| --- |
| layout: transcript |
| interviewee: leo none bretholz |
| rg_number: rg-50.030.0038 |
| pdf_url: https://collections.ushmm.org/oh_findingaids/rg-50.030.0038_trs_en.pdf |
| ushmm_url: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn506771 |
| gender: m |
| birth_date: 1921-03-06 |
| birth_year: 1921.0 |
| place_of_birth: vienna |
| country: austria |
| experience_group: survivor,resistance |
| ghetto(s)_encyclopedia: none |
| ghetto: none |
| camp(s)_encyclopedia: none |
| camp: none |
| non_ss_camp: none |
| region: none |
| needs_research: none |
| data_entry: cl |
| accession: 1989.h.0332 |
| revisit: none |
| tags: transcripts |
| --- |
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| <body><dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="1">LEO BRETHOLZ July 31, 1989 </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3">Q: Could you please tell us your name and where you were born? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="5">A: My name is Leo Bretholz. </sentence><sentence id="6">Do I have to spell that? </sentence><sentence id="7">I usually do have to. </sentence><sentence id="8">And I was born in <span class="populated place">Vienna</span>, <span class="country">Austria</span>. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="13">Q: In what year? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="15">A: 1921. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="17">Q: Tell us about the family which you grew up in. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="19">A: Our family was a normal, or what you might call a "normal family." </sentence><sentence id="20">My father was a tailor. </sentence><sentence id="21">They were originally from <span class="country">Poland</span>. </sentence><sentence id="22">My parents were -- came to <span class="country">Austria</span> right after the first World War, married in <span class="country">Austria</span>, and there were three children in the family. </sentence><sentence id="23">There would have been a fourth, but that child, a boy, died six weeks after birth. </sentence><sentence id="24">I was the oldest. </sentence><sentence id="25">My sister was a year and a half younger, and the other one, born in 1928, was seven years younger. </sentence><sentence id="26">A normal family, as I said, with <span class="building">schools</span> and activities, fun -- although some of that was disrupted by the death of my father in 1930. </sentence><sentence id="27">I was nine years old, the oldest at the time of the three children. </sentence><sentence id="28">And, my mother, a young widow at 35, never remarried. </sentence><sentence id="29">My father was 39. </sentence><sentence id="30">And it sort of made me a father image, young as I was, to my children -- to my sisters -- because my mother had to go to work and support the young family. </sentence><sentence id="31">But that was all bearable and we coped as best we could. </sentence><sentence id="32">We do not want to forget that in those years it was still, if not depression, but very close to just, just post-depression. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="47">Q: Tell us about that. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="49">A: And these were hard times. </sentence><sentence id="50">Just as here in <span class="country">America</span> in the middle "30s, latter "30s, we had to make with -- make ends meet with what was available to us. </sentence><sentence id="51">And income -- my mother was a, as I said, a widow who had to come up with, with the support of the family, and there were Jewish organizations who helped out in that respect. </sentence><sentence id="52">And the real, the real tragedy began then in 1938 with the annexation of <span class="country">Austria</span>. </sentence><sentence id="53">Where that <span class="building">family structure</span>, that family entity as in so many hundreds and thousands and millions of cases, that family entity overnight was destroyed. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="59">Q: Tell us about -- before you begin with 1938, tell me about a Jewish child growing up in <span class="populated place">Vienna</span> as a Jew. </sentence><sentence id="60">Were you aware of being a Jew, and what did that mean as a child? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="63">A: <span class="populated place">Vienna</span> and <span class="country">Austria</span> had a history of antisemitic activities and antisemitic attitudes. </sentence><sentence id="64">When we grew up in <span class="country">Austria</span>, as Jews, we were always aware of the fact that we were Jewish. </sentence><sentence id="65">It so happens that I lived in a <span class="populated place">district</span> in <span class="populated place">Vienna</span> where there were more Jews than in other <span class="populated place">districts</span>. </sentence><sentence id="66">It was the <span class="populated place">20th district</span>, and the <span class="populated place">second district</span> had more Jews than the <span class="populated place">20th</span>, and a few other <span class="populated place">districts</span> had -- but the majority of the <span class="region">areas</span> were non-Jewish or very few Jews and antisemitism was almost a part of daily life. </sentence><sentence id="67">It's not that we thought a lot about it, because it just became part of life. </sentence><sentence id="68">If you, if you, if you live with something everyday, then it becomes part of you and you cope with it, if it didn't become too violent. </sentence><sentence id="69">But from time to time, there were denigrations. </sentence><sentence id="70">Sometime we were spit at. </sentence><sentence id="71">Sometime we were singled out for a particular rough treatments in <span class="building">schools</span>, the Easter and Christmas seasons particularly. </sentence><sentence id="72">When I think back to those days, to me they represent a certain trauma because we, we were set apart. </sentence><sentence id="73">There was Easter dealing with a religious connotation of Christ and the resurrection which automatically brings back the killing of Christ, and that was the Jewish misdeed. </sentence><sentence id="74">And at Christmas time it was -- again we, we couldn't, we couldn't be part of a, of a festive mood even if we wanted to. </sentence><sentence id="75">Oh, there were many times when we did participate with neighbors in trimming a <span class="env feature">tree</span> or sharing in, in the Christmas cookies and that sort of thing, but that was all surface. </sentence><sentence id="76">As children, we did things like this because we were part of a, of a, of a greater <span class="populated place">community</span> where there were non-Jewish children and we, we related to them. </sentence><sentence id="77">But the excesses took place at certain times for certain reasons and especially during the depression years. </sentence><sentence id="78">I was then in my early young years, but I do remember that often could we hear that all these economic problems -- and even the first World War -- it was all the fault of the Jews. </sentence><sentence id="79">So we were being maligned and singled out and we didn't like it, but nevertheless we asserted ourselves in some way because when, when we went on outings with the <span class="building">Hebrew schools</span>, we, we sometime carried the Jewish blue and white flag and we were taunted for that by people who were looking at us. </sentence><sentence id="80">But it was a segment in history that does not reflect too well on, on the Austrian attitude towards Jews, and when we go later into "38, it is very easily perceptible. </sentence><sentence id="81">You can touch it. </sentence><sentence id="82">You can feel it. </sentence><sentence id="83">You could see it, that as soon as the Austrian Anschluss" took place, <span class="country">Austria</span> in the next five, six weeks, or perhaps several months, the Jews in <span class="country">Austria</span> underwent much more hardship in those few weeks or months than the Jews of <span class="country">Germany</span> did in the previous five years from "33 to "38. </sentence><sentence id="84">It lent itself -- the climate in <span class="country">Austria</span> lent itself more to antisemitic excesses. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="107">Q: Give us examples. </sentence><sentence id="108">It's 1938, you have described a really dramatic change in your feelings. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="111">What happened? </sentence><sentence id="112">What happened to Leo Bretholz? </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="113">A: Seeing that some of my uncles had been arrested and many of our friends and neighbors had been arrested, my mother actually urged me to think of leaving as soon as I possibly could -- " Term used to described the incorporation of <span class="country">Austria</span> in the <span class="country">German Reich</span> on March 11, 1938. </sentence><sentence id="114"> leaving <span class="populated place">Vienna</span>. </sentence><sentence id="115">I had already left <span class="building">school</span>. </sentence><sentence id="116">And an aunt of mine had left for <span class="country">Luxembourg</span> right after the Anschluss, and we planned for me to join that aunt and her husband, my uncle, in <span class="country">Luxembourg</span> as soon as I would be able to -- as soon as arrangements could be made. </sentence><sentence id="117">It was my mother who prevailed upon me to leave because she said that for boys and for men, it will be very bad, as we can see. </sentence><sentence id="118">People were arrested every day and within days or the most a few weeks, ashes were sent back of these people to their, to their relatives. </sentence><sentence id="119">Now whether they were these peoples ashes or not, nobody could ever find out. </sentence><sentence id="120">But they received a <span class="spatial object">container</span> with ashes, describing them as the ashes of the deceased who was caught trying to escape and shot because shooting was a justification for, for catching someone who tried to escape, killing someone, or that he had contracted a disease, a pneumonia. </sentence><sentence id="121">But there were these, these explanations given which no one hardly even believed because some of the people who were freed from <span class="populated place">camps</span> periodically brought back other horror stories, so we know that. </sentence><sentence id="122">My mother was very much bent on sending me away, and frankly, it is constantly a source of guilt for me, to know that she had sent me away and they couldn't do it. </sentence><sentence id="123">But then when I consulted with psychiatrist, because I didn't want to have to live with feelings such as these, he confirmed to me that, "Would your mother be able to speak today, she would still say...she was glad she did it." </sentence><sentence id="124">So, to begin with, she was actually instrumental in getting me out and saving my life. </sentence><sentence id="125">She was a good woman. </sentence><sentence id="126">My mother was what you might call in, in Hebrew, it's described as "Eshet Khayil,"" -- woman of valor. </sentence><sentence id="127">She did the best she could under the circumstances. </sentence><sentence id="128">I am breaking down because...she never had a chance in life... She and my sisters and 55 others of my family never had a chance in life. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="145">Q: What did she do? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="147">A: She was a widow and had to struggle to support the family and always helped poor people, people that were less well-off than we or less fortunate. </sentence><sentence id="148">Always helped somebody. </sentence><sentence id="149">There was this poor painter around the corner from us. </sentence><sentence id="150">When the <span class="interior space">apartment</span> needed painting, she called him. </sentence><sentence id="151">He didn't even do a good job, but he needs the job. </sentence><sentence id="152">And when it was finished, the painting wasn't -- the painted <span class="interior space">room</span> was sort of streaky, but she had given Mr. Fried a job because he needed it for his family, you see. </sentence><sentence id="153">But, I got to get myself together to make this thing. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="161">Q: Let's pull it back. </sentence><sentence id="162">Pull it back. </sentence><sentence id="163">Your mother... </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="167">A: She urged me to leave, and I did leave. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="169">Q: Where did you go? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="171">A: I took a <span class="spatial object">train</span> from <span class="populated place">Vienna</span>, <span class="populated place">Frankfurt</span>, <span class="populated place">Koblenz</span>, to the west of <span class="country">Germany</span> and <span class="populated place">Trier</span>, the ancient <span class="populated place">town</span> of <span class="populated place">Trier</span>. </sentence><sentence id="172">By arrangement with a committee in <span class="country">Luxembourg</span>; it was called the Ezra > Woman of valor (Hebrew). </sentence><sentence id="173"> Committee. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="177">Q: Who were the <span class="building">Ezra Committee</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="179">A: The <span class="building">Ezra</span> was an aid committee, almost like a <span class="building">HIAS</span>," perhaps. </sentence><sentence id="180">Aid to refugees that came from <span class="country">Germany</span> and <span class="country">Austria</span> to <span class="populated place">Luxembourg</span>, provide some <span class="building">shelter</span>, provide food, <span class="interior space">kitchen</span>, and help these people who could not stay in <span class="populated place">Luxembourg</span> unless they had regularized, temporary documents. </sentence><sentence id="181">Somebody came with a passport and a, and a, and a visa could do that. </sentence><sentence id="182">Others that fled and came illegally, could not. </sentence><sentence id="183">And the <span class="building">Ezra committee</span> was such a committee. </sentence><sentence id="184">And a Mr. Becker who was the smuggler that smuggled me across from <span class="populated place">Trier</span> into <span class="country">Luxembourg</span>, was in the employ of Ezra. </sentence><sentence id="185">In a way because later when I went to <span class="country">Belgium</span>, he was also the one that smuggled us into <span class="country">Belgium</span>, but I am jumping ahead here. </sentence><sentence id="186">But we were -- I went to the <span class="populated place">border town</span> of <span class="populated place">Trier</span>, and on the 31st of October, Mr. Becker picked me up in <span class="populated place">Trier</span> and smuggled me across the <span class="dlf">border</span>. </sentence><sentence id="187">Actually he took me to the <span class="env feature">river</span>, the <span class="env feature">Sauer River</span> and asked me cross and then meet him at the other side of the Sauer. </sentence><sentence id="188">And during the night from October 31st to November the first, after it had been raining for four or five days in <span class="region">western Germany</span> -- these are the rainy periods there -- I crossed into <span class="country">Luxembourg</span>. </sentence><sentence id="189">He had asked me to put a pair of dry socks into my <span class="spatial object">coat pocket</span> so that when I came across and once I had crossed, I would put these dry socks on, which at the point was not even possible because I didn't have dry socks in my <span class="spatial object">pocket</span> after I had crossed the <span class="env feature">river</span>. </sentence><sentence id="190">When he told me I was to cross that <span class="env feature">river</span>, I asked him would I -- no, he asked me do I know how to swim. </sentence><sentence id="191">I said, "Yes, I know how to swim." </sentence><sentence id="192">I said, "Would it be necessary, you think?" </sentence><sentence id="193">because he told me I would wade across. </sentence><sentence id="194">But no way could I wade across that <span class="env feature">river</span> after four days of rain because that <span class="env feature">river</span> carried a lot of torrential waters with debris, <span class="env feature">branches</span>, mud, all kind of things. </sentence><sentence id="195">That <span class="env feature">river</span> springs in the <span class="env feature">Ardenne Mountains</span> and comes down. </sentence><sentence id="196">It's a, it's really a tributary of the <span class="env feature">Moselle</span>, a small <span class="env feature">river</span> which under normal circumstances is a <span class="env feature">creek</span>, a small <span class="env feature">stream</span>. </sentence><sentence id="197">I went there later in years with, with my family to get to that same <span class="region">area</span>, and people were just waiting there ankle deep, knee deep in that particular... But I crossed, and the first step I took into the <span class="env feature">river</span>, I was up to my knees and the second step up to my chest, and then here go the dry socks in my pocket, and it wasn't a concern of mine. </sentence><sentence id="198">My concern was to get across. </sentence><sentence id="199">And I did! </sentence><sentence id="200">And on the other side, Mr. Becker was waiting to take me into <span class="country">Luxembourg</span>, and my aunt was waiting there, and I had crossed into safety. </sentence><sentence id="201">Or at the moment, relative safety, because three days later, I was arrested in <span class="country">Luxembourg</span>. </sentence><sentence id="202">The police came into this <span class="building">cafe</span> where I was sitting and having breakfast just a couple of days after I had crossed. </sentence><sentence id="203">Actually, my coat was still wet and not even dried yet, and they asked for my papers and I didn't have them, so they arrested me and took me to <span class="building">jail</span>, and I spent the night in <span class="building">jail</span> in the <span class="building">Luxembourg jail</span> -- by the way, a very clean facility. </sentence><sentence id="204">And the next morning, they interrogated me. </sentence><sentence id="205">How did I come over? </sentence><sentence id="206">I said, "I crossed the <span class="env feature">river</span>. </sentence><sentence id="207">The <span class="env feature">river Sauer</span>." " </sentence><sentence id="208">Who brought you over?" </sentence><sentence id="209">I said, "I just crossed." " </sentence><sentence id="210">And how did you get into <span class="populated place">Luxembourg</span>." " </sentence><sentence id="211">I just walked into <span class="populated place">Luxembourg</span>." </sentence><sentence id="212">I * <span class="building">Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society</span>. </sentence><sentence id="213"> wasn't going to say, "Mr. Becker brought me over." </sentence><sentence id="214">And, well, it is my choice. </sentence><sentence id="215">I have two choices. </sentence><sentence id="216">I can pick a place where I want to be taken to out of <span class="populated place">Luxembourg</span>, either <span class="country">Belgium</span> or <span class="country">France</span> or back to <span class="country">Germany</span>. </sentence><sentence id="217">So the choice was very simple. </sentence><sentence id="218">I said, "Well, I have an aunt in <span class="populated place">Paris</span>. </sentence><sentence id="219">Maybe I can make my way to <span class="populated place">Paris</span>." </sentence><sentence id="220">So they decided, yes, take me to the <span class="dlf">border</span>, to this <span class="dlf">Luxembourg-French border</span>. </sentence><sentence id="221">There is a little <span class="populated place">town</span> called <span class="populated place">Thionville-les-Bains</span>. </sentence><sentence id="222">It is like a <span class="building">thermal spa</span>. </sentence><sentence id="223">And they took me there and they -- the next morning -- and they -- <span class="spatial object">commuter train</span> that went to the <span class="dlf">border</span>, just about a half an hour or 40 minute ride. </sentence><sentence id="224">And I crossed into <span class="country">France</span>. </sentence><sentence