh...the German troops arrived.
The...tanks were parked on the market square.
And since then...it was also...It was exactly the Jewish celebration of Rosch ha-Shana, the Jewish new year.
And since the synagogue was already occupied, I don't know, with the cavalry or with horses.
The Jews had gathered to pray in private homes.
My father had taken me with him.
And the soldiers arrived in the middle of prayer.
And they took us away in the middle of prayer.
My father was handed a broom.
At other places the people who were praying were given shovels.
My father was with other Jews there...he had to sweep the market square.
And I knew that since my father did not have a beard, that he was not...
there were no assaults...but some of the others who had beards, their beards were torn off.
And they gave these people shovels and after they had entertained themselves for a while by humiliating these religious Jews, they were led out of the city.
And they dug out their graves.
And they were executed.
That was my first contact with the, uh, Nazi regime.
And that is why I, uh, after Poland was occupied, my family returned to my city in Szczakowa.
And it was...our city was not very far from, ok, let's not speak of Auschwitz yet.
And between, uh, it was not far from Katowice. From Kattowitz.
And there were... in our city, people who had gone to my school.
And I had a buddy who was German.
He was my friend. Initially.
One is, one is...
But when I returned to Szczakowa, uh Lewko -- his name was Lewko - he was already wearing a uniform of the Hitler Youth.
He had a small bayonet here on the side.
And, and he had forgotten our friendship.
He came with a knife and robbed me.
He took things away from me.
I had a precious box made out of I don't know what.
I know that he came to our house that evening, maybe to give it back to me
And his parents were a little ashamed of him.
I assume..I want to believe this.
That his parents...that is what I think now.
It was enough, enough just to put a child in a uniform, a uniform of the Hitler Youth, and he can march along in the marches.
I remember, uh, it was...I am not musical, but I remember the words:
The...The blood of Jews splashes on the knife, will be, will be good again. That will be something...like that.
And the others began to march too...letting the children march, the groups on the fields... and brainwashing.
And then a group...because a group doesn't have a brain.
That is a horde.
It has no...a group has neither a brain nor a heart.
It marches like, like a horde.
And, and, and among the children, normal people, totally normal, with totally normal ethics.
Uh, they can become, no, I won't say animals because that would be insulting to animals.
become criminal.
That is it.
I still recall, at the beginning we were not supposed to...we were to go out two or three hours daily, besides for work.
And I remember, um, there were...we were annexed like Alsace-Lorraine.
And so the police was the German police.
They were Schupos.
And I still recall the names of three Schupos, one was Krieger, he had a big dog.
And there was Kuhn, a huge person, who
And there was Linke, Linke.
Linke had...I have never seen a Jew with a nose like that.
LInke had a nose like that.
And I think he hated Jews because of his nose.
I think, I think, it was not the Stürmer who... I think he was imitating the Stürmer.
That is how his nose was.
Now I recall, um, because when a German passed by, a Jew had to raise his hat.
That was the rule.
Uh, he goes into our house, I don't know how.
And he sees me in a corner, we were stunned, and he begins to slap me.
And my mother, who was standing next to me, began to scream.
"But, but...he is just a child! He is just a child!"
Then he opened his eyes, the eyes of a calf.
He looked at my mother, turned around and left, slamming the door.
Uh, we had there...the small Jewish community was organized into a Jewish council.
And each time the Jewish council had to provide people, people to perform compulsory labor.
Often it was to, to...the work was to shovel snow...they went from the station of Szczakowa all the way to Jaworzno.
That was about 5 kilometers.
But one day they told us...they ordered a group of people, I was among them, to shovel snow.
I think that was in 1940.
Und shoveling snow between their barracks and the slaughterhouse where there were very large trees.
And as the day darkened, trucks arrived, vans arrived.
Uh and people, plainclothed, some plainclothed and some in uniform, set up scaffolding and fastened ropes to the trees.
And the entire city, around noon, everyone had to come.
And we, who...who cleaned the entire area...we had to stay at the site.
I was maybe 12 years old.
No, no yet...maybe...
And I was there on the left side.
And on the tree across from me, I saw that they had brought my teacher from my youth there.
And, and, when they placed the rope around his neck, I heard him praying in Hebrew.
Schma Israel, A-donaj E-lohejnu, A-donaj Echad.
And then the chair was pulled away.
By the way, we had, I don't know how, uh my wife Ruthy was able to get a copy of the photo of the hanging.
Because all these trees...there were...I don't know who these people were who were hanged.
Perhaps Polish intellectuals, perhaps Jews, but...
And the only, the only one that stayed in my memory, who, who uh...
That was also the first time that I had ever seen a dead person.
Ok. Then I began working in a factory...
And at a certain point they took us from the houses and created a kind of ghetto.
And that was a...ghetto...a small village next to Szczakowa.
A village surrounded by the river Kozi Bród.
And a railroad ramp.
And to get in one had to go through a gate.
So we were locked in a ghetto.
And I left this ghetto every day to go to the factory where I started working.
And in this ghetto, it was very ... quite a small village, there were only a few people in it, very few buildings.
I think, in every room, there were four, four or five families, one after the next.
But that didn't last long.
Because...And then they gathered the Jews from all the surrounding villages.
They gathered them there.
And then, one day, early in the morning, the sun had not yet risen, one heard that the SS had arrived.
Since we lived next to Auschwitz, they gathered us there.
And this time uh my father, my mother and my little sister were uh spared.
And we went to Chrzanów for a few months.
That is around 5, 6 kilometers from Szczakowa.
We only stayed there briefly, and selections took place there too.
The people, they went... uh, yes...
Because at the first selection my oldest sister was sent to a labor camp in Germany.
And, and I don't know by what luck that some families came to Chrzanów.
The rest was...they went away to the labor camps in Germany.
And the rest went straight to Auschwitz into the gas chambers.
Uh we didn't know that there were gas chambers, even though it was so close.
One couldn't imagine something like that.
But there were rumors here and there that they were killing there.
But one couldn't imaging that it was "systematic killing."
In quotation marks.
And when I arrived in Chrzanów, I worked in a...
there were German businesses, tailors, tailors...they made clothing.
They gathered together all the machines of the Jewish tailors and built a factory, to produce clothing.
I think there was also...clothing for the army was also made there.
And that lasted a few months.
And then again, one morning at dawn, I was not awake yet, my...
I didn't see my mother and my little sister again, they had reached safety.
And I stayed with my father.
And they came to our yard and into our house and yelled:
"Hands up!"
And everyone had to raise their hands and go outside.
And they brought us to the school.
To the school of Chrzanów.
In the school of Chrzanów, once again we were very close to Auschwitz, selections were carried out from there.
And right away my father was separated from me.
And I went downstairs with my friends who were my age.
And there were women there, old people, women with children.
And so...I didn't understand.
But suddenly, something made me move toward the selections
where the German police were were guarding the selection between those who ... the larger group that was below
and the few others, the healthy people and the young girls that ... were separated on the above levels.
And there was...a policeman from the ghetto, Huber-Schönberg, a Jew, he saw me there on the side, near the selection.
He started to yell.
I was thirteen years old.
He began to yell: "What are you doing here. You are 17 years old."
And the German police didn't have time to react and he pushed me back upstairs.
And so I was with my father.
And with my father, they first sent us to Sosnowiec, a transit camp.
And from there to a, a camp in Germany, that was called Faulbrück and then to Gröditz, they were next to each other.
And Faulbrück, Faulbrück, in Faulbrück we went every morning... they had us...there was a former factory.
And there were beds set up.
And there were also fathers and sons among us.
My father and... every morning we went to work, to Reichenbach, where we had to dig foundations. I think for Krupp.
For the Krupp factories that were expanded here at extraordinary speed.
Ok, I'll return to my father.
And, and, and, the dehumanization that took place.
They completely dehumanized us, by starving us, abusing us, beating us.
Beating.
My father, there were fathers...although it is said that the dehumanization was very effective.
We former deportees often hide this.
But I won't hide it.
They dehumanized us ... it was very effective.
And there were fathers and sons who fought over a little extra or a little less bread.
When I speak to people about bread, they think I am talking about bread.
But it is not about bread.
It is about surviving one more day.
It is not...it is not a question of bread.
It is a question of life.
And it is difficult to explain this when I go to universities and speak to students about this.
I have to stress this.
And, and, and I was there with my father, and my father wanted me to have a somewhat larger piece of bread.