id="225">But earlier before we went -- before we took that <span class="spatial object">train</span>, at the <span class="building">railroad station</span>, when they went to the ticket to, to, to show that to the <span class="dlf">ticket window</span> that day, were transporting me, whatever, they needed to have transportation. </sentence><sentence id="226">My uncle had found out that next day I will be taken to the <span class="dlf">border</span>, appeared at the <span class="building">railroad station</span> and he wore a cap. </sentence><sentence id="227">And he was standing on the side, and I noticed him and he noticed me, and he did this to his cap, the visor of the cap: he turned it around. </sentence><sentence id="228">There is an expression in Yiddish which translates "Turn the <span class="spatial object">visor</span> around," which to me meant, "If you can come back, come back." </sentence><sentence id="229">And when they had taken me to the <span class="dlf">border</span> and I crossed, they indicated to me that the other end of the <span class="dlf">border</span>, just a few hundred yards inside <span class="country">France</span>, there is a <span class="populated place">Jewish camp</span>, they said. </sentence><sentence id="230">That's all they told me. </sentence><sentence id="231">And they will probably be able help me. </sentence><sentence id="232">But when I told them earlier, "How do you want me to manage going into <span class="country">France</span> by myself? </sentence><sentence id="233">Can you --" They said, "Well, you just told us that you managed to swim a <span class="env feature">river</span> and come into <span class="country">Luxembourg</span>. </sentence><sentence id="234">Now if you could make it across a <span class="env feature">river</span>, you will make it across <span class="region">dry land</span>, we know." </sentence><sentence id="235">They were sort of patronizing me but also very nice to me. </sentence><sentence id="236">They were not in any way vicious. </sentence><sentence id="237">They were just doing their job to get me out of there. </sentence><sentence id="238">And I was glad they didn't -- that I wasn't sent back to <span class="country">Germany</span>. </sentence><sentence id="239">As I crossed into <span class="country">France</span>, I went to that <span class="populated place">camp</span> and it was a <span class="populated place">preparatory camp</span>, <span class="populated place">hakh'sharah</span>,* where, where Jewish young people were preparing for aleeyah" to <span class="country">Palestine</span>. </sentence><sentence id="240">I got into this <span class="region">area</span> and somebody at the <span class="dlf">gate</span> actually stopped me, wanted to know who | am, and I said, "I am a Jewish fellow, just escaped from <span class="country">Germany</span>. </sentence><sentence id="241">The Luxembourg people told me -- Luxembourg authorities told me that you might be able to help me...." "Well, they do that periodically just to make you feel that when you get across the <span class="dlf">border</span>, you will be all right." " </sentence><sentence id="242">There will be no problem so that they should be off the hook. </sentence><sentence id="243">But actually as many as we get here periodically, we do get some. </sentence><sentence id="244">We always have to tell them that the French authorities tolerate us here. </sentence><sentence id="245">We have only temporary permits to live in <span class="country">France</span>, and if we are being in any way compromised to give you <span class="building">shelter</span>, to help you further your, your travel in <span class="country">France</span>, they will dissolve this <span class="populated place">camp</span>, so we can't do it." </sentence><sentence id="246">Being that far away from <span class="populated place">Paris</span> and not having money on me, I thought of my uncle's turning the visor around and waited until 4 Special training for youth preparing to settle in <span class="country">Israel</span>. </sentence><sentence id="247">5 Immigration to <span class="country">Israel</span> (Hebrew). </sentence><sentence id="248"> nightfall to cross back into <span class="country">Luxembourg</span> and made my way back to <span class="populated place">Luxembourg city</span> during the night. </sentence><sentence id="249">The last leg of that trip was in early morning catching a farmer with bales of hay or whatever he was carrying on his <span class="spatial object">wagon</span> to get me to the <span class="dlf">city line</span> of <span class="country">Luxembourg</span>. </sentence><sentence id="250">And from there I found my way to the address of my aunt. </sentence><sentence id="251">An hour later I showed -- a couple of hours later I showed up at the <span class="interior space">apartment</span> where she lived. </sentence><sentence id="252">I rapped on the <span class="dlf">door</span> and my uncle stood there and my aunt was sick in <span class="spatial object">bed</span> from, from aggravation that she had brought me there and now I was arrested again. </sentence><sentence id="253">I was a kid of 17 years old. </sentence><sentence id="254">She -- that aunt lives today in <span class="populated place">Baltimore</span>. </sentence><sentence id="255">She is in her 80s. </sentence><sentence id="256">She is my father's, my father's youngest sister. </sentence><sentence id="257">And as soon as I opened the <span class="dlf">door</span>, my uncle said, turning to her, "I told you he'll be back." </sentence><sentence id="258">So, then they prevailed through the Ezra Committee to have me stay with a family in <span class="country">Luxembourg</span> where about a half or dozen or more people were also staying waiting for further disposition of their situation. </sentence><sentence id="259">And I stayed there from the night of the second, third of November to the ninth -- six days. </sentence><sentence id="260">And the night of the ninth to the 10th of November, exactly Kristallnacht night, Mr.Becker took six or seven of us into <span class="country">Belgium</span>, smuggled us into <span class="country">Belgium</span>, into <span class="populated place">Brussels</span>. </sentence><sentence id="261">And it was during that night that we saw the strange phenomenum looking to the east as we traveled in the <span class="spatial object">car</span> of <span class="env feature">skies</span> that had changed their color. </sentence><sentence id="262">It was the <span class="env feature">night sky</span>, but we could see reflections almost some eerie looking reflections of reddish-purplish coloration and it was only the next morning in <span class="populated place">Brussels</span> that we found out that Kristallnacht had happened in <span class="country">Germany</span> where hundreds of <span class="building">synagogues</span> and <span class="building">businesses</span> and <span class="building">homes</span> had been set afire and, of course, <span class="populated place">Luxembourg</span> being in this <span class="region">tristate area</span>, <span class="country">Belgium</span>/<span class="country">Luxembourg</span>/<span class="country">France</span>, we were very close to the <span class="dlf">border</span>. </sentence><sentence id="263">And chances are the flames that we saw reflecting were those that happened in <span class="populated place">Trier</span> or <span class="populated place">Koblenz</span> or other <span class="dlf">border</span>, <span class="dlf">border</span>, localities that were evidently destroyed in that night of horror which many considered the beginning of the end of the European Jews -- Judaism, you know. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="350">Q: What happened? </sentence><sentence id="351">You are now in <span class="country">Belgium</span>. </sentence><sentence id="352">What did you do? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="356">A: The next day after we had contacted the <span class="building">Jewish committee</span> in <span class="populated place">Brussels</span>, in <span class="populated place">Brussels</span>, <span class="country">Belgium</span>, they gave us transportation to go to <span class="populated place">Antwerp</span>. </sentence><sentence id="357">We took that <span class="spatial object">train</span> which is a <span class="spatial object">train</span> that goes every 20 minutes; a <span class="spatial object">electric train</span> from <span class="populated place">Brussels</span> to <span class="populated place">Antwerpen</span>. </sentence><sentence id="358">Within an hour, we were in <span class="populated place">Antwerp</span>, again going to the <span class="building">Aid Committee</span> who were registering us, giving us food coupons, and trying to help us regularize our situation as refugees from <span class="country">Germany</span> to <span class="country">Belgium</span>. </sentence><sentence id="359">I met an uncle of mine there who had left <span class="populated place">Vienna</span>., </sentence><sentence id="360">my mother's brother, distant relatives which came from the same <span class="populated place">town</span> as my mother, which we found out about. </sentence><sentence id="361">And from November "38 to May 1940, I spent 18 months in <span class="country">Belgium</span>, which were pleasant months with distant relatives and friends, constantly under the pressure of not being sent -- avoiding to be sent to a <span class="populated place">camp</span> because they also had <span class="populated place">camps</span> for these refugees. </sentence><sentence id="362">Somebody working in that committee, also a Viennese fellow who worked there in, in the <span class="building">office</span> helping out with paperwork made sure that when the time came to select people for the <span class="populated place">camps</span> that I was not being considered for it because they tried to get me into a <span class="building">school</span>, to register in a <span class="building">school</span>, and I did. </sentence><sentence id="363">And having registered in that <span class="building">Flemish school</span>, I became authorized to stay with a temporary ID card which I have here with me, too, as a memento. </sentence><sentence id="364">And periodically we knew that temporary permit to stay. </sentence><sentence id="365">It was a <span class="building">school</span> which, in Dutch -- Flemish -- was called "Openbaar Beroep School voor Jongens,"(r) which means "<span class="building">Public Trade School for Boys</span>." </sentence><sentence id="366">And I took a course in electrotechnical, studies, you know, was a <span class="building">trade school</span>. </sentence><sentence id="367">Took also languages and I learned Flemish almost, almost to perfection. </sentence><sentence id="368">I had good marks in the Flemish language and as a young man you learn faster, and I had a facility for languages anyway. </sentence><sentence id="369">So that's why I was in this <span class="building">trade school</span>. </sentence><sentence id="370">With my distant relatives in 1939, I went for a week's vacation to the <span class="env feature">ocean</span>. </sentence><sentence id="371">All along I got letters from my mother and sisters that they were coping, that things were at the normal rate as normal can be considered, and I always had intended to bring them over, but I didn't have the money to do it, because you had to pay a smuggler. </sentence><sentence id="372">And they themselves were not really urging me, my mother and sisters. </sentence><sentence id="373">Because they -- the mood was that "How long can this last?" </sentence><sentence id="374">or this sort of thing. </sentence><sentence id="375">There was constantly that hope against hope. </sentence><sentence id="376">How much can it last? </sentence><sentence id="377">Although when my uncle brought his wife and daughter and son over to <span class="country">Belgium</span>, he had to pay an amount, whatever it was, to the smuggler. </sentence><sentence id="378">I asked him why it wasn't possible to bring my mother also -- at least suggest. </sentence><sentence id="379">So he said, you know, they had to leave on quietly. </sentence><sentence id="380">Nobody could know about it. </sentence><sentence id="381">The fewer people knew about it, the better it was, and again the money aspect was something that we didn't even discuss because that sort of becomes something of a very delicate situation. </sentence><sentence id="382">But my mother and sisters did not come and actually, really didn't urge me to do something for them to come. </sentence><sentence id="383">They felt it'll, it'll work itself out. </sentence><sentence id="384">Then in "42, we found out differently. </sentence><sentence id="385">When I was in <span class="country">Belgium</span> then, then, of course, in 1939, the War broke out. </sentence><sentence id="386">So after 1939, September 1939, there was no longer any question of anybody leaving from <span class="country">Austria</span>. </sentence><sentence id="387">By that time even they had wanted to...had they wanted to leave, there would be no problem, no way to do it. </sentence><sentence id="388">That would be a problem, you see, would have been because the war was on. </sentence><sentence id="389">The Germans were fortifying the <span class="dlf">borders</span> and <span class="dlf">Maginot Line</span> in the south of <span class="country">France</span> and the <span class="dlf">Siegfried Line</span> further to the north. </sentence><sentence id="390">There was no possibility any longer after "39 for anybody to come across, although some tried and did. </sentence><sentence id="391">But it wasn't as open and free as up to the beginning of the war. </sentence><sentence id="392">And, of course, in 1940, in May 1940, on the 10th of May, the Germans attacked the <span class="region">lowlands</span>, <span class="country">Holland</span>. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="430">Q: Where were you and what where you doing when the Germans attacked ? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="432">A: That is the day that I will never have to guess where I was, because I was in a <span class="building">hospital</span>. </sentence><sentence id="433">I had a hernia and I had decided to see a doctor and rather to go on with a hernia bothering -- having from time to time -- why not do it? </sentence><sentence id="434">And on Thursday night, May the ninth, I went to the <span class="building">hospital</span> at <span class="populated place">Antwerpen</span> in a <span class="populated place">suburb</span> of <span class="populated place">Antwerpen</span> called <span class="populated place">Berchen</span> and the same evening they prepared me for the operation of next day, meaning cleaning my body, shaving, that sort of thing. </sentence><sentence id="435">And operation was to take place next day, about seven in the morning. </sentence><sentence id="436">Between 5:00 and 6:00, Friday the 10", fire bombs were flown over <span class="populated place">Antwerpen</span>. </sentence><sentence id="437">Visibly. </sentence><sentence id="438">We could actually see them. </sentence><sentence id="439">In fact one of those bombs dropped right into the <span class="interior space">yard</span>, the <span class="interior space">courtyard</span> of that <span class="building">hospital</span>. </sentence><sentence id="440">And the order came for those who were ambulant to pick up their documents in deg <span class="building">Public Trade School for Boys</span> (Flemish). </sentence><sentence id="441"> the <span class="building">office</span> and leave the <span class="building">hospital</span>. </sentence><sentence id="442">And I left the <span class="building">hospital</span>, never been operated on. </sentence><sentence id="443">I made my way, not where I lived in my <span class="interior space">apartment</span> that was in the middle of the <span class="populated place">town</span>, but in that <span class="populated place">suburb</span> where my distant relative lived, and I made my way to their <span class="interior space">apartment</span>. </sentence><sentence id="444">And that time I already found out that there were notifications, proclamations that all aliens of enemy alien origin have to register with the Belgium authorities. </sentence><sentence id="445">Although I had Polish nationality due to the fact that my parents were never naturalized in <span class="populated place">Vienna</span>, I as a Viennese-born person could not be an Austrian until I would have been 21 years old with the first military service. </sentence><sentence id="446">It's not like in <span class="country">America</span>. </sentence><sentence id="447">When you are born <span class="country">America</span>, you are an American. </sentence><sentence id="448">And so I was, to all intent and purposes, also a Polish citizen which showed on my ID, and I went and registered and in good faith, hoping that they will see "Polish citizen." </sentence><sentence id="449">I couldn't have done differently anyway because they would have caught me or perhaps I could have fled. </sentence><sentence id="450">But in good faith, I did it. </sentence><sentence id="451">Like many hundreds did. </sentence><sentence id="452">I am, number one, I am of Polish nationality. </sentence><sentence id="453">And the Poles are Allies because <span class="country">Poland</span> had been attacked, and besides that, even born in <span class="country">Austria</span> or others in <span class="country">Germany</span>, we were the first victims of this Nazi regime. </sentence><sentence id="454">We are here now. </sentence><sentence id="455">We came here looking for <span class="building">shelter</span>, for refuge, as people who ran away from that system. </sentence><sentence id="456">So we're certainly not enemies of you. </sentence><sentence id="457">We are enemies of that system. </sentence><sentence id="458">But in bureaucracy, that doesn't count. </sentence><sentence id="459">When you are born on enemy in <span class="region">enemy territory</span>, that makes you an enemy alien, I guess. </sentence><sentence id="460">And a <span class="spatial object">train</span> took us to <span class="region">southern France</span>. </sentence><sentence id="461">After we were arrested, we were told to bring a change of clothes, a toothbrush, a blanket, and food for a day. </sentence><sentence id="462">And they transported us to the south of <span class="country">France</span>. </sentence><sentence id="463">Ironically enough, Germans were with us. </sentence><sentence id="464">German Nazis were with us in that <span class="spatial object">train</span>. </sentence><sentence id="465">They also had to register, but to them that was just a formality because eventually they knew they would be exchanged for Belgium nationals because that goes in international relations as a normal procedure. </sentence><sentence id="466">But we as Jews, number one, we were not exchangeable, and number two, we wouldn't have wanted to be exchanged. </sentence><sentence id="467">Were we arrested, number one, we would have wanted to, and number two, we were not exchangeable, whichever. </sentence><sentence id="468">For us, that didn't count. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="506">Q: Belgians have deported you as an enemy alien. </sentence><sentence id="507">You are going on a <span class="spatial object">train</span> to the south of <span class="country">France</span>. </sentence><sentence id="508">Where did you go? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="512">A: To a <span class="populated place">camp</span> called <span class="populated place">Saint-Cyprien</span>. </sentence><sentence id="513">The ironic, more irony, that when we got out of that <span class="spatial object">train</span>, in the <span class="populated place">camp</span> on the way to <span class="populated place">Saint-Cyprien</span> where we stopped for one night near <span class="populated place">Agde</span> somewhere. </sentence><sentence id="514">When we looked at our <span class="spatial object">train</span> on the outside, the facing of the <span class="spatial object">train</span>, in white paint, it was marked <span class="dlf">5th Column</span> -- "Cinquieme Colonne."" </sentence><sentence id="515">So they transported us as Fifth Column people. </sentence><sentence id="516">No wonder that when we traversed the <span class="region">French countryside</span> from north to south that in those small <span class="building">stations</span> where we did, where we made periodic stops, that people were doing this to us [making "slitting throat" gesture]. </sentence><sentence id="517">They thought we were, you know, Germans. </sentence><sentence id="518">We wound up in <span class="populated place">Saint-Cyprien</span>, a <span class="populated place">camp</span> in the <span class="region">Department of Pyrenees-Orientales</span> in <span class="country">France</span>, right near the <span class="dlf">Spanish border</span> near a major <span class="populated place">town</span>, a larger <span class="populated place">town</span> called <span class="populated place">Perpignan</span>. </sentence></p><p><sentence id="519"> 7 <span class="dlf">Fifth Column</span> (French). </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="520">Q: Tell me about <span class="populated place">Saint-Cyprien</span>. </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="521">A: <span class="populated place">Saint-Cyprien</span> was a -- an established <span class="populated place">camp</span>. </sentence><sentence id="522">That was -- this was 1940, so that <span class="populated place">camp</span> had been established somewhere between "36 and "38, mainly holding Spanish refugees that had come into <span class="country">France</span> due to the Civil War in <span class="country">Spain</span>. </sentence><sentence id="523">People had left <span class="country">Spain</span>; the duress of the war -- fled into <span class="country">France</span> and there at <span class="populated place">Saint-Cyprien</span> at the time, was nothing but <span class="env feature">beach</span>. </sentence><sentence id="524">So these refuges from <span class="country">Spain</span> had come there, and established a <span class="building">camp facility</span>. </sentence><sentence id="525">First they had <span class="building">tents</span>, then they built <span class="building">barracks</span> with undulated <span class="dlf">metal roofs</span> and later more <span class="building">barracks</span> were built, but the <span class="interior space">floors</span> in the <span class="building">barracks</span> were not <span class="interior space">floors</span>. </sentence><sentence id="526">They were <span class="env feature">sand</span>. </sentence><sentence id="527">It was just the uprights were there and the <span class="dlf">roof</span>. </sentence><sentence id="528">But in the <span class="building">barracks</span>, it was just the sand of the, of the <span class="env feature">beach</span>. </sentence><sentence id="529">And there, straw was put on there and we were lying on that sand on that straw in that <span class="building">barrack</span> -- <span class="building">shelter</span>. </sentence><sentence id="530">As we walked through the <span class="env feature">sand</span>, to go to the <span class="interior space">latrine</span>, or to go to the <span class="interior space">kitchen</span> to pick up the rations, we walked sometime on bones. </sentence><sentence id="531">A jaw bone here, a tail bone there, a skull here there of domestic animals, donkeys and horses and goats and dogs. </sentence><sentence id="532">The Spaniards had brought these animals with them. </sentence><sentence id="533">They were farmers. </sentence><sentence id="534">They were people who had a little livestock. </sentence><sentence id="535">They brought them with them, and in the process they died or they killed them even for food. </sentence><sentence id="536">And this, this was the scene there. </sentence><sentence id="537">The <span class="env feature">ocean</span> periodically -- the tide carried the <span class="env feature">waters</span> up to the <span class="building">barracks</span> and sometimes right into the <span class="building">barracks</span>, the ones that were closest to the <span class="dlf">shore</span>. </sentence><sentence id="538">A beautiful sight it was scenically because there was the <span class="env feature">Mediterranean</span> and there in the not too distant future were the <span class="env feature">Pyrenees Mountains</span> jutting right into the <span class="env feature">Mediterranean</span>, so scenically this was a beautiful place. </sentence><sentence id="539">And if any of us had thought to escape, that wasn't possible because at the end of the <span class="env feature">beach</span> where the <span class="env feature">beach</span> meets the <span class="env feature">ocean</span>, you had <span class="dlf">barbed wires</span>. </sentence><sentence id="540">And <span class="spatial object">patrol boats</span> were cruising so if somebody would go through the <span class="dlf">barbed wire</span> and try to swim, they would be detected. </sentence><sentence id="541">The better way to escape would have been trying to escape from the <span class="populated place">camp</span>, and then by foot make it into <span class="country">Spain</span>. </sentence><sentence id="542">Be this as it may, we got there in May of 1940.Sometime in July or early August, and I couldn't pinpoint that, dysentery developed in -- broke out in that <span class="populated place">camp</span>, and typhoid fever. </sentence><sentence id="543">There were a handful of <span class="interior space">latrines</span>. </sentence><sentence id="544">There was a <span class="populated place">male section camp</span> and a <span class="populated place">female section camp</span>. </sentence><sentence id="545">There was a handful of <span class="building">latrines</span>, and with the condition under which we labored, it was a constant <span class="dlf">line</span> to these <span class="building">latrines</span>. </sentence><sentence id="546">And they were elevated on stilts because the <span class="env feature">ocean</span> would come in -- the seat of the <span class="building">latrine</span> would be covered, so it was on stilts. </sentence><sentence id="547">So you walked up those <span class="spatial object">stilts</span> and there was that one <span class="dlf">door</span>, that swinging <span class="dlf">door</span> like, and you would go up there and relieve yourself and as soon as you were sitting down somebody rapped on the <span class="dlf">door</span>, so you had to get out and get in <span class="dlf">line</span> again. </sentence><sentence id="548">And there was no paper. </sentence><sentence id="549">There was no tissue paper. </sentence><sentence id="550">There was not even a <span class="spatial object">newspaper</span>. </sentence><sentence id="551">So what we used was <span class="env feature">straw</span>. </sentence><sentence id="552">It's awful to bring back these things, but these are all segments of dehumanization that people go through and you somehow cope with it because you live and you hope you will survive. </sentence><sentence id="553">What happened later, of course, these situations were almost bearable, sometimes even comical. </sentence><sentence id="554">And I escaped from that <span class="populated place">camp</span> with another fellow. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="590">Q: Tell us about it. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="592">A: Some people that we knew in <span class="populated place">Antwerp</span> who came from <span class="populated place">Antwerp</span> as Belgian citizens with a stream of refugees into the <span class="region">area</span>, this is the general <span class="region">southern area</span> from <span class="populated place">Toulouse</span> to the <span class="env feature">Pyrenees</span>. </sentence><sentence id="593">One of our friends by the name of Oesterreicher had finally arrived in <span class="populated place">Toulouse</span> and he had inquired with the authorities where some of the people that were transported into <span class="country">France</span> were taken. </sentence><sentence id="594">And they told him, the foremost reception for these <span class="populated place">camps</span>, they called them "<span class="building">Centre d'Accueil</span>,"* -- Center of -- <span class="building">Reception Center</span>. </sentence><sentence id="595">Like they had a red carpet out for us, or something like that.. These euphemisms, they have their way of creeping into a language and then that's what it is. </sentence><sentence id="596">And they found out that we were in this <span class="populated place">camp</span>, and Oesterreicher wrote to us. </sentence><sentence id="597">We could receive mail there. </sentence><sentence id="598">Communication between people who had left in the <span class="spatial object">train</span> and others that left by <span class="spatial object">car</span> on their own volition because they want to get away from the <span class="populated place">war zone</span>. </sentence><sentence id="599">So, sort of, families through <span class="building">Red Cross</span> and through authorities found each other. </sentence><sentence id="600">That's communication. </sentence><sentence id="601">Slowly as it went, it still helped. </sentence><sentence id="602">And Oesterreicher found out that we, that we were taken to this <span class="populated place">camp</span>, and he came to the <span class="populated place">camp</span> and asked the commandatur, the <span class="building">office</span> to issue a visiting permit so that he can visit his friend. </sentence><sentence id="603">And they called me that there is a friend here visiting. </sentence><sentence id="604">And I got dressed, went to the <span class="region">visiting area</span>, and he told me then, "Why don't you go back and get your shoes?" </sentence><sentence id="605">I was barefoot. " </sentence><sentence id="606">Get your shoes, get your clothes because I think you can get out of here." </sentence><sentence id="607">I say, "How do you do it?" </sentence><sentence id="608">He said, "I see that these guards here are not very watchful. </sentence><sentence id="609">They are half asleep. </sentence><sentence id="610">They walk around. </sentence><sentence id="611">They talk. </sentence><sentence id="612">They talk to the internees. </sentence><sentence id="613">They exchange cigarettes. </sentence><sentence id="614">You can give them cigarettes and you can give them chocolates and they will be, will be looking away, maybe." </sentence><sentence id="615">So I went back to the <span class="populated place">camp</span> and took my things and told my uncle who was there with me from <span class="country">Belgium</span> and his son, a cousin, that I am leaving with a friend. </sentence><sentence id="616">They were not amenable to fleeing. </sentence><sentence id="617">They said, "Oh, we will." </sentence><sentence id="618">because they had, they had -- he had his wife still in <span class="country">Belgium</span>, the other one had his wife still in <span class="country">Belgium</span>, so they were not going to go anywhere where, where, where their wives may have, have no knowledge where they are. </sentence><sentence id="619">In other words, you are there, and you hope that these authorities will take care of it. </sentence><sentence id="620">As you saw others were exchanged, you hoped that you perhaps would be let out and -- but with the situation that it was, that there was dysentery and all this illness. </sentence><sentence id="621">The guards themselves were not crazy about guarding these people because they're not immune to that. </sentence><sentence id="622">I mean, dysentery can spread across a <span class="dlf">barbed wire</span> too, you see. </sentence><sentence id="623">So they relaxed their watchfulness. </sentence><sentence id="624">And my friend was right! </sentence><sentence id="625">When we walked out, we walked across the <span class="dlf">barbed wire</span> that was surrounding the <span class="populated place">compound</span> where the, where the <span class="building">office</span> was. </sentence><sentence id="626">He walked out the regular <span class="dlf">door</span>, the regular <span class="dlf">gate</span>, because he had his permit to visit me, and I did not. </sentence><sentence id="627">But as we walked there, we saw at the bottom that one of those <span class="dlf">barbed wires</span> was actually lifted off. </sentence><sentence id="628">So he said, "If you can climb through that underneath and cross behind the <span class="building">barrack</span>, they won't even see you. </sentence><sentence id="629">Join me in front." </sentence><sentence id="630">And that's exactly what I did. </sentence><sentence id="631">That was exactly what I did. </sentence><sentence id="632">And we walked into the little <span class="populated place">town</span> of <span class="populated place">Perpignan</span>. </sentence><sentence id="633">We bought a box of peach preserves and a slice of Roquefort cheese, and I learned how good preserves can taste on a fully ripened cheese. </sentence><sentence id="634">That is a great combination. </sentence><sentence id="635">You should try that sometime. </sentence><sentence id="636">And he brought some money for tickets, my friend did, to go to <span class="populated place">Toulouse</span>, to travel to <span class="populated place">Toulouse</span>. </sentence><sentence id="637">And he knew where these people that I had been with in <span class="country">Belgium</span>. </sentence><sentence id="638">My distant relatives had finally also come from <span class="country">Belgium</span> into <span class="country">France</span>, and they located themselves into a little <span class="populated place">town</span> called <span class="building">8 Reception center</span> (French). </sentence><sentence id="639"> <span class="populated place">Bagneres-de-Luchon</span> in the <span class="env feature">Pyrenees</span>. </sentence><sentence id="640">I got a ticket from <span class="populated place">Toulouse</span> to <span class="populated place">Bagneres-de-Luchon</span> and joined up with them. </sentence><sentence id="641">And with them, I spent most of the time in <span class="country">France</span> living in the same places there, then we were taken to <span class="building">forced residence</span>, and then we were taken to another <span class="building">forced residence</span>, but they were always involved, these people. </sentence><sentence id="642">Their family name was Frajermauer. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="694">Q: Spell it. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="696">A: F-R-A-J-E-R-M-A-U-E-R. <span class="building">Frajermauer</span>. </sentence><sentence id="697">The German word frajermauer means freemason. </sentence><sentence id="698">But that's sort of a derivative of that. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="702">Q: And your friend's name? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="704">A: Oesterreicher. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="706">Q: Will you spell that? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="708">A: O-E-S-T-E-R-R-E-I-C-H-E-R, which translated means "Austrian." </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="710">Q: So you are there in this <span class="populated place">town</span>. </sentence><sentence id="711">You are in the <span class="populated place">town</span> and what happened to you? </sentence><sentence id="712">You lived there for awhile? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="716">A: I lived in <span class="populated place">Bagneres-de-Luchon</span> from 1940 to 1941, to the beginning of "41, when we were asked to leave <span class="populated place">Luchon</span> beginning of "41, to join other Jews who had been confined in that assigned <span class="building">residence</span> of <span class="populated place">Bagneres-de-Bigorre</span>. </sentence><sentence id="717"><span class="building">Bagneres</span> -- B-A-G-N-E-R-E-S D-E. That's " Bagneres," one word; "de" is second word; the third word, "Bigorre" -- B-I-G-O-R-R-E. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="720">Q: Now how did the authorities know that you were part of the party? </sentence><sentence id="721">You said you were taken to this assigned <span class="populated place">community</span>. </sentence><sentence id="722">But you had walked out of <span class="populated place">camp</span> illegally. </sentence><sentence id="723">How did anyone know you were there? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="728">A: When we...when I came to <span class="populated place">Luchon</span>, I had to regularize my situation in <span class="populated place">Luchon</span> with the authorities there. </sentence><sentence id="729">To them, I told them that I just came from <span class="country">Belgium</span>. </sentence><sentence id="730">They didn't know that I came -- there was, in those days, there is a Hebrew word right in Genesis, and it speaks about tohoo va-vohoo." </sentence><sentence id="731">This was tohoo va-vohoo. </sentence><sentence id="732">You know the expression? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="738">Q: Yes. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="740"> deg Chaos, disorder (Hebrew). </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="741">A: It was utter turmoil. </sentence><sentence id="742">So when I came to <span class="populated place">Bagneres-de-Luchon</span>, these relatives, distant relatives who had already established themselves with, with the temporary permit of residence took me to the, to the <span class="building">city hall</span>. </sentence><sentence id="743">It was a <span class="building">police station</span>. </sentence><sentence id="744">Well, this is a relative of us who just came from <span class="country">Belgium</span>. </sentence><sentence id="745">He walked a lot and he -- that's why he's so late, and he stayed somewhere on the way. </sentence><sentence id="746">And I got these papers. </sentence><sentence id="747">I became -- I had to have these papers because of ration cards. </sentence><sentence id="748">I couldn't get ration cards unless I had this regularization of the situation involved in it. </sentence><sentence id="749">And I became just another one of the refugees in <span class="populated place">Luchon</span>. </sentence><sentence id="750">You see these were not all Jewish refugees, although the majority were. </sentence><sentence id="751">But there were Frenchmen and Belgians there who just ran away from the <span class="populated place">war zone</span> and finally wound up somewhere in the south of <span class="country">France</span> because the south of <span class="country">France</span> was then considered probably the furtherest and safest part. </sentence><sentence id="752">And then when the -- by the way, in the fall of that year we were also asked to sign up for work if we wanted to volunteer to do harvest, wine harvest, and we did that. </sentence><sentence id="753">Came back to <span class="populated place">Bagneres-de- Luchon</span>, there we got a <span class="spatial object">Laisser-passer</span>"" for that, a safe conduct that we could do that. </sentence><sentence id="754">The authorities wanted us to help the wine harvest. </sentence><sentence id="755">Why? </sentence><sentence id="756">Because we were the refugees that could fill in the labor force. </sentence><sentence id="757">Their men had been taken to the army. </sentence><sentence id="758">Their French men were in -- had been inducted into the army since 1939. </sentence><sentence id="759">So they needed agricultural help and that's what we did. </sentence><sentence id="760">We came back to <span class="populated place">Bagneres-de-Luchon</span>. </sentence><sentence id="761">We were paid in, in food. </sentence><sentence id="762">We were not paid in money, but we got eggs and chickens and wine and cheese and butter to take back with us, which were commodities that were probably better than money. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="785">Q: What was it like for a Jew in <span class="populated place">Bagneres-de-Luchon</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="787">A: As a community of, of Jews, we, we, we were a support system of each other, supporting of each other. </sentence><sentence id="788">The majority had come from <span class="region">northern France</span> and <span class="country">Belgium</span>, and the majority of people knew each other. </sentence><sentence id="789">Families, friends had fled together. </sentence><sentence id="790">Some of them came by <span class="spatial object">car</span>. </sentence><sentence id="791">Very few, but some of them did come by <span class="spatial object">car</span>, brought even dogs with them. </sentence><sentence id="792">And it was somewhat regularized. </sentence><sentence id="793"><span class="populated place">Bagneres-de-Luchon</span>, the name indicating a <span class="building">thermal spa</span>, had a <span class="building">pavilion</span> like those places do have and for the Jewish holidays, the Jews got together and had services. </sentence><sentence id="794">One of the Cantors by the name of Kreistein, and you may remember why I remember his name. </sentence><sentence id="795">It so happens he is from <span class="populated place">Vienna</span> and in the <span class="region">district</span> where I lived. </sentence><sentence id="796">I once sang with his choir as a boy. </sentence><sentence id="797">And Cantor Kreistein, a very diminutive man, and I say very, because you can be five foot six, that makes you five foot five diminutive, but he was probably was like close to five foot, but the voice of an angel, a very high pitched soprano voice. </sentence><sentence id="798">Kreistein was leading the congregation there, and we had services. </sentence><sentence id="799">But shortly thereafter, after the services, then came wintertime, and we spent the winter in <span class="populated place">Luchon</span> which is heavy winters. </sentence><sentence id="800">There's snow in these <span class="env feature">mountains</span>. </sentence><sentence id="801">Right after that, after that in early 41, we received notification that we will have to move to <span class="populated place">Bagneres-de-Bigorre</span>, giving us safe conduct to go to <span class="populated place">Bagneres</span>, we had two weeks to do it: go to <span class="populated place">Bagneres</span>, look for <span class="building">lodging</span>, look for a place to live, and then make arrangements to transfer to that locale. </sentence><sentence id="802">Mr. Frajermauer, the father, he and one of his brothers went there, looked for a place, and found a nice place, 10 < right at the <span class="dlf">border</span> of the <span class="env feature">Adour River</span>, and the place was called <span class="building">Villa Susanne</span>. </sentence><sentence id="803"><span class="building">Villa Susanne</span>. </sentence><sentence id="804">It was available. </sentence><sentence id="805">People come there on vacation and rent <span class="populated place">places</span> for vacation during the summer. </sentence><sentence id="806">Well, the owner of <span class="building">Villa Susanne</span> was very glad to rent that, that <span class="building">facility</span> out in January or February for a, for an unlimited time almost because we didn't know how long we were going to be there. </sentence><sentence id="807">But it wasn't just renting for a month or two months. </sentence><sentence id="808">We did, we did move, took our belongs, drove by, we rented a <span class="spatial object">camion</span>,!! </sentence><sentence id="809">a <span class="spatial object">truck</span>, and the whole family, Frajermauer and me including. </sentence><sentence id="810">I was included -- and that's not good to say "Me included." </sentence><sentence id="811">And we went to <span class="populated place">Bagneres-de-Bigorre</span> and had a very -- some of the things I can really smile because they evoke more pleasant memories. </sentence><sentence id="812">It was just we moved from one <span class="populated place">town</span> to another. </sentence><sentence id="813">In fact we moved from a small <span class="populated place">town</span>, more confined and less accessible, to a <span class="populated place">town</span> that was a little freer in access. </sentence><sentence id="814">That was 1941. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="843">Q: Let's hold it right there. </sentence><sentence id="844">We need to make a tape change. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="847">A: Okay. </sentence><sentence id="848">End of Tape 1 " <span class="spatial object">Truck</span> (French). </sentence><sentence id="849"> Tape #2 </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="853">Q: Pick up now please. </sentence><sentence id="854">You are in <span class="populated place">Bagneres-de-Bigorre</span>. </sentence><sentence id="855">Tell us what happened? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="859">A: <span class="populated place">Bagneres-de-Bigorre</span>, from 1941 to 1942 was a little bit of a, a spot of light, as I recall the whole period. </sentence><sentence id="860">Because we, although we were registering, under the law, under the new Vichy laws, we, we moved freely within, within the confines. </sentence><sentence id="861">We went to the <span class="building">movie theatre</span>. </sentence><sentence id="862">We took excursions into the <span class="env feature">mountains</span>. </sentence><sentence id="863">I remember some mornings with the weather being right and nice and refreshing in the <span class="env feature">mountains</span>. </sentence><sentence id="864">We got up early, five o'clock, and by six o'clock, we were up on a <span class="dlf">slope</span> and picked blueberries that we brought back and made jams and, and, fruit juices out of and we used them and we ate them. </sentence><sentence id="865">We went out and picked fruit and, and, and we raised rabbits in that <span class="building">Villa Suzanne</span>. </sentence><sentence id="866">Food was hard to come by because we had ration cards. </sentence><sentence id="867">Periodically, we would have to stand in <span class="dlf">line</span> because they were rationing everything, even tripes, even liver, even marrow bones. </sentence><sentence id="868">You had to give a ticket for a marrow bone, but then you forego, a marrow bone was something with which you could do, make a good soup, but you may have to forego five ounces of meat which may not have the same impact on your, on your, on your, what you're preparing for, for dinner, you see. </sentence><sentence id="869">You have to trade one with the -- against the other. </sentence><sentence id="870">It was a, a fairly regulated type of life, other than having to go to the authorities and register periodically under the Jewish laws. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="883">Q: You registered with the Vichy French? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="885">A: Yes. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="887">Q: What kind of police presence was there? </sentence><sentence id="888">What kind of <span class="populated place">Vichy</span> presence was there? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="891">A: In that <span class="populated place">town</span>, there was the <span class="building">police station</span>, the <span class="building">police department</span>, the police chief, the police in <span class="country">France</span> -- or what you might call the gendarmes."" </sentence><sentence id="892">The <span class="building">gendarmes</span> is like <span class="building">state police</span>. </sentence><sentence id="893">They are an arm of the government. </sentence><sentence id="894">They do what has to be done to keep law and order. </sentence><sentence id="895">But there was another arm. </sentence><sentence id="896">That was the political arm. </sentence><sentence id="897">The Vichy arm. </sentence><sentence id="898">That was called the "Milice,""?the <span class="building">Militia</span>. </sentence><sentence id="899">They wore their special uniforms, the black uniforms. </sentence><sentence id="900">The police wore their police uniforms. </sentence><sentence id="901">And they were out there to go along with the Vichy government law bent on pleasing and collaborating with the Germans. </sentence><sentence id="902">This was the treacherous element. </sentence><sentence id="903">The presence of the <span class="spatial object">Milice</span> in <span class="populated place">Bigorre</span>, <span class="populated place">Bagneres-de-Bigorre</span>, was minute. </sentence><sentence id="904">They knew they had a group of Jewish people there, maybe a thousand, fifteen hundred. </sentence><sentence id="905">They couldn't go anywhere without a Laisser-passer permit from the police. </sentence><sentence id="906">Therefore, the con game was on. </sentence><sentence id="907">We felt comfortable. </sentence><sentence id="908">We could go to a <span class="building">movie theatre</span> if we wanted to. </sentence><sentence id="909">We could go to a <span class="building">restaurant</span> if we wanted to. </sentence><sentence id="910">We could circulate. </sentence><sentence id="911">We could buy newspapers; and if we had to go to <span class="populated place">Tarbes</span>, <span class="populated place">Bigorre</span>, which was the <span class="populated place">Prefecture</span> -- that was the seat of the <span class="region">Hautes-Pyrenees</span>, that B Soldiery of the police militia (French). </sentence><sentence id="912">8 Militia (French). </sentence><sentence id="913"> <span class="region">Department Hautes-Pyrenees</span>, we would get to regularize something or two, or ask for whatever, paper, have to travel to a <span class="building">consulate</span> somewhere. </sentence><sentence id="914">We got these permits, these Laisser-passer, and it was really a game of psychology that was played constantly to make the people feel as comfortable, as safe, to ease their mind as to what the future might bring in, in more drastic measures, and like all the other population, the native indigent population of <span class="populated place">Bagneres</span>, we stood in <span class="dlf">line</span> with them for, for meat and food and, and anything else, clothing even. </sentence><sentence id="915">There was, was no difference. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="942">Q: How did you eat? </sentence><sentence id="943">You wore a star? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="946">A: Not there. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="948">Q: Not there. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="950">A: The first time I wore a star was in <span class="populated place">Drancy</span> later. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="952">Q: Okay. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="954">A: And "Juif""* was never worn in the <span class="region">Vichy area</span>. </sentence><sentence id="955">Only in the <span class="region">occupied area</span> north of the <span class="dlf">Demarcation Line</span>. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="958">Q: When did it no longer become safe in <span class="populated place">Bagneres</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="960">A: In -- at the end of 1941, just before the end of 1941. </sentence><sentence id="961">Sometime in the fall, we were told that we would have to make preparations towards moving to another assigned <span class="building">residence</span> and that was <span class="populated place">Cauterets</span>--C-A-U-T-E-R-E-T-S. Also in the same <span class="region">Department</span>, <span class="region">Pyrenees</span>, <span class="region">Hautes- Pyrenees</span>. </sentence><sentence id="962">It so happens that at the time in 1941, during the summer and the early fall, I had received my papers from the <span class="country">United States</span>, affidavit, an affidavit to come to the <span class="country">United States</span>. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="966">Q: How? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="968">A: My aunt had sent me those papers into <span class="populated place">Vichy</span>, <span class="country">France</span>. </sentence><sentence id="969">I had actually received them earlier already in the beginning, but , but it took a while to process papers before you could come to the <span class="country">United States</span>. </sentence><sentence id="970">I was on a waiting quota. </sentence><sentence id="971">And it was sometime in the fall -- no, it was actually around the time of <span class="populated place">Pearl Harbor</span> that I was supposed to get my visa. </sentence></p><p><sentence id="972"> 14 Jew (French). </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="973">Q: Your aunt arranged all this? </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="974">A: Yeah, in, in, in, my aunt from <span class="populated place">Baltimore</span>. </sentence><sentence id="975">She had already earlier brought an uncle, two uncles and two aunts, a brother and sister here with their respective mates. </sentence><sentence id="976">But when I went to the <span class="building">consulate</span>, that was on that day of <span class="populated place">Pearl Harbor</span>. </sentence><sentence id="977">There was no more processing of documents. </sentence><sentence id="978">So my affidavit to come to the <span class="country">United States</span> fell by the <span class="dlf">wayside</span>. </sentence><sentence id="979">It expired. </sentence><sentence id="980">So that later after the war, after I had survived, I got fresh papers. </sentence><sentence id="981">But in <span class="populated place">Bagneres</span>, we were notified that we would have to move to <span class="populated place">Cauterets</span>. </sentence><sentence id="982">And we moved to <span class="populated place">Cauterets</span> sometime after the first of the year early in "42, probably in the springtime of "42. </sentence><sentence id="983">Again, the two men went there ahead of time and picked a place for us to live. </sentence><sentence id="984">And that place was called <span class="populated place">La Pergola</span>. </sentence><sentence id="985">And also the little <span class="building">house</span>, they name the <span class="building">houses</span> in <span class="country">Europe</span>. </sentence><sentence id="986">You know that. </sentence></p><p><sentence id="987"> Call them one thing or another. </sentence><sentence id="988">A name or a <span class="env feature">tree</span>. </sentence><sentence id="989">The <span class="building">Lindenhouse</span> (ph) or something like that. </sentence><sentence id="990">When we went to <span class="populated place">Cauterets</span>, we, at that point, frankly, we felt confined. </sentence><sentence id="991">For the first time since <span class="populated place">Luchon</span> and <span class="populated place">Bagneeres</span>, <span class="populated place">Cauterets</span> too was a thermal spot. </sentence><sentence id="992">A lot of, about 1500 inhabitants during the year, but during the summer season, it, it could rise to about maybe 10,000. </sentence><sentence id="993"><span class="building">Thermal spa</span>. </sentence><sentence id="994">There were about a thousand or 1500 of us sent into that <span class="populated place">town</span> into <span class="building">forced residence</span>. </sentence><sentence id="995">It was called <span class="building">residence assignee</span>. </sentence><sentence id="996">We called it "<span class="building">Residence Forcee</span>."" </sentence><sentence id="997">> Even for those people who do not speak French, I think "Assignee""(r) speaks for itself. </sentence><sentence id="998">Well, again we tried to make the best of life. </sentence><sentence id="999">And we did excursions into the <span class="env feature">mountains</span> to pass the time, and we gathered and listened to the <span class="spatial object">radio</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1000">Of course, by that time some of the listening of the <span class="building">Radio</span>, <span class="building">Radio London</span> was prohibited, but we still heard it. </sentence><sentence id="1001">Bumm, bumm, bummm, You familiar with that? </sentence><sentence id="1002">The first <span class="dlf">bars</span> of the Fifth Symphony. " </sentence><sentence id="1003"><span class="building">Ici Radio Londres</span>.""" </sentence><sentence id="1004">This is the Free French. </sentence><sentence id="1005">Near the <span class="dlf">Spanish border</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1006">Hardly a mile or two from the <span class="dlf">Spanish border</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1007">When we went into a little excursion in the morning, again recognize let's go up in the <span class="env feature">mountain</span>, make a little picnic or that sort of thing. </sentence><sentence id="1008">This was all to pass the time as pleasantly as we could, because if you were sitting there worrying about when will the Milice come and when will things change, you could really fall into such doldrums and such despair and depression that you wouldn't even be able to think straight anymore. </sentence><sentence id="1009">And life is life while it's going on. </sentence></p><p><sentence id="1010">There's just, there's just not enough impetus to, to, to make you think of the most dire circumstances, because you have a <span class="env feature">mountain</span> surrounding you and you have friends with you and, and you wake up in the morning and you hope for the next day. </sentence><sentence id="1011">But there's not that immediate threat hanging over you. </sentence><sentence id="1012">So you make the best of life and you say "Hopefully, this will end soon." </sentence><sentence id="1013"><span class="populated place">Radio London</span> gave us a little hope -- a note from here, from there would filter through that the resistance is starting to, to, to jell you know. </sentence><sentence id="1014">And it was not until the fall, something in September, that the Mayor of that <span class="populated place">town</span> sent the word out to us, the Jews, that within a day or two, they expect a raid by the Milice and the Gestapo. </sentence></p><p><sentence id="1015"> "S <span class="building">Forced Residence</span> (French). </sentence></p><p><sentence id="1016">16 Assigned (French). </sentence></p><p><sentence id="1017">"" Here is <span class="building">Radio London</span> (French). </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1018">Q: Okay, let's pick it up. </sentence><sentence id="1019">The mayor, tell us about the mayor. </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1020">A: We never met the mayor. </sentence><sentence id="1021">But what he did at the time was a great thing. </sentence><sentence id="1022">He notified us and left it up to us to do what, he wasn't going to say, "I am going to put a <span class="spatial object">train</span> at your disposal and send you all out of here or <span class="spatial object">trucks</span>" or something. </sentence><sentence id="1023">Do what you can. </sentence><sentence id="1024">I just want you to know that this place is no longer safe for you. </sentence><sentence id="1025">A handful of us took to the <span class="env feature">mountains</span>, in fact, and we stayed a couple of days and couple of nights up in the <span class="env feature">mountains</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1026">Periodically sending someone down. </sentence><sentence id="1027">Once I went down, then somebody else, to find out what's going on. </sentence><sentence id="1028">The first few hours nothing had changed in <span class="populated place">town</span> and the people were still there, although very apprehensive. </sentence><sentence id="1029">By that time, the mood had drastically changed. </sentence><sentence id="1030">The parents had to console their kids. </sentence><sentence id="1031">They had to tell them, "We may leave." </sentence><sentence id="1032">They started packing. </sentence><sentence id="1033">Some of us, as I said, took to the <span class="env feature">mountains</span>, a handful. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1048">Q: The rest stayed? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1050">A: Stayed! </sentence><sentence id="1051">Two days later when finally the messenger that we had sent out came back and said, "It's finished. </sentence><sentence id="1052">They were there. </sentence><sentence id="1053">Most people are gone." </sentence><sentence id="1054">That's when we came back from the <span class="env feature">mountains</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1055">In fact, the message was that when I knew they were going down to the <span class="env feature">mountains</span>, "Go over the to <span class="populated place">Frajermauers</span> and see if they are still there." </sentence><sentence id="1056">Low and behold, the <span class="building">Frajermauers</span> were still there. </sentence><sentence id="1057">They had Belgian documentations. </sentence><sentence id="1058">Those who apatrides, (r) means stateless, Polish, German, Austrian, were taken. </sentence><sentence id="1059">Those who had French, Belgian, and <span class="country">Luxembourg</span> nationality were left. </sentence><sentence id="1060">Another psychological ploy to tell them, "You are safe." </sentence><sentence id="1061">In the final analysis, no one was. </sentence><sentence id="1062">Because when you look at the book of the Klarsfelds,"" many people do not know that, but there were Americans and Swiss and Finns and Swedes and Norwegians who were Jews deported from <span class="populated place">Drancy</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1063">Those passports didn't matter at all to the Germans. </sentence><sentence id="1064">But the ploy was there at this particular point. </sentence><sentence id="1065">When you look back at this whole period -- the Nazi period, the deportations -- you see one psychological aspect of the progress of that dehumanization after the other. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1082">Q: You are in the <span class="env feature">mountains</span> caught in the middle of this. </sentence><sentence id="1083">You are about to come down to <span class="populated place">Bigorre</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1084">What did you do? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1088">A: I went right to <span class="populated place">La Pergola</span>, saw the <span class="building">Frajermauers</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1089">They said, "You know, we are here because we are Belgians, but we don't know how long." </sentence><sentence id="1090">In fact, they were not Belgians. </sentence><sentence id="1091">The children were, the two daughters. </sentence><sentence id="1092">That's why they left the family with them. " </sentence><sentence id="1093">But you cannot stay here." " </sentence><sentence id="1094">But let's wait and see what we can think about." </sentence><sentence id="1095">I went up to the <span class="interior space">attic</span> and hid in "8 Without nationality, stateless (French). </sentence><sentence id="1096">a Serge and Beate Klarsfeld. </sentence><sentence id="1097"> the <span class="interior space">attic</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1098">There was a <span class="interior space">room</span> up there with a <span class="spatial object">cot</span>, a <span class="spatial object">cot</span> that had no sheets or anything, just a small <span class="spatial object">mattress</span> on it and some storage, a <span class="interior space">storage room</span> it was mainly -- and there were <span class="spatial object">suitcases</span> and all kinds of discarded objects that weren't even ours. </sentence><sentence id="1099">They were, these were of the owner of, of the, the <span class="building">building</span> and I hid up there for two days and two nights. </sentence><sentence id="1100">The <span class="dlf">door</span> was not a regular <span class="dlf">door</span>, but it was slats of wood and you could peep between the slats and it had a padlock on the outside. </sentence><sentence id="1101">My distant cousin, Anny, the daughter of Mr. Frajermauer, locked me in. </sentence><sentence id="1102">And the next morning I hear footsteps coming up, and I peep through that thing to that crack and I see two gendarmes, not Milice, local gendarmes from the police, come up with Anny and I hear them ask her, "Who has the key to that lock?" </sentence><sentence id="1103">And there she is, and I peeped and then I stood sideways so that they shouldn't notice, and I had to be very careful not to move or make any crackling noise. </sentence><sentence id="1104">You know these, these wooden planks, they can easily give you away. </sentence><sentence id="1105">And I hear her say, "We don't store anything up here. </sentence><sentence id="1106">We don't even have the key for this, but if you want to break it open, go ahead and do it." </sentence><sentence id="1107">And I hear him say to her, "You know where your friend is still, don't you?" </sentence><sentence id="1108">Because they knew there was another person living under that address because we had to register with the police here, just like we did in <span class="populated place">Bagneres-de-Bigorre</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1109">That was the idea of a assigned <span class="building">residence</span>, where you would register periodically so that they know you have not left this assigned <span class="building">residence</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1110">There was a law against leaving this assigned <span class="building">residence</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1111">And she said, "We don't even have the key." </sentence><sentence id="1112">And I have never talked about that because that's something so private, but I guess eventually that has to be brought up, too. </sentence><sentence id="1113">And by the time this is shown, well, the person herself will not be aware of it, but it has to be, it has to be told, I think. </sentence><sentence id="1114">And he said, "The only way I will not try to break that <span class="dlf">lock</span> open if you kiss me" to the girl. </sentence><sentence id="1115">That was 1942. </sentence><sentence id="1116">She was 20 years old. </sentence><sentence id="1117">A 20-year old distant cousin of mine. </sentence><sentence id="1118">In fact, I liked the girl. " </sentence><sentence id="1119">If you kiss me." </sentence><sentence id="1120">And she said, "No, don't ask me to do that"--"Ne demandez C/a pas, ne me demandez pas faire C/a." "Well, then I'll break the lock open." </sentence><sentence id="1121">She says, "Well, go ahead and do it." </sentence><sentence id="1122">She didn't want him to, to give away that there is somebody in there. </sentence><sentence id="1123">He said, "Well, I guess you are right. </sentence><sentence id="1124">I guess you are not lying to me." </sentence><sentence id="1125">But regardless, he grabbed her and kissed her and lifted her skirt and tried to molest her, tried to have sex with her. </sentence><sentence id="1126">The second gendarme said to him -- and I hear all this -- "Leave that girl alone and let's go." </sentence><sentence id="1127">That's when he let go of her. </sentence><sentence id="1128">And they all three went down. </sentence><sentence id="1129">And I stayed up there another night. </sentence><sentence id="1130">And then when they came back to tell me that it's time for me to get out of there, I am pretty safe, one evening, I kissed Anny and I said, "You almost got raped on account of me." </sentence><sentence id="1131">She says, "I had to save you. </sentence><sentence id="1132">I had to save you." " </sentence><sentence id="1133">If I had to do it," she says, "I'll just have to do it. </sentence><sentence id="1134">I didn't want them to get into that <span class="interior space">attic</span>." </sentence><sentence id="1135">She lives today in <span class="populated place">Antwerp</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1136">She has a family. </sentence><sentence id="1137">An evening later -- the same evening, actually, because I couldn't stay another day--I left on foot from <span class="populated place">Cauterets</span> at night. </sentence><sentence id="1138">I had taken a <span class="spatial object">rucksack</span>, belongings, left on foot from <span class="populated place">Cauterets</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1139">Guess where I went to. </sentence><sentence id="1140"><span class="populated place">Bagneres-de-Bigorre</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1141">Back to Bagneres- de-Bigorre. </sentence><sentence id="1142">Why? </sentence><sentence id="1143">I knew a family there that had remained there. </sentence><sentence id="1144">The family Spira, S-P-I-R- A. Their daughter today lives in <span class="populated place">Kew Gardens</span>, <span class="populated place">New York</span>; and we visit periodically. </sentence><sentence id="1145">And another daughter lives in <span class="country">Israel</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1146">Susie in <span class="populated place">New York</span> and <span class="populated place">Recha</span> in <span class="country">Israel</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1147">I went, left at night, heading toward <span class="populated place">Bagneres-de-Bigorre</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1148">I walked all night. </sentence><sentence id="1149">I went through <span class="populated place">Lourdes</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1150">That's in that same <span class="region">area</span>, slept under a <span class="env feature">tree</span> during that night, resting up, next day during the day, I went to the <span class="building">Spira's</span>, made contact with them and spent with them several weeks, all the time trying to secure a false identification so that I should escape to <span class="country">Switzerland</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1151">Living with the <span class="dlf">Spira's</span>, I lived in hiding. </sentence><sentence id="1152">I didn't go out. </sentence><sentence id="1153">Maybe, no, I never went out at all at that particular point. </sentence><sentence id="1154">The father went out to do the shopping and the marketing and everything else, bread and stand in <span class="dlf">line</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1155">Mr. Spira, Max Spira -- Mendel Spira, actually. </sentence><sentence id="1156">And I stayed with these friends for several weeks, maybe five or six weeks. </sentence><sentence id="1157">At one time, we feared a police raid into the <span class="building">house</span> to just check out. </sentence><sentence id="1158">It was during the night and the two girls and I slept in the, the two daughters and I were in the <span class="interior space">attic</span>, slept in the same <span class="interior space">room</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1159">I on a, bedded out on the <span class="interior space">floor</span>, and the girls on the <span class="spatial object">bed</span>, and at that point when we heard the noises, Susie just recently reminded me, "Leo, remember what you did when you, when that noise came?" </sentence><sentence id="1160">I said, "No. </sentence><sentence id="1161">No. </sentence><sentence id="1162">I must have been hiding somewhere." </sentence><sentence id="1163">She said, "You opened the <span class="dlf">window</span> and you walked out on the <span class="dlf">roof</span>." </sentence><sentence id="1164">She said, "Do you remember when one morning you woke up and next to you there was a dead rat." </sentence><sentence id="1165">I said, "Yes, I do. </sentence><sentence id="1166">How did that happen?" </sentence><sentence id="1167">She said, "Well, in the middle of the night, you remember, we heard that noise and something on you and you started banging and banging and you had killed a rat." </sentence><sentence id="1168">That was right next to me. </sentence><sentence id="1169">She brought back these things to me and I said, "Wait a minute, Leo, you went through some things that today, you wouldn't even believe you could have done it." </sentence><sentence id="1170">They were good people, the Spira's. </sentence><sentence id="1171">They harbored me. </sentence><sentence id="1172">We remained friends for a long time. </sentence><sentence id="1173">Still are, with the daughter and I in <span class="populated place">New York</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1174">But when I had, finally had my false ID papers, </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1262">Q: How did you get them? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1264">A: Mr. Spira knew a person in <span class="populated place">town</span> who was connected with an underground situation. </sentence><sentence id="1265">And they procured these papers for me, for some other people, including a friend who was part of that distant family by the name of Albert Herszkowitz. </sentence><sentence id="1266">"deg He later was deported in the same <span class="spatial object">train</span> that I was in. </sentence><sentence id="1267">And we made our way to the <span class="dlf">Swiss border</span>, having already through that contact with the cards, found out whom to contact near the <span class="dlf">Swiss border</span>, near <span class="populated place">Evian-les- Bains</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1268">A farmer's family, the son had smuggled, a young man in his 20s, had smuggled people into <span class="country">Switzerland</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1269">We arrived in <span class="populated place">Evian-les-Bains</span>, looked for the address. </sentence><sentence id="1270">In fact, he picked up us up at the, at the <span class="building">railroad station</span>, because we had notified him so that he, should directly come to his <span class="dlf">farm</span>, spent a couple of days on his <span class="dlf">farm</span>, and two days later, he took us up into the <span class="env feature">mountains</span> to right to the <span class="dlf">Swiss border</span> in the <span class="env feature">mountains</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1271">We walked some 40 some hours there or maybe even more. </sentence><sentence id="1272">Heavy shoes. </sentence><sentence id="1273">We spent one night in the <span class="env feature">mountains</span>, sleeping on a, sort of an <span class="dlf">incline</span>, a <span class="dlf">slope</span> and that night, that was in October 1942, and that night a light snow fell. </sentence><sentence id="1274">When we woke up we were covered with sort of a rime of icy stuff. </sentence><sentence id="1275">Next morning we crossed into <span class="country">Switzerland</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1276">This man had instructed us, this young man. </sentence><sentence id="1277">In fact, he left us up there, five of us. </sentence><sentence id="1278">Went back to his <span class="building">house</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1279">He says, "All you have to do is > The interviewee notes that various spellings of this name occur in several records: In one, Albert is listed as Abram Herskovicz. </sentence><sentence id="1280">In another, Albert's brother Mordka had been recorded as Herzkowicz. </sentence><sentence id="1281"> just cross this thing. </sentence><sentence id="1282">You are at the <span class="dlf">border</span>." </sentence><sentence id="1283">From here on in, we are on our own, simply because he as a Frenchman doesn't want to be caught be a Swiss being a smuggler. </sentence><sentence id="1284">He would be arrested. </sentence><sentence id="1285">He took us to, we paid for that. </sentence><sentence id="1286">We crossed into <span class="country">Switzerland</span> and we had been no longer than 10 minutes walking on the <span class="region">Swiss side</span> towards the <span class="env feature">valley</span>, we knew. </sentence><sentence id="1287">It goes down and it goes into the <span class="env feature">valley</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1288">When the <span class="dlf">path</span> goes down constantly in a little serpentine, we go into the <span class="env feature">valley</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1289">That stands to reason. </sentence><sentence id="1290">Before we could even reach half point, we had gone maybe 10 or 15 minutes, the <span class="building">Swiss border police</span>, they wear these big hats. </sentence><sentence id="1291">They look like scout hats. </sentence><sentence id="1292">Like the Canadians some -- wear the Mounties, similar -- and shepherd dogs. </sentence><sentence id="1293">So the dogs started standing up, and he gave them some command or whatever that is. </sentence><sentence id="1294">The dog listens to these commands evidently, and we knew that if we were attempting anything like running or anything else, but who would run in <span class="country">Switzerland</span>? </sentence><sentence id="1295">After all, we are in free <span class="country">Switzerland</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1296">We are in <span class="region">neutral territory</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1297">We had heard that they had taken in German deserters and, and, fliers that had been shot down or had been on mission over <span class="country">France</span> and had to -- and were shot down and made it to the <span class="dlf">border</span> and were accepted in <span class="country">Switzerland</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1298">Why run from a Swiss? </sentence><sentence id="1299">We were coming to them and said, "Hello, we are here. </sentence><sentence id="1300">Here we are. </sentence><sentence id="1301">Now we are in your <span class="country">country</span> -- a free <span class="country">country</span>, right?" </sentence><sentence id="1302">Wrong. </sentence><sentence id="1303">We were taken down into the <span class="env feature">valley</span> into a little <span class="populated place">town</span> called <span class="populated place">St.Gingolph</span> which is a <span class="populated place">border town</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1304">Half of the <span class="populated place">town</span> is French and half of it is Swiss. </sentence><sentence id="1305">On the <span class="region">Swiss side</span>, it so happens the <span class="dlf">cemetery</span> is located. </sentence><sentence id="1306">So when somebody dies on the <span class="region">French side</span>, they got to take him across the <span class="dlf">border</span>, aboard the <span class="building">border post</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1307">They lift the <span class="dlf">border post</span> -- they inspect <span class="spatial object">coffins</span> even, to see that there is no contraband. </sentence><sentence id="1308">At least in those days, they did. </sentence><sentence id="1309">Now maybe that's eased up. </sentence><sentence id="1310"><span class="dlf">St. Gingolph</span> -- G-I-N-G-O-L-P-H. Exactly across from <span class="populated place">Montreux</span>, which is in <span class="country">Switzerland</span> on the other side of the <span class="env feature">lake</span>, <span class="env feature">Lac Leman</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1311">That's the <span class="env feature">Lake of Geneva</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1312">But we were in <span class="country">Switzerland</span>, in the <span class="region">Swiss part</span> of <span class="populated place">St. Gingolph</span>, taken to a <span class="building">police office</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1313">And there is a captain. </sentence><sentence id="1314">And this captain was a <span class="env feature">rock</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1315">A cold <span class="env feature">rock</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1316">A stone. </sentence><sentence id="1317">He had eyes and he had a nose and he had a mouth, but he had no feelings. </sentence><sentence id="1318">We cried. </sentence><sentence id="1319">We begged. </sentence><sentence id="1320">We tried to take his hand and kiss his hand. </sentence><sentence id="1321">We were young kids. </sentence><sentence id="1322">We kneeled. </sentence><sentence id="1323">You name it. </sentence><sentence id="1324">Everything bureaucratic. " </sentence><sentence id="1325">How did you get over? </sentence><sentence id="1326">Who helped you?" " </sentence><sentence id="1327">Nobody!" </sentence><sentence id="1328">All these inquiries. " </sentence><sentence id="1329">How did you make it up here? </sentence><sentence id="1330">How -- how did you get there? </sentence><sentence id="1331">Where did you originate?" " </sentence><sentence id="1332">Well, we came from <span class="populated place">Evian</span> and walked across." " </sentence><sentence id="1333">Who showed you the way?" " </sentence><sentence id="1334">Nobody! </sentence><sentence id="1335">We were in these <span class="env feature">mountains</span> for days." </sentence><sentence id="1336">We didn't have to tell him it was just a night or two. </sentence><sentence id="1337">Nothing doing. </sentence><sentence id="1338">Enough. </sentence><sentence id="1339">In effect, I know the words that we said. </sentence><sentence id="1340">We said in as many words that we would like to stay here until the end of the war in one of your <span class="populated place">camps</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1341">We know you have <span class="populated place">camps</span> for internees, refugees, just to work and for food. </sentence><sentence id="1342">We don't need pay. </sentence><sentence id="1343">All we want to know that we are there and can live, wait out the