That is why, uh, I didn't...I was a child.
And, and I wanted my father to have a bit more.
And it was just a short period in which I got to know my father because in life I didn't know my father well.
He was always busy.
He went, uh, he went to work.
He came home in the evening.
Saturdays, uh, that was a surprise for me because he arrived and made...he tested me on what I had learned in the Jewish school.
And I was no good.
Incidently, I can still remember everything that I could not...what I could not answer to my father, I know that all by heart now.
That is very strange.
It is...how the brain works.
But...and in the camp he...my father never reproached me for anything.
But I learned a lesson for life.
from dignity...about dignity.
Through his example.
And even the other inmates respected him.
We were on the building site, and, and, the first time I...
at the building site we came from excavation work and had to push a cart with steel pipes.
And that was very hard, we pushed.
And there was a foreman there, a civilian, he had it out for my father.
He insulted him, he beat him and he began, uh..he didn't stop until his nose and mouth were covered in blood.
Uh, and my father was not so much affected by the physical treatment as by the great.. the insults that the foreman could get away with.
And he repeated... he told me that. He told me that.
And, a bit later, my father became weak.
And then, uh, they brought him to the barracks.
And one day, they told me that they would take good care of my father.
That they would bring him to a "recuperation camp."
A recuperation camp, after the war I learned that my father was murdered in a shameful way.
They put a water hose in his mouth and let him burst from the inside.
And there was, uh, someone who...saw him in the corner that was called Brande. Brande.
That was the so-called recuperation camp.
And one even came back from Gröditz.
Someone uh came back from Brande.
And each time he wanted to speak to me about my father.
And I, I knew that they had killed him.
But I didn't want them to tell me.
And I was...each time I went away, I didn't want, didn't want to know.
I didn't want to know.
That's how it was.
I also worked in Gröditz.
And from Gröditz, yes, And my father...I was 14 years old, about 14 years old.
And I was left behind, without anyone, in the hell.
And slowly I made a friend.
Uh Rawer.
And there was a place, that...there was...uh Gröditz is a place where there was a barbwire fence, but not electric.
But on the other side there were potatoes.
And since we were starving, at night Rawer and I...he kept look out and I, uh, as usual, I risked it.
I crossed the fence and filled up.. under my shirt, with potatoes.
And when leaving the light went on and a guard was there.
He brought me to the guardroom.
First he took away the potatoes of course.
My friend Rawer had disappeared.
And he made a deal with me. I give you ten beatings.
If you scream, uh, I'll report you.
And if you don't scream, I'll forget you.
And I leaned over a stool.
And with all his strength, with a, uh thin, I don't know what it was, rubber or a cable.
or a rubber cable with an electrical cord on the inside or so.
I recall that I bit my teeth into the stool and and I didn't make a sound.
I stopped breathing.
And so he forgot me.
That's how it was.
From there uh...there was a transfer of a few inmates from uh from Gröditz to Markstädt
And I was among these inmates.
I was already in bad shape.
And in Markstädt I caught pneumonia.
IV1: Excuse me.
IV1: One moment.
We have to...we only have a half hour. I think we have to speed up a bit so that we get to Flossenbürg.
ShS: Oh, i didn't yet...
IV1: Just, otherwise...
I haven't spoken yet about a hanging in Faulbrück. I would like to tell this.
V2: Oh, Ok.
ShS: I'll go back again.
IV2: Mr. Selinger, but then we have to...
We still have a half hour. We have time.
But and then to Flossenbürg, we mustn't get too detailed, for example about Fünfteichen, ok?
ShS: Yes, I...
IV2: So, you...
ShS: I am going to tell about an important scene from Faulbrück, as my father was still there.
IV2: He wants to continue speaking, from where he was but I told him that..
IV2: After that we will try.
ShS: Yes. In Faulbrück. Uh.
Is it ok? Can I...is it working?
IV1: Yes.
ShS: Uh, one morning, that means in the middle of the night, maybe at four o'clock, three, four o'clock, they woke us up much earlier.
And they gave us this soup, this, this soup, to call this soup, liquid.
And they brought us to a fenced-in area where there were trees.
And all these trees were...
Our comrades were hanging on all these trees.
I began to drink this soup and suddenly I saw feet.
This is how they showed us, uh, they typified uh, our purpose.
That we were definitely a part of uh that we were programmed not to exist.
In part by the immediate murder in the baths with gas.
In part through this slogan "extermination through work."
So then I arrived in Markstädt.
I became sick there and a kapo...the winter began.
He extended my stay in the sick barrack.
And, and he gave me an extra soup.
And that is how I survived.
And in Markstädt I worked in excavation.
We always dug the foundations for the Krupp factory.
And one day, uh, next to the Markstädt, our camp, in Markstädt we were only Jews.
uh, it was a large camp, Fünfteichen.
It was not yet run by the police like our camp, but by the SS.
And, uh, they got us undressed, and we were brought before a commission of SS doctors.
And they gave us prisoner clothes, pyjamas.
And we were given an identification number that we always had to say when we were...at roll calls.
And in Fünfteichen I was given 25 beatings on my behind
Elsewhere too.
And my comrades helped me to find work at the building site that was not too strenuous since I couldn't...at night I couldn't sleep on my back.
And, and Fünfteichen, uh a new prisoner transport was supposed to arrive.
They had us do sports.
That means: squats and jumps, so.
And the roll-call grounds.
(someone coughs)
ShS: And the roll-call grounds were filled with exhausted prisoners.
We, since we were already starving when we arrived, abused at the building site, we waited for this, this chance to get this small soup.
Uh and yes...I see too...Sundays.
On Sundays, from time to time they made us wear our jackets inside-out, with the buttons on the inside.
And we transported earth from one place and then from another place.
And we endured the beatings of the SS and kapos.
And we were dependent on the large camp, uh the main camp, that was Gross-Rosen.
And Gross-Rosen was different than Buchenwald where the politicals had taken power.
Whereas with us, it was the green triangles, the criminals.
And for them killing meant nothing.
And, and, and...the killing definitively continued.
And every morning there was...the living and the dead who had died during the night were brought to the roll-call grounds.
And we brought the people with us from the building site who couldn't survive the work or the beatings from the kapos at the building site.
But we went every morning...in front of the gate there was a prisoner orchestra.
And there were musicians among them, the greatest musicians of Europe, who played these idiotic marches.
And next to them the SS and kapos who counted and counted and couldn't stop counting, counting us.
And before evening, before returning, we lined up at the roll-call grounds between the blocks.
and when the block leader arrived before the...block eldest, the block eldest gave the block eldest gave the order "caps off!"
So. We took off our caps.
Those were idiotic things.
And, and when you returned from the camp and arrived in the block...and if the bed had not been made very well, you were beaten.
And it was...uh...in Fünfteichen there was a kind of table that held the feet and someone put their head in and he was given 25 beatings.
And if someone was beaten and started to scream...the....breathing stopped (he imitates the sound) and he couldn't scream anymore.
And one time it happened to me, when...why did they hit us -- because we didn't have enough strength to work very well.
Uh, because we were exhausted, we were uh...they recorded our number and, and beat us in the camp.
And yes, these long distances and the cold in our clothing that were very, very...
We were clothed in pyjamas, very thin things.
And, and, to protect ourselves from the cold...and since we were at the building site, we were able to find cement sacks and other things.
And, and when..we hid them under our clothes, and and when they discovered it, uh then they were beaten to death.
That is how it was.
IV2: And how did you come from Fa..uh Fünfteichen to Flossenbürg?
Could you speak about your time in Flossenbürg?
ShS: After that, after that uh after that..
(he clears his throat) Since we were dependent on Gross-Rossen, uh I think that the Soviets were slowly approaching, they evacuated the people onto the streets who were still of value and able to work.
And that was my first death march.
We walked through snow.
And, and whenever someone couldn't continue, someone...an SS man shot him in the neck.
And he was left on the road.
And arrived...so we arrived in Gross-Rosen, and there were many people in Gross-Rosen.
There was no room in the barracks.
And we uh, our group, we were Russians, Poles, Czechs...because Fünfteichen, that was a very big, a very big camp.
And we were housed in a cave.
And there was not room for everyone in this cave.
And so the kapo put one on top of the other.
With beatings.
And the kapo hit me so hard that he broke my collar bone.
And so I went on.