war. </sentence><sentence id="1344">Not an emotion, nothing! </sentence><sentence id="1345">Nothing at all! </sentence><sentence id="1346">Just motions and, and, and very quick questions and bureaucracy. </sentence><sentence id="1347">They sent us back to <span class="populated place">Vichy France</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1348">And the Vichy France gendarme took us over at the <span class="dlf">border post</span> in <span class="populated place">St. Gingolph</span> and brought us into the <span class="building">French gendarmerie</span>," and we spent a night in their <span class="interior space">cells</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1349">I had taken my shoes off. </sentence><sentence id="1350">I had high shoes. </sentence><sentence id="1351">I had taken my shoes off. </sentence><sentence id="1352">I *I The total force of the gendarmes (French). </sentence><sentence id="1353"> had to peel my socks off my feet. </sentence><sentence id="1354">I had bloody feet from walking in the <span class="env feature">mountains</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1355">I know I had because they hurt, and I know I had it because I could feel my socks sticking to the shoe and a couple of women were among them that were sent back, and my friend, Al Herszkowicz, Albert. </sentence><sentence id="1356">And from there by <span class="spatial object">train</span>, we were taken to a <span class="populated place">camp</span> whose name you have heard many, many times: <span class="populated place">Rivesaltes</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1357">I met some people recently here at a meeting in <span class="populated place">Washington</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1358">This woman, she was in <span class="populated place">Rivesaltes</span>; same experience from <span class="country">Switzerland</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1359">Her brother, her husband, and when she heard that I went out and talked about it in <span class="country">Columbia</span> to a group on a Shoah exercises, she came up to me and she says, "You brought back a whole period of my life when you mentioned the word "Rivesaltes"." </sentence><sentence id="1360">Taken to <span class="populated place">Rivesaltes</span> in October. </sentence><sentence id="1361">Separated women from men. </sentence><sentence id="1362">Also again, Polish, German, group from -- Luxembourgers. </sentence><sentence id="1363">Milly Cahen, a friend, the young lady whom I had befriended in the <span class="spatial object">train</span> from <span class="country">Switzerland</span> to <span class="populated place">Rivesaltes</span>, she was in, in an adjoining section of the <span class="populated place">camp</span> and we spoke across the <span class="dlf">barbed wire</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1364">Later when I went to Europe with my family and we visited <span class="populated place">Luxembourg</span>, and we went to visit her husband. </sentence><sentence id="1365">I hadn't known that, but Milly just a few weeks earlier had been killed in an automobile accident. </sentence><sentence id="1366">Never got to saw <span class="populated place">Milly</span> again. </sentence><sentence id="1367">A bright young person. </sentence><sentence id="1368">Her husband, very saddened, told me that she had just had that violent death. </sentence><sentence id="1369">Anyway, from <span class="populated place">Rivesaltes</span>, after a few weeks -- well, not so many few weeks; just a couple of weeks, we were taken to <span class="populated place">Drancy</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1370">Now in <span class="populated place">Rivesaltes</span> -- again, I didn't go to <span class="populated place">Drancy</span> just because they wanted me to go to <span class="populated place">Drancy</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1371">I was hiding out in the <span class="populated place">camp</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1372">Yes, again. " </sentence><sentence id="1373">Where will you hid out?" </sentence><sentence id="1374">they said. </sentence><sentence id="1375">I said, "Well, let me try." </sentence><sentence id="1376"><span class="building">Barracks</span> have a <span class="dlf">ceiling</span>, but there is a <span class="dlf">triangular roof</span>; something that looks triangle where you have an ungulated <span class="dlf">roof</span> going this way and that way. </sentence><sentence id="1377">And between that <span class="dlf">peak</span> and the <span class="building">barrack</span>, there is a -- is it plywood or plaster board <span class="interior space">ceiling</span>? </sentence><sentence id="1378">I climbed up there and lay down on that <span class="interior space">flat</span> with my <span class="spatial object">rucksack</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1379">I had to have that with me. </sentence><sentence id="1380">Somehow that's, this was my <span class="interior space">apartment</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1381">This was my life. </sentence><sentence id="1382">That's what I had to hold on to. </sentence><sentence id="1383">If I didn't have that, I didn't have anything anymore, you see. </sentence><sentence id="1384">This was ludicrous, really, in hindsight, because you only carry or shlep" around things that you don't need. </sentence><sentence id="1385">But you hold on to things. </sentence><sentence id="1386">I was lying up there and hearing them go and count. </sentence><sentence id="1387">And I was missing. </sentence><sentence id="1388">My name wasn't, I wasn't there. </sentence><sentence id="1389">I wasn't in the <span class="building">barrack</span> when we checked in the evening. </sentence><sentence id="1390">We were checked in, in the evening as to presence. </sentence><sentence id="1391">In the morning I wasn't there. </sentence><sentence id="1392">And I hear them talk: "OU est tu? </sentence><sentence id="1393">Ne cachez pas. </sentence><sentence id="1394">"--"Where are you? </sentence><sentence id="1395">Don't hide. </sentence><sentence id="1396">It won't work. </sentence><sentence id="1397">"--"Ca ne marchera pas." " </sentence><sentence id="1398">We know where you are. </sentence><sentence id="1399">"--"Nous savons ou vous etes." " </sentence><sentence id="1400">Tu est"--They don't "vouvoi" you, they "toutoi"> you. </sentence><sentence id="1401">And there I am trying not to breathe even because I felt if I, breathing maybe, But unfortunately, and I could have expected it, should have probably, some of that plaster board started falling down and it fell down from there you know, and I really heard it trickle down like... > Jerk, drag (Yiddish).deg3 Interviewee explains that the polite or formal plural, "voivou," wasn't used. </sentence><sentence id="1402"> And so they came in the <span class="region">area</span> and said, "We know you are up there. </sentence><sentence id="1403">Why don't you just come down and make it easier." </sentence><sentence id="1404">I didn't get punished or anything. </sentence><sentence id="1405">I climbed down, climbed down and they said, "You tried, but it just didn't work." </sentence><sentence id="1406">To them it didn't really matter, because to them people came and went constantly. </sentence><sentence id="1407">This was just another <span class="spatial object">transport</span> they had to do, and they wanted to just numerically have the right amount of people and to know that nobody had escaped, because that would reflect on their efficiency. </sentence><sentence id="1408">So when they have x amount of people to take and count it in the <span class="building">barracks</span> the night before and the next day these people have to be transported, so that number better be the same number that you counted the night before. </sentence><sentence id="1409">That's all they were concerned with. </sentence><sentence id="1410">Not the punishing me with -- if they had punished me and put me in a <span class="spatial object">brig</span>, I would have preferred that because my deportation would have been delayed. </sentence><sentence id="1411">But that's not the case. </sentence><sentence id="1412">They took us to the <span class="spatial object">train</span> and took us to <span class="populated place">Drancy</span> on the 20 or the 22nd of October. </sentence><sentence id="1413">We were taken by transport -- <span class="spatial object">passenger train</span>, not <span class="spatial object">cattle cars</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1414">Another ploy to make us feel are we going to <span class="populated place">camp</span> so, by that time all of us had been used to <span class="populated place">camps</span> and those situations so much, that another <span class="populated place">camp</span> was just a continuation of -- an expected situation. </sentence><sentence id="1415">So <span class="populated place">Drancy</span> -- by that time, we in the <span class="region">south</span> had heard of <span class="populated place">Drancy</span> but did not quite realize the immensity of the <span class="populated place">camp</span> and the tragedy involved in that preparation toward deportation. </sentence><sentence id="1416">It took us a day to get up there. </sentence><sentence id="1417">We arrived in <span class="populated place">Drancy</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1418">Again in that <span class="spatial object">train</span>, several times going to the <span class="interior space">wash room</span>, I looked at the situation over. </sentence><sentence id="1419">Escape was always on my mind. </sentence><sentence id="1420">Maybe this is the, the deep urge to live and, and experience. </sentence><sentence id="1421">But there was no, there was no getting away from that <span class="interior space">bathroom</span> because the gendarmes stood right in front of the <span class="dlf">door</span> when somebody went to the <span class="interior space">bathroom</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1422">They were in the <span class="spatial object">car</span> with us. </sentence><sentence id="1423">It was not like the gendarmes were riding in another <span class="spatial object">car</span> ahead, or in the back so that they should be there in case of emergency. </sentence><sentence id="1424">They were with us in the <span class="spatial object">train</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1425">And you know how the <span class="spatial object">French trains</span> are, were at that time anyway. </sentence><sentence id="1426">Each <span class="interior space">compartment</span> had their own <span class="dlf">door</span> to walk in, so was no use trying it there and again, let's wait until the next <span class="populated place">camp</span> and see what we can do later. </sentence><sentence id="1427">We arrived in <span class="populated place">Drancy</span> and checked in. </sentence><sentence id="1428">The checking-in process in <span class="populated place">Drancy</span> was, well, a first step in a, in a real dehumanization process. </sentence><sentence id="1429">Number one, when we arrived there, the faces that we saw, the, the eyes with queries in them and, and a lot of questions, "Where are you coming from? </sentence><sentence id="1430">How is outside? </sentence><sentence id="1431">What did you, what do you think? </sentence><sentence id="1432">What news do you have?" </sentence><sentence id="1433">Everybody gathering about a new group of arrivals because they may, they may have something to convey and we went through a <span class="building">barrack</span> process of checking in which would also mean taking your watch away, your rings, certain belongings, money. </sentence><sentence id="1434">And another psychological ploy: giving you a receipt for the things that they took from you, with the admonition, "Don't lose that!" </sentence><sentence id="1435">because you will never get them back. </sentence><sentence id="1436">That is your receipt that has a number on it. </sentence><sentence id="1437">It had a number on it. </sentence><sentence id="1438">Just imagine that! </sentence><sentence id="1439">And people there tried to sort of whisper to us that this isn't good here. </sentence><sentence id="1440">And we knew, as we came in, the mood immediately, it wasn't <span class="populated place">Rivesaltes</span> any longer. </sentence><sentence id="1441">It was not <span class="populated place">Rivesaltes</span> by any stretch of the imagination. </sentence><sentence id="1442"><span class="populated place">Drancy</span> was a complex that was built to be a <span class="building">military barracks facility</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1443">It was a <span class="building">multi-story complex</span> almost like a <span class="building">stadium</span> because it was round. </sentence><sentence id="1444">But due to the war, beginning of the war, that <span class="building">building</span>, that <span class="building">structure</span>, was never finished. </sentence><sentence id="1445">So the places, the <span class="interior space">rooms</span> that they put us in were wide open, <span class="interior space">concrete floor</span> with piping laying around and half-installed electrical wires, half-installed plumbing, makeshift, and it was concrete. </sentence><sentence id="1446"><span class="dlf">Windows</span> -- no, no <span class="dlf">windows</span>, There were no panes in the <span class="dlf">windows</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1447">It was just the <span class="dlf">opening</span> where the <span class="dlf">windows</span> were supposed to go in the frames later. </sentence><sentence id="1448">That wasn't done so it was all open, breezy. </sentence><sentence id="1449">And on this concrete, straw. </sentence><sentence id="1450">Men, women, children together. </sentence><sentence id="1451">Minimal facilities to wash. </sentence><sentence id="1452"><span class="populated place">Community</span>, one <span class="dlf">trough</span> like, where you, where the <span class="env feature">water</span> ran down from in trickle. </sentence><sentence id="1453">Minimum toilet facilities. </sentence><sentence id="1454"><span class="building">Watchtowers</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1455"><span class="dlf">Barbed wire</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1456"><span class="populated place">Suburb</span> of <span class="populated place">Paris</span> close to quote "civilization." </sentence><sentence id="1457">Minimal food distribution. </sentence><sentence id="1458">That's where we were issued the Jewish star. </sentence><sentence id="1459">This is where we had to wear it. </sentence><sentence id="1460">The population in <span class="region">northern France</span> and the <span class="region">occupied zone</span> had to wear that already in the <span class="populated place">towns</span>, <span class="dlf">streets</span>, everywhere. </sentence><sentence id="1461">But we having just arrived in <span class="populated place">Drancy</span> had to put that on because this was the administration of the German authorities. " </sentence><sentence id="1462">Juif" --- French for "Jew." </sentence><sentence id="1463">In <span class="country">Holland</span>, it was "Jood;" in <span class="country">Germany</span>, "Jude." </sentence><sentence id="1464">I cannot fail to mention that, because I always mention that. </sentence><sentence id="1465">And it has to be mentioned over and over and over again, that the German propaganda told you that a Jew, you can smell them a mile away. </sentence><sentence id="1466">A Jew, you know when you see a Jew, from a distance, you can smell him, you see his actions, you see, there's no way where you can mistake a Jew for what he is. </sentence><sentence id="1467">So the obvious thing, question is, it's a rhetorical question and even young children to whom I speak periodically in a <span class="building">museum</span> or in <span class="building">school</span> when I ask that and I say, so what is your next question then. </sentence><sentence id="1468">And they would say, "So why did you need that <span class="env feature">star</span>?" </sentence><sentence id="1469">And some young people, eight, nine year old, says, "I know why." </sentence><sentence id="1470">I said, "Tell me." </sentence><sentence id="1471">He says, "To humiliate you." </sentence><sentence id="1472">And for a child that's a big statement. </sentence><sentence id="1473">He understands that. </sentence><sentence id="1474">So we had this <span class="env feature">star</span> and we were easily recognizable, yet we had to wear it. </sentence><sentence id="1475">So that destroys their whole thesis, their whole propaganda, and their propaganda can be destroyed in thousands of ways because nothing ever made sense. </sentence><sentence id="1476">It only dwelt on the, on the, on the emotions. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1693">Q: Go back to <span class="populated place">Drancy</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1694">So you were in this <span class="populated place">camp</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1695">What happened in <span class="populated place">Drancy</span>? </sentence><sentence id="1696">What did you do? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1701">A: We saw utter despair, uncertainty, acts of, of aggression, pushing, shoving, end of rifle butts, and threats. </sentence><sentence id="1702">And it wasn't until I saw a newborn baby being shot like a clay pigeon, and the mother being killed too because she threw herself into the <span class="dlf">path</span> of the bullet, that I spoke to my friend, Manfred Silberwasser. </sentence><sentence id="1703">And I said, "Manfred, if this can happen in <span class="populated place">Drancy</span>, what can we expect where we're going to? </sentence><sentence id="1704">This is <span class="country">France</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1705">This is not yet <span class="country">Germany</span>." </sentence><sentence id="1706">There was no question of <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span> yet, because <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span>, the rumors that had come back to us were, were we didn't even want to think about that. </sentence><sentence id="1707">We didn't even want to believe that, that that was possible. </sentence><sentence id="1708">But this was November 1942; and in January 1942, the, the, the Wannsee Conference had decided on the Final Solution of which the news had only trickled down to us. </sentence><sentence id="1709">And everybody was always suspicious, leery of that, that cannot happen, take people for thousands of miles to gas them to kill them and then the -- always came back that there were always rumors in the First World War that turned out to be just that -- rumors. </sentence><sentence id="1710">And I said, "Fred, what we hear about what's possible, how they're going to... And we must do something. </sentence><sentence id="1711">Now if these are rumors and we prove to be wrong at the end of the war, then so be it. </sentence><sentence id="1712">I would rather be wrong at the end of the war than not be prepared now to do something about this." </sentence><sentence id="1713">They take your watch away, your toothbrush, glasses, eyeglasses. </sentence><sentence id="1714">They would leave you the eyeglasses, but when somebody had very thick eyeglasses where it was very necessary for that person to carry to see your hand in front of your eyes, those they took away. </sentence><sentence id="1715">That's the torture. </sentence><sentence id="1716">Somebody that had two eyes that needed for reading glasses, they left them those. </sentence><sentence id="1717">They were very selective as to how they moved that, that psychological ploy. </sentence><sentence id="1718">And compacts. </sentence><sentence id="1719">A compact to a woman and lipstick to a woman is, is something to hold onto. </sentence><sentence id="1720">Her person is a person. </sentence><sentence id="1721">Without that she is not fully a person. </sentence><sentence id="1722">Or the same thing for a -- combs they took away from us, because they could be a weapon. </sentence><sentence id="1723">But we didn't need it anyway. </sentence><sentence id="1724">They shaved our hair. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1749">Q: What did you do then? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1751">A: Well, on the sixth of November. </sentence><sentence id="1752">We had one sign while we were there of something hopeful when towards the beginning of November, the <span class="spatial object">skywriters</span> were flying overhead in the <span class="populated place">Paris</span> sky and I also later witnessed bombardment. </sentence><sentence id="1753">But these skywriters wrote "<span class="building">Le Huit</span>," <span class="building">Le Huit</span>, L-E H-U-I-T" which means "the eighth." </sentence><sentence id="1754">And on the eighth of November, on a Sunday, November the eighth, the Allies landed in <span class="region">North Africa</span> in 1942. </sentence><sentence id="1755">So they were playing games with those things, but they just wanted to let the French population know that on the eighth, you can expect something. </sentence><sentence id="1756">They had these little things going on periodically to encourage. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1763">Q: When did you know you were going on a <span class="spatial object">transport</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1765">A: The day before they took us. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1767">Q: Tell us about it. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1769">A: Thursday the fifth, in the morning, they notified us that we will be leaving. </sentence><sentence id="1770">In the afternoon of the fifth, Thursday, took us to the <span class="building">train station</span> of <span class="populated place">Drancy</span>, to <span class="populated place">Le Bourget</span>, in <span class="spatial object">trucks</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1771">Again, we looked how we can jump off that <span class="spatial object">truck</span>, but that would have been of foolishness because the guards were right on there and anybody who would jump would be shot at. </sentence><sentence id="1772">And people -- we, my friend and I, when I say "we," had a, an advantage, namely that we were not with family. </sentence><sentence id="1773">A husband would not jump off the <span class="spatial object">truck</span> and leave his wife and children there. </sentence><sentence id="1774">That's for sure. </sentence><sentence id="1775">Or a young child that is without parents will not try to run away because he or she was told that where you are going, you are going to meet your parents, and vice versa. </sentence><sentence id="1776">Parents were taken and were told where you are going you're going to meet your children. </sentence><sentence id="1777">Because the kids were taken out of the <span class="building">school</span> and brought in and the parents, again "tohoo va-vohoo." </sentence><sentence id="1778">And we were taken to the <span class="spatial object">train</span> and put into the <span class="spatial object">trains</span> in the evening. </sentence><sentence id="1779">Now it could have been 5:00, 6:00, or 7:00, somewhere around this time. </sentence><sentence id="1780">November it gets dark early. </sentence><sentence id="1781">It was a, a sort of a misty type <span class="region">northern France</span> fall, raw day. </sentence><sentence id="1782">Put into the <span class="spatial object">trains</span> at 50 "4 Eight (French). </sentence><sentence id="1783"> per <span class="spatial object">cattle car</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1784">I understand from other people who were in the <span class="region">east</span>, in those cases, they even had a hundred per <span class="spatial object">cattle car</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1785">Fifty per <span class="spatial object">cattle car</span> which was bad enough of a, what I like to call, microcosm of humanity abandoned by the world. </sentence><sentence id="1786">Everybody, old and young and from all professions, from all walks of life, from all economic strata, from every segment of the Jewish population. </sentence><sentence id="1787">Children alone. </sentence><sentence id="1788">Crippled people. </sentence><sentence id="1789">People on <span class="spatial object">stretchers</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1790">Counted out 50 per <span class="spatial object">car</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1791">Now, Linda, imagine yourself in a situation where you and a husband and two children are at the end of rifle butts pushed into a <span class="spatial object">cattle car</span>, counted out, ", 48, 49, 50. </sentence><sentence id="1792">In!" </sentence><sentence id="1793">Fifty-one would have been the other child. </sentence><sentence id="1794">This other child does not go with his parents and sibling into this <span class="spatial object">car</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1795">This child is at this point separated and put into the next <span class="spatial object">car</span>, counted out as number one going into the next <span class="spatial object">car</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1796">You might say they are separated by one car length but in fact they are separated by an <span class="env feature">ocean</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1797">They are worlds apart. </sentence><sentence id="1798">And a good chance is -- a bad chance -- is that that child will never see the parents again, and the parents will never see that child again. </sentence><sentence id="1799">And the trauma of that family is indescribable. </sentence><sentence id="1800">I can say words; they are not answerable. </sentence><sentence id="1801">I can express thoughts; they are unthinkable. </sentence><sentence id="1802">Even to express them is almost a ludicrous endeavor. </sentence><sentence id="1803">Dehumanization to the worst degree! </sentence><sentence id="1804">End of Tape #2 Tape #3 </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1841">Q: You're in the <span class="spatial object">cattle car</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1842">The <span class="dlf">doors</span> -- tell me what they did with the <span class="dlf">doors</span>. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1845">A: They shut them closed, yeah. </sentence><sentence id="1846">These <span class="dlf">sliding doors</span>, they were closed shut. </sentence><sentence id="1847">And from the outside, just latch-locked -- heavy metal latches. </sentence><sentence id="1848">And that was in the evening. </sentence><sentence id="1849">Now, the good thing would have been for this <span class="spatial object">train</span> to leave. </sentence><sentence id="1850">But it didn't. </sentence><sentence id="1851">It did not leave until next morning, about 12 hours later, 12 or 14 hours later, in the early morning. </sentence><sentence id="1852">As I see the report in the Klarsfeld book, it was something like 8:05. </sentence><sentence id="1853">Because there was a precise schedule. </sentence><sentence id="1854">But to be all night in a waiting standing <span class="spatial object">train</span> is much more torture than being riding. </sentence><sentence id="1855">When you are riding, you, you see progress, you see something is happening. </sentence><sentence id="1856">Sitting there is like being the expression "sitting ducks." </sentence><sentence id="1857">And, of course, in that particular confinement you have a whole gamut of emotions running their course. </sentence><sentence id="1858">You have resignation, you have despair, openly expressed; a lot of crying, a lot of moaning, some praying. </sentence><sentence id="1859">A young man with a gangrenous leg and knee attempting to make love to a young woman in the <span class="spatial object">train</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1860">He did that in the <span class="populated place">camp</span>, too. </sentence><sentence id="1861">Call that an expression of life. </sentence><sentence id="1862">Call it an expression of, perhaps, resignation of what else can happen. </sentence><sentence id="1863">Call it whatever you will. </sentence><sentence id="1864">It was an act, perhaps this was the, because perhaps this was the one human act that really happened there. </sentence><sentence id="1865">He didn't force that person. </sentence><sentence id="1866">She didn't cry or shout or resist. </sentence><sentence id="1867">But it points up that what happened in that <span class="spatial object">train</span> was, all privacy of a human being was, had been taken away. </sentence><sentence id="1868">There's no more privacy. </sentence><sentence id="1869">How can you, with one <span class="spatial object">bucket</span> in the center of that <span class="spatial object">car</span>, of that <span class="spatial object">cattle car</span>? </sentence><sentence id="1870">Everybody relieving themselves in that one <span class="spatial object">bucket</span> -- man, women, and children -- because you had to. </sentence><sentence id="1871">You had reached the common denominator of dehumanization. </sentence><sentence id="1872">There was no such thing as "I am a man, I can't show it," and, "I am a woman, I can't do that." </sentence><sentence id="1873">And people were still thinking that there was something of humaneness ahead of them. </sentence><sentence id="1874">We recently saw that film about one remembrance. </sentence><sentence id="1875">The one stark scene that I -- my family didn't want me to see that at all, and I only saw glimpses of it, like snitches of it. </sentence><sentence id="1876">But at the end, I saw that one scene where the woman open, stands in the open <span class="dlf">door</span> of that <span class="spatial object">cattle car</span> confronted by the SS officer at the arrival in <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span> or <span class="populated place">Birkenau</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1877">And she said to the person, "We have seven dead people in that <span class="spatial object">car</span>." </sentence><sentence id="1878">And he laughed and said, "Well, these are the lucky ones." </sentence><sentence id="1879">That points it all up. </sentence><sentence id="1880">That that woman speaking to this SS officer thought she was really confronting a human being who could understand this tragedy. </sentence><sentence id="1881">And this is why people throughout the <span class="spatial object">transport</span> were trying to talk us out of running away. </sentence><sentence id="1882">We had decided to make our getaway. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1921">Q: Who is "we"? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1923">A: My friend and I. </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1924">Q: And you are still standing. </sentence><sentence id="1925">You had not yet began to move? </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1926">A: We hadn't moved. </sentence><sentence id="1927">We were squatting, standing. </sentence><sentence id="1928">We moved in human waste. </sentence><sentence id="1929">The stench is still up here, and it's, it's powerful. </sentence><sentence id="1930">There were three of us who planned, but two only escaped. </sentence><sentence id="1931">And some tried to talk us out of it. " </sentence><sentence id="1932">Look what can happen to us if they find you escaped. </sentence><sentence id="1933">They will kill us all!" </sentence><sentence id="1934">And our answer at this point was, "So what do you think awaits us, anyway?" </sentence><sentence id="1935">They were some in previous <span class="spatial object">transports</span> who tried to escape. </sentence><sentence id="1936">And one man was caught under the wheels and was then thrown back into the <span class="spatial object">car</span> with two legs amputated to bleed to his death. </sentence><sentence id="1937">And people died anyway. </sentence><sentence id="1938">Malnutrition. </sentence><sentence id="1939">Maybe some suicides. </sentence><sentence id="1940">There was this woman in crutches in that <span class="spatial object">train</span>, pointing her crutch at me in, in, in weapons style, like a weapon, like a dagger -- pointing it and telling me, "Que Dieu vous garde!" -- " </sentence><sentence id="1941">Let God keep you! </sentence><sentence id="1942">You must go. </sentence><sentence id="1943">You must do what you want to do. </sentence><sentence id="1944">Don't let anybody talk you out of it." </sentence><sentence id="1945">You be-- To her, we were a symbol. </sentence><sentence id="1946">We were a symbolism. </sentence><sentence id="1947">Perhaps it will succeed, and then we can tell something about it. </sentence><sentence id="1948">A woman in crutches. </sentence><sentence id="1949">Every bit in her 70s, with streaky gray hair and deep, sad, dark, sad eyes, actually consoling a child that was there without a parent. </sentence><sentence id="1950">I don't know whether that father or mother was along. </sentence><sentence id="1951">The child was there crying, and she was in charge of that child. </sentence><sentence id="1952">And Tony was there -- a distant cousin of mine -- and her husband. </sentence><sentence id="1953">She was the one that had sewed on my star in the <span class="populated place">camp</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1954">And under the <span class="env feature">star</span>, I had a half a pound note of Irish pounds. </sentence><sentence id="1955">Under the star, under this star, there was a half a Irish pound note that I had salvaged over the last several years, sent to me by an aunt who had immigrated from <span class="country">Austria</span> to <span class="populated place">Galway</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1956">She had sent me that to <span class="country">Belgium</span>, periodically, and I saved that one. </sentence><sentence id="1957">Didn't want to spend it or exchange it, just for an emergency. </sentence><sentence id="1958">Didn't even know what the value of it was. </sentence><sentence id="1959">But it was something to hold on to. </sentence><sentence id="1960">Tony sewed that onto me; said, "Why do you want that there?" </sentence><sentence id="1961">I said, "I want it under the <span class="env feature">star</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1962">Sometime when I tear this <span class="env feature">star</span> off, if I do run away, I would like to have that. </sentence><sentence id="1963">Maybe I can buy some bread or some -- buy a <span class="spatial object">train</span> ticket with it, or what have you." </sentence><sentence id="1964">But it was some, something. </sentence><sentence id="1965">And we planned on our getaway. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2006">Q: What did you do? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2008">A: I have repeated that so often, and I don't want to over-dramatize. </sentence><sentence id="2009">I don't want to be pleading any kind of heroship or anything like that. </sentence><sentence id="2010">But the kids, when I speak about it, to them this is like an adventure. </sentence><sentence id="2011">We are not heroes. </sentence><sentence id="2012">I don't even exult in the word "surviving" because it speaks of something so, so exclusive. </sentence><sentence id="2013">You survive. </sentence><sentence id="2014">How many did survive, really? </sentence><sentence id="2015">So, it's almost like you are putting down those who couldn't survive, and you exult in that. </sentence><sentence id="2016">It was fear, utter fear, that prevailed upon us to do that. </sentence><sentence id="2017">Two little words: fear and luck. </sentence><sentence id="2018">One has to motivate you, and the other one is there to hopefully let you succeed. </sentence><sentence id="2019">Luck, you have. </sentence><sentence id="2020">This is luck. </sentence><sentence id="2021">And it's only -- </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2036">Q: What did you do? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2038">A: First, I would like for people to understand that if the hero that they, somebody whom they call hero -- whether they look at a person tells about it, or a <span class="spatial object">monument</span> that that, of some hero of years gone by --only that person knew really how scared he really was, you see. </sentence><sentence id="2039">You make a hero of somebody, but that person knew deep down that there was a lot of fear. </sentence><sentence id="2040">Heroism isn't something that comes sort of at the spur of the moment. </sentence><sentence id="2041">How did we do it?There was only one way of doing it. </sentence><sentence id="2042">Other than having tools to cut out the bottom of the <span class="spatial object">train</span> or cut out the <span class="dlf">ceiling</span>, there was only one way -- the obvious way -- a <span class="dlf">window</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2043">And these <span class="dlf">windows</span> were <span class="dlf">squares</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2044">Perhaps 24 by 18, something like that. </sentence><sentence id="2045">But you see, in <span class="spatial object">cattle cars</span> they are normally called "huit, <span class="spatial object">quarante</span>"" -- eight horses, or 40 men, in military terms. </sentence><sentence id="2046">Both <span class="dlf">windows</span> had bars, straight bars. </sentence><sentence id="2047">Two <span class="dlf">bars</span>: the one on the one side facing the other <span class="dlf">track</span> that runs parallel had <span class="dlf">barbed wire</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2048">That would not have prevented us from using that <span class="dlf">window</span>, because a <span class="dlf">barbed wire</span> that's rusty can easily be bent back and forth and can be eliminated. </sentence><sentence id="2049">A <span class="dlf">barbed wire</span> can be cut by bending back and forth a few times, and then you have just the <span class="dlf">bars</span> to contend with. </sentence><sentence id="2050">But that <span class="dlf">window</span> was not in our plan, because that was the <span class="dlf">window</span> that was next to the other <span class="dlf">track</span> and you don't want to jump when you jump onto a <span class="dlf">track</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2051">Especially from a moving <span class="spatial object">train</span>, because you can't really take that big chance. </sentence><sentence id="2052">I mean, you want to succeed. </sentence><sentence id="2053">The left side -- the <span class="region">north side</span>, as it were, because we were traveling east -- was the one that faced the <span class="env feature">ravine</span>, the <span class="env feature">bushes</span> that are alongside and the <span class="dlf">telephone post</span>, and so on. </sentence><sentence id="2054">That's the <span class="dlf">window</span> we chose through which we will make our getaway, we hoped to make our getaway. </sentence><sentence id="2055">And as soon as the <span class="spatial object">train</span>, we had all night to think about that. </sentence><sentence id="2056">We were walking in, in, around in miserable conditions. </sentence><sentence id="2057">I mean, we were sliding back and forth. </sentence><sentence id="2058">So the only way we tried in the morning to move these <span class="spatial object">bars</span>, but it wasn't possible. </sentence><sentence id="2059">We decided the only way that we could possibly do that is by trying to twist them or to bend them forcefully or forcibly. </sentence><sentence id="2060">And we dunked, we took our sweaters and we dunked them in <span class="env feature">human wastes</span>, made them wet, to create a tensile cloth. </sentence><sentence id="2061">Dry cloth you cannot wring too well. </sentence><sentence id="2062">A <span class="spatial object">towel</span>, for instance. </sentence><sentence id="2063">But a wet cloth can be wrung and wrung and wrung, and it twists and twists until the moisture has dripped out entirely until it's dry. </sentence><sentence id="2064">That sort of principle is applied in a tourniquet style when you use it on an arm. </sentence><sentence id="2065">We used that as a tourniquet. </sentence><sentence id="2066">So if you figure that two <span class="spatial object">bars</span>, you twist that sweater around the <span class="spatial object">bars</span> and then you go twisting, twisting, twisting until you can, We helped each other. </sentence><sentence id="2067">We tried that several times. </sentence><sentence id="2068">It was no give yet. </sentence><sentence id="2069">There was no give yet. </sentence><sentence id="2070">But we hoped that something will happen. </sentence><sentence id="2071">And then we moved in the side and see maybe it gets loose a little bit. </sentence><sentence