And, and during the night we slept on top of each other.
The dirt came out everywhere.
And in, in Gross-Rosen it happened to me too.
In Gross-Rosen it just went on, life just went on, there were hanging ceremonies.
People who were punished.
But for the ceremony to be complete, uh the scaffoldings had to be full.
And I, I came from where I had washed myself a bit -- I always washed myself because the people who didn't wash, those were the ones who gave up.
And I always wanted to live, always.
I had a treasure inside me.
A huge treasure, that was my parents' love.
I...they gave me this will...that I always thought that I would live.
And, and there, that was the end.
And the kapo grabbed me and tied my hands behind my back to complete the hanging ceremony.
And, and fear is something terrible.
That is not a normal fear.
It turns your bowels inside out.
And, and, I...one can't hold it back uh... the diarrhea ran.
And..but at the same time, when I..it is over, I die, I know it, it is over uh I said to myself:
I don't know the prayers, the, the, the from Aharon Diamant, that I saw in Szczackowa when he was hanged.
I couldn't speak this prayer.
Those are things...my,, my, my clothes were dirtied from the diarrhea.
And the thought that I, that I was going to die without prayer.
But as I cameup to the scaffolding, the SS man said to him:
Uh we have enough!"
And all the ropes were occupied.
And instead of an actor I was a spectator.
And very quickly.
Ah, yes, another episode, uh...
I met someone from my city.
Uh uh a person that was looking for me.
Because he uh, he sensed that he couldn't go on.
And he gave me the soup.
His soup.
But I say he gave me his soup, and and no one understands what that means. The soup.
He gave me the chance to live a bit longer.
And i want to state his name: Janek Spierer.
Every time. Janek Spierer, that was...
And the one in Szczakowa, who was hanged in front of me, that was Aharon Diamant.
The others, I don't know.
After that the evacuation began, from Gross-Rosen.
They put us on a train.
And uh open.
And the cold...in the cold.
The train runs slowly, makes stop.
They gave us something to eat.
There was nothing to drink, there was a bit of snow.
We licked the snow a bit.
And I don't know how long we were traveling.
But I know that I uh, that I drank my own urine.
The thirst...the thirst was immense.
And upon arrival in, in Flossenbürg a part of the...a part of the train was still alive.
And I was among them, with Maniek.
Maniek Selinger, a distant relative, who kept an eye on me a bit, kept an eye on me a bit, helped me a bit.
And I was with him until the end.
And upon arrival
I thought it was very close.
I even thought uh that the train brought us into the camp.
And they took our clothes away uh because we stank and the SS was always afraid of contagious diseases.
And they took the clothes we had away from us.
And they put us in a bath.
And that was a miracle.
It was...they thawed us.
And I remember that we were given new, not new, but different prisoner clothing.
And with a new number.
And in F..and in Gross-Rosen, Fünfteichen, I had a number that I can't remember.
But, but I had a yellow triangle.
Whereas in Flossenbürg I was given a red triangle with a "P".
Poli...uh..polisch uh political
prisoner I guess.
And we were put in the quarantine in Flossenbürg.
in the quarantine.
And the crematorium, the crematorium was next to it.
Where, where I breathed in that smell.
And incidentally, this time when I went to the site of the crematorium, I know that there was no smell - I know it, I know it.
but I had the feeling of smelling this smell that suffocated me.
there the day before yesterday.
(IV1 clears throat)
ShS: OK. We were in the quarantine in Flossenbürg for a while.
Then we were housed in a block from where I could determine exactly where it was.
It was the first block beyond the kitchen.
And Sonja, uh we went there with Sonja and located.. I could locate the site exactly.
I went partway up the stairs that I went up everyday.
And...at that time, when I was there.
And like uh, Gross-Rosen, Flossenbürg was also overcrowded with people.
We were uh squeezed together in the beds like sardines, one on top of the other.
And at night, when we were very poorly nourished, debilitated from the death marches and from hunger and from the beatings that we got from the kapos and SS alike.
Just so, separate from punishment.
Uh for example an SS comes to you and says in friendly way:
"How old are you?"
So I say: "I am 15 years old."
"15 years is long enough to have lived!"
And begins hitting.
That is...and the kapos who practiced beating with their fists and elbows at the same time.
They just took any prisoner and trained.
Or, or, whatever.
Took a prisoner and dunked his head in a bucket of water and he drowned in this water bucket.
And, and, and the SS in Fünfteichen they practiced aiming by putting empty bottles on the heads of prisoners and aiming.
And sometimes they missed.
That didn't count.
In anycase at that time it was much harder for us Jews because...and also for the Russians.
Because we didn't get letters or packages.
The Poles received packages, the Czechs received packages and certainly the Germans too.
And, and, and, we were there, we no longer had any family, we didn't have anything anymore.
We already knew that our families had been exterminated.
We knew...it was...
And we already knew that in Fünfteichen, uh in '44, that the Jews from Hungary were brought...were all exterminated.
And that the gas chambers in Auschwitz were not enough.
They threw the children directly into the fire.
And after the war I learned from my cousin that uh, when the train from Krakow arrived in Auschwitz with her nieces
and one of the nieces was crying, an officer, an SS dressed in black tore the child away and kicked her head, in front of the parents.
And they were definitely before the gas chambers but uh..
And, and I also had a friend, the poet, uh, the poet, Bruno Durocher, who was in Mauthausen-Gusen.
And he told me that there was a small commando where the camp commandant fed his dog with the ...he tied the prisoners up and fed his dog the genitals of the prisoners.
You see, there were no limits.
Sadism knows no limits.
Oh yes, he also told me something that got me thinking.
That a man, a young man, a student of philosophy who came from Berlin, no doubt someone who was protected so that he didn't have to go to the front.
A young SS man who came to Mauthausen-Gusen.
And Bruno Durocher had direct contact with this SS man because he was in charge of the coal.
And he said to him: How can people behave like this towards other people
And six weeks, a month, six weeks later he murdered just like the others.
That means, humans are fragile, humans have to be monitored.
IV2: Mr. Selinger, to come back to Flossenbürg and take a look at the rest of your life...
ShS: Ah, yes.
IV2: Couild you tell us how...?
ShS: From Flossenbürg, in the night of Flossenbürg, when someone turned black.
They didn't turn black from the cold in the night because there wasns't enough space in the beds.
He was thrown on the floor.
So all night long one heard "bumm", a corpse, someone who had died, they threw him down.
This smell "brumm", which haunts me in my nightmares.
IV2: How long were you in Flossenbürg?
And where did you go after that?
RS (his wife): Schlomo. The view. The beauty.
ShS. Ah yes. Flossenbürg, that was an unusual place.
Beautiful. The landscape all around.
And that was also true in Gross-Rosen.
That was something that affected me deeply.
I endured..I hated this beauty.
This beauty...the filth, the torture, the vermin that ate us up, the hunger that emptied us out, that was my life.
But the beauty, I could not bear it.
It was an insult for, for..
That beauty continued to exist.
And it was the same in the night when I took the buc..when I went out with the urine container to..
Because we urinated in the night...The prisoners went out, they urinated...they were not allowed to go out.
And we...and it filled up very very quickly.
And there were people who had to go out.
I went out to dump out the urine and I raised my head and there was the moon and there were the stars.
That was beauty.
And it was something that was unbearable.
It was...I couldn't bear it.
Perhaps because I.. I had no artistic inclination in my childhood.
But perhaps I had somewhere the sensibility which led me later to become a sculptor.
And illustrator.
The beauty, the beauty was unbearable.
And only after the war, when I arrived in Palestine with an illegal boat.
and, and I arrived in a kibbuz on the bank of the Dead Sea, where we washed the earth, since there was 17% earth..salt there.
And there was a woman, a wonderful woman, who led me back to life and to poetry.
And helped me to raise my eyes and to see the beauty of the desert of Judea.
Then I was born, reborn in the desert of Judea.
Fine,, I'll return now to FLossenbürg.
We were sent from Flossenbürg in a commando to Dresden. Dresden had already been destroyed.
And I worked with a master, repairing railroad tracks.
And I recall that I found a head of cabbage there that was already a bit floppy.
And, and and I ate it.
It was perhaps not poisonous.
And a bit of time passed, we worked there.
A few of us prisoners...pardon?
RS: The potatoes.
Shs. Oh, yes.
There were people who peeled potatoes for the SS.
I went passed, snatched them and ate the raw potato.
And I knew, had the intuition uh, knew which weed to pluck, which I ate and the weed which I didn't touch.
An insect, which I took and ate without hesitating.
And others that I didn't touch.
I became a small animal.
And there in Dresden the front was slowly coming closer.
And we go, we carry, we went away on the second death march.
And we walked along small mountain trails.
And if someone could not go on, he was not killed there.
A cord was wrapped around his neck and he was pulled a bit.
And thrown to the side.
And it went on like that.
And, yes, a personal episode.
Also a lesson.
Uh, we went there.
It was already spring.
It was not as hard as my first death march in the middle of winter.
And an SS bit into an apple and threw it away.
Intuitively I thought to pounce on it.
And a man walked next to me.
Uh, he.. was a Hungarian rabbi, I don't know who.
I can't recall his face.
but I remember his eyes well.
Still today he looks at me.
He grabs me and I wanted to tear myself away so that I..
And he still had the strength to slap me.
And he said: "Look, this is what they have turned us into.
Like dogs that pounce on a bone.
You, you will live.
But do not touch that."
Another lesson.
I was, I was a child.
I knew nothing.
And that had an affect on my life.
That was a lesson about dignity.
And so we arrived in Leitmeritz.
Leitmeritz, a very large camp.
And my red triangle protected me from the special treatment.
But I was very, very weak.
And I recall someone said to me:
"Did you know they are demanding that the Jews gather together.
They are going to get bread."
When I heard the word bread, I went there.
And they brought us to Terezin.
But beforehand I would like to return to the quarantine.
In the quarantine there was a Russian, no it was a Usbek.
And I, in my childhood, I remember that I had read a book called "Taschkent, the city of bread."
So I moved closer to this man so that he could tell me about Taschkent.
Because to me he was.. he represented bread.
IV2: Could you talk about the liberation in Theresienstadt?
ShS: And in Terezin, gut Terezin, that was the end of the war.
And in Terezin, I was finished. They brought me to, brought me to the hospital of Terezin.
And I don't know why, they thought I was dead.
And they put me with the dead.
But the Red Army was already there.
And a Soviet officer came closer.
He saw that I was not really dead.
And he pulled me out of there.
And he brought me to the military hospital.
I am sure that he did not have the right to do that.
Since left and right there were injured, war injured.
I was in the field lazarette.
And the nurses, they were female soldiers.
And the director of the hospital came by personally in intervals and gave me two, three spoonfuls of soup.
He slowly brought life back to me.
He didn't want me to die, from eating.
I gained my strength back a bit, a bit.
After that uh Maniek Sel.. Selinger, he called me.. they let me go to the fence of the hospital.
And he said to me: "You know what. We are going away to Prague."
And, and I brought myself to safety, I don't know why, I went with him, I brought myself to safety with him.
And I went with him to Prague.
In Prague.. to me Prague was a city of freedom.
And then the former prisoners could ride the trams for free.
RS: Shlomo, the amnesia.
ShS: And.. oh yes.
IV1: Perhaps we could very, very, very, really that he says five sentences about the amnesia and then we simply must stop.
IV2: The problem is that we don't have much time left.
So if you want to say a few sentences about the amnesia, but otherwise..
ShS: I left the hospital and suffered from amnesia for 7 years.
Ruthy had already gone with me at the end of my amnesia to ask someone about my life.
And she noted - did she note or did he?
RS: He had written down the names of the camps.
ShS: He had written down on a piece of paper the names of the camps where I had been.
How I was.
Where I came from.
And, and, I would like to tell a small episode from Prague.
And in the tram I saw a woman with children across from her.
And I hadn't seen children for three and a half years.
I was hypnotized by the child.
Completely hypnotized.
And, and the woman got off the tram, and I began to follow her.
And she walked faster and I did too.
And then she started to run.
And, and I realized that she was afraid of me.
In the condition that I was in, I was a scarecrow.
I understood, and I think that I... the first time after three years, during which I had not cried, I cried deeply.
I cried.
I didn't know that someone could be scared of me.
And, and maybe I wasn't human anymore.
IV1: Ok. I suggest we make a cut here.
That is somehow fitting with the last sentence.
And we would like to thank you. I am very sorry that we cannot continue.