id="2072">But after a while, when we twisted again, again, we gave up for five minutes to catch our breath and we were perspiring. </sentence><sentence id="2073">We were working under pressure. </sentence><sentence id="2074">This was our getaway. </sentence><sentence id="2075">This was life. </sentence><sentence id="2076">There the <span class="env feature">countryside</span> flew by us, that bucolic <span class="region">countryside</span> -- <span class="country">France</span>, the <span class="dlf">fields</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2077">And this was -- we were approaching <span class="region">champagne country</span>, you know. </sentence><sentence id="2078">The <span class="region">area</span> of lusciousness. </sentence><sentence id="2079">But here we were going to certain death, which now we know. </sentence><sentence id="2080">At that 5 Eight, forty (French). </sentence><sentence id="2081"> time, we only speculated. </sentence><sentence id="2082">But I am glad we did speculate. </sentence><sentence id="2083">It didn't let us fall into some sort of lethargy, like a lot of people were. </sentence><sentence id="2084">And we twisted and twisted, and then finally we saw that glimmer of hope where the <span class="dlf">bars</span> in the frame started to move ever so slightly, ever so slightly. </sentence><sentence id="2085">And rust came out falling from that fitting that it was in, the <span class="dlf">hole</span> that it is set in. </sentence><sentence id="2086">Rust came out. </sentence><sentence id="2087">Now, we never hoped to get the <span class="spatial object">bar</span> out of there; because they are set in like an inch or so, half an inch. </sentence><sentence id="2088">But we hoped to, them to be bending. </sentence><sentence id="2089">We worked for a while, and we saw them ever so slightly bend inward. </sentence><sentence id="2090">Then we used our hands to move them apart again, so that they should start loosening. </sentence><sentence id="2091">And it did that! </sentence><sentence id="2092">We moved them back into the proper position. </sentence><sentence id="2093">We went back and twisted again and this time, the bending inward was ever so slightly more of a bend. </sentence><sentence id="2094">And we put that again, did that. </sentence><sentence id="2095">We worked all day, being mindful of the fact that if the <span class="spatial object">train</span> would have to come to a stop, these things would have to be put into proper position. </sentence><sentence id="2096">Because then the guards would walk out of the first and the last <span class="spatial object">car</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2097">They were in the first <span class="spatial object">car</span>--that was a <span class="spatial object">passenger car</span>--and the last. </sentence><sentence id="2098">These were Gestapo, and these were the German guards. </sentence><sentence id="2099">And, of course, <span class="building">French police</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2100">The French police, French collaborators. </sentence><sentence id="2101">That's a chapter by itself. </sentence><sentence id="2102">Towards the late afternoon, those <span class="spatial object">bars</span> had moved apart, through our efforts, enough where we could see our way squeezing through it. </sentence><sentence id="2103">And we put them back into the original position, just again in case the <span class="spatial object">train</span> would come to a stop and the guards would come up and inspect. </sentence><sentence id="2104">One time the <span class="spatial object">train</span> stopped at a <span class="building">station</span>, and the people there seeing it wanted to reach me. </sentence><sentence id="2105">We shouted "<span class="env feature">Water</span>!" </sentence><sentence id="2106">The -- they didn't let them get close because these people were aware of three <span class="spatial object">transports</span> going by there every week. </sentence><sentence id="2107">Some of the people were aware of that, and sometimes that awareness helped communicate simply because some of us. </sentence><sentence id="2108">And I didn't do it, because I didn't leave family and friends. </sentence><sentence id="2109">But some of them, husbands or wives or children, whoever had left families behind in <span class="populated place">Drancy</span> or hiding out somewhere, they would drop envelopes, and the people would pick them up and would put stamps on them and mail them. </sentence><sentence id="2110">Or just notes: "We are going away. </sentence><sentence id="2111">We are going away. </sentence><sentence id="2112">Don't forget us." </sentence><sentence id="2113">Cryptic notes like this, you see. </sentence><sentence id="2114">But they didn't let them approach. </sentence><sentence id="2115">We only made one stop. </sentence><sentence id="2116">In hindsight, I see exactly the time when the <span class="spatial object">train</span> -- because it's in the book - - when the <span class="spatial object">train</span> would arrive at the <span class="dlf">German border</span>, and the German guards would take over everything by schedule. </sentence><sentence id="2117">But we did, Finally, under the cover of the darkness -- it could have been begin around seven o'clock, and it was dark at that time already. </sentence><sentence id="2118">We did climb out of that <span class="spatial object">cattle car</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2119">My cousin Tony, distant cousin Tony Gutefreund handed me my <span class="spatial object">rucksack</span> through. </sentence><sentence id="2120">I was the first one to step out. </sentence><sentence id="2121">I dropped down, held onto that <span class="building">bar</span>, and then reached my way to the back of that <span class="spatial object">cattle car</span> to the coupling. </sentence><sentence id="2122">Reaching for the coupling with my foot, and standing and holding on to this, and then holding to that metal iron -- wrought iron -- <span class="spatial object">stepladder</span> that leads up to the <span class="dlf">roof</span>, holding on to this, and stepping on those. </sentence><sentence id="2123">I was already half free. </sentence><sentence id="2124">I was standing there reaching my <span class="spatial object">rucksack</span> around, putting it only with one strap on my shoulder, and my friend came next. </sentence><sentence id="2125">He did the same procedure. </sentence><sentence id="2126">In fact, I told him already, "Now reach for the coupling -- la coupler. </sentence><sentence id="2127">""deg I stepped over to the next one, and he *6 Coupling (French). </sentence><sentence id="2128"> used this one. </sentence><sentence id="2129">Our third friend that was going to go with us either never had the, the, got up the nerve to do it, or perhaps he was noticed by someone that he was reaching out, because at that very moment or just seconds later, the <span class="spatial object">car</span>, the <span class="spatial object">train</span> went into a slight curve on the <span class="region">north side</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2130">That's the side we intended to jump. </sentence><sentence id="2131">And the <span class="dlf">curve</span> is like a concave curve, which serves the guards as a means to inspect the whole length of the <span class="spatial object">car</span>, the <span class="spatial object">train</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2132">They are shining their flashlights up and down from the back and the front, and they cross somewhere in the middle, sort of a floodlight effect, to see that everything on the outside of that <span class="spatial object">car</span> is -- or those <span class="spatial object">cattle trains</span>, <span class="spatial object">cattle cars</span>, is still under control. </sentence><sentence id="2133">It is possible that they noticed that, because at that moment when the <span class="spatial object">car</span>, the <span class="spatial object">train</span> had come into that <span class="dlf">curve</span> and somewhat slowed down--let's say, from 75 to 60 miles an hour or whatever, my friend standing on this <span class="dlf">coupling</span> was the first to jump. </sentence><sentence id="2134">And I jumped right after him. </sentence><sentence id="2135">But at that very moment, we heard whistles and shots fired. </sentence><sentence id="2136">Up to this day, I think that one or two things happened to our friend. </sentence><sentence id="2137">He was caught in the crossfire of these <span class="dlf">beams</span> and just didn't get out of the <span class="dlf">window</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2138">He was attempting to, maybe he was a little heavier than us. </sentence><sentence id="2139">Whatever the case. </sentence><sentence id="2140">Or they may have caught him. </sentence><sentence id="2141">Those shots, however, were fired before the <span class="spatial object">train</span> came to a halt, because a few seconds later, the <span class="spatial object">train</span> came to a screeching halt and we heard more shots fired -- probably in the <span class="env feature">air</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2142">Warning shots. </sentence><sentence id="2143">I don't think it was at our friend because I don't think he really ever made it out of the <span class="dlf">window</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2144">But that's conjecture. </sentence><sentence id="2145">And voices: "Let's look for...Let's search...Run up and down." </sentence><sentence id="2146">We were lying there in that <span class="env feature">ravine</span> and that wet, tall <span class="env feature">grass</span>, holding our breath together in a moment that seemed like hours. </sentence><sentence id="2147">But it was just a few minutes. </sentence><sentence id="2148">And it wasn't until we heard no longer any voices and we heard the <span class="spatial object">train</span> being set into motion again that we let our breath out. </sentence><sentence id="2149">For the first time in so many weeks, we were what you might call "free;" but at least -- if not entirely free, at least away from the <span class="spatial object">train</span> that was taking us to certain death. </sentence><sentence id="2150">Because only 72 hours earlier, 48 hours earlier, we were there in utter despair, put into a <span class="spatial object">train</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2151">This was a total metamorphosis in a few minutes. </sentence><sentence id="2152">We tried to make our way, and did make our way, into a <span class="populated place">village</span> nearby. </sentence><sentence id="2153">By that time, everything was closed. </sentence><sentence id="2154">And because of blackout -- war time -- the <span class="dlf">windows</span> were blue and blackened out. </sentence><sentence id="2155">And we went to this big <span class="building">shop</span>, rapped on the <span class="dlf">door</span>, and an apprentice, a young man, came to the <span class="dlf">door</span> and told us that there was no bread, they are closed. </sentence><sentence id="2156">And we said, "Yes, we do not want bread at this moment. </sentence><sentence id="2157">But we would like for you to tell us where does the priest of the <span class="populated place">village</span> live." </sentence><sentence id="2158">And he said, "Wait a minute." -- " </sentence><sentence id="2159">Un moment." " </sentence><sentence id="2160">Just a minute." </sentence><sentence id="2161">And he went in and got his jacket, came out with us and took us to the priest of the <span class="populated place">village</span>, to his <span class="building">residence</span> -- like a little <span class="building">house</span> sacristy. </sentence><sentence id="2162">We rapped, rapped on the <span class="dlf">door</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2163">We walked in, and the priest wanted to know, "What brings you here?" </sentence><sentence id="2164">The baker said, "These young men asked for your <span class="building">house</span>." </sentence><sentence id="2165">Then he walked off. " </sentence><sentence id="2166">Qu'est qu'il se passe?" -- " </sentence><sentence id="2167">What's going on?" </sentence><sentence id="2168">At that time, we had torn off our <span class="env feature">star</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2169">We didn't want to walk there with that. </sentence><sentence id="2170">And we felt later that this priest, that as good as he was and the <span class="building">shelter</span> that he did give us, would have probably be a little more reassured if we had the star. </sentence><sentence id="2171">He would know we were escapees rather than maybe agents sent there to find out if he is really into helping people. </sentence><sentence id="2172">We told him we escaped from the <span class="spatial object">train</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2173">He said, "Ah, oui. </sentence><sentence id="2174">Trois fois par semaine. </sentence><sentence id="2175">"--"Three times a week," he said. </sentence><sentence id="2176">Unfortunately, we never knew his name. </sentence><sentence id="2177">But names didn't matter at that particular time. </sentence><sentence id="2178">He didn't know ours either. </sentence><sentence id="2179">So, he said, "Oh, yeah, three times per week. </sentence><sentence id="2180">And you did escape from that." " </sentence><sentence id="2181">What we want is, can we stay for the night?" </sentence><sentence id="2182">He said, "What you first want is, is make yourself clean a little bit." </sentence><sentence id="2183">We came in. </sentence><sentence id="2184">We were -- smelled to high <span class="region">heaven</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2185">We were infested. " </sentence><sentence id="2186">You may also be hungry," he said. </sentence><sentence id="2187">He put a <span class="spatial object">pot</span> up to warm some milk, give us bread and cheese. </sentence><sentence id="2188">And he says, "Une nuit seulement." -- " </sentence><sentence id="2189">Only one night." " </sentence><sentence id="2190">Parce que les patrols, le matin ils sont ici. </sentence><sentence id="2191">Toujours tous les matins a six heures." -- " </sentence><sentence id="2192">Towards six o'clock in the morning we have the patrols here. </sentence><sentence id="2193">I will let you stay for the night, but you have to be out of here before 6:00." </sentence><sentence id="2194">He gave us, let us wash up, gave us this warm milk and bread and cheese, and put us into a <span class="spatial object">bed</span> with white, crisp sheets, wishing us good night. </sentence><sentence id="2195">Where just hours before, we were thrown into a <span class="spatial object">car</span> at the end of rifle butts. </sentence><sentence id="2196">And in no time we fell asleep. </sentence><sentence id="2197">Exhaustion! </sentence><sentence id="2198">We let ourselves just fade away into a dreamland. </sentence><sentence id="2199">Next morning -- and that night went so fast -- a tender tap on the shoulder. </sentence><sentence id="2200">He says, "Les gars," -- "Hey, guys! </sentence><sentence id="2201">Hey, guys! </sentence><sentence id="2202">Hey, guys, it's time to get up." </sentence><sentence id="2203">Can you imagine a voice speaking in nice terms, like it was just like somebody, an angel, had just come down? </sentence><sentence id="2204">We hated to leave that <span class="spatial object">bed</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2205">But he had breakfast prepared. </sentence><sentence id="2206">He gave us a note to a colleague of his, a priest in another <span class="populated place">village</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2207">He gave us some francs and food for the <span class="dlf">road</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2208">And we were walking, walking, as we bid him goodbye and thanked him. </sentence><sentence id="2209">As I said, unfortunately, we never knew his name and he didn't know ours. </sentence><sentence id="2210">But again, this was not a moment to dwell on that. </sentence><sentence id="2211">And on the <span class="dlf">road</span> we, we took advantage of one of those <span class="spatial object">farm trucks</span> that went back, a <span class="spatial object">horse-pulled truck</span>, a <span class="spatial object">farm wagon</span>, <span class="spatial object">hay wagon</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2212">And he took us into a next <span class="populated place">village</span>, where he was then. </sentence><sentence id="2213">We walked again; we wound up into that <span class="populated place">village</span> where that other priest lived that he gave us the address to. </sentence><sentence id="2214">And, you know, the priest wasn't <span class="building">home</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2215">This was Saturday morning. </sentence><sentence id="2216">He was out at <span class="populated place">Mass</span> somewhere. </sentence><sentence id="2217">And we asked the maid that was there, "When will he be back?" </sentence><sentence id="2218">She said, "Shortly." </sentence><sentence id="2219">So we walked into the <span class="dlf">cemetery</span> to just visit <span class="spatial object">graves</span>, so we shouldn't be noticed by anybody in the <span class="dlf">streets</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2220">The <span class="dlf">cemetery</span> is a safe place. </sentence><sentence id="2221">The police doesn't go there to search for people walking around. </sentence><sentence id="2222">We had our berets on, because we had our heads shaven. </sentence><sentence id="2223">Then we got back to the priest. </sentence><sentence id="2224">And it was about lunch time, and he gave us lunch because he had the recommen-- he had a note from that other Reverend Father. </sentence><sentence id="2225">He gave us lunch, and when he, when he stood there, saying his prayer, his blessing over the meal, we being Jewish had no ideas as to what, we just bent down and moved our lips. </sentence><sentence id="2226">That night, he let us spend the night in his <span class="building">stable</span> of cows. </sentence><sentence id="2227">We slept between cows on straw, fresh straw he prepared. </sentence><sentence id="2228">But that odor of the cow and that odor of the <span class="building">stable</span> was perfume. </sentence><sentence id="2229">And the coziness, the warmth of the cows, the animals chewing the cud, was almost as if you hear rain drop dropping on your <span class="dlf">windowpane</span> when you try to fall asleep. </sentence><sentence id="2230">It was a cozy sound and a good, good odor. </sentence><sentence id="2231">Again, I am coming back to that odor. </sentence><sentence id="2232">7 Young men (French). </sentence><sentence id="2233"> When I -- today when I go through a <span class="region">farming country</span> and I smell the odor of cows and <span class="building">stable</span> and dung, it's, it's a perfume -- it's Chanel No. </sentence><sentence id="2234">60, or whatever. </sentence><sentence id="2235">But it is a perfume. </sentence><sentence id="2236">And next morning, he again urged us to leave, gave us an address of a farmer with whom we spent the next night. </sentence><sentence id="2237">And that farmer, in some way -- he put us up in a <span class="building">barn</span> - -had to be connected with some underground because next morning he came to us, took us to the <span class="building">railroad station</span> and gave us two tickets to <span class="populated place">Paris</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2238">And Sunday, the eight, two days after our escape, we landed in the Gare de L'est"(r) in <span class="populated place">Paris</span>, got off the <span class="spatial object">train</span> in <span class="populated place">Paris</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2239">Again, carrying our star in our pockets, not on the lapel. </sentence><sentence id="2240">Hair shaven. </sentence><sentence id="2241">And when we were in that <span class="spatial object">train</span>, or was it on the <span class="dlf">road</span> that I mentioned to Fred? </sentence><sentence id="2242">By the way, it was Sunday. </sentence><sentence id="2243">He would not have let us go on that <span class="spatial object">train</span> if it was Monday because during the week there are patrols. " </sentence><sentence id="2244">On Sunday, there are, there are, it's a day off, even for the inspectors for the soldiers for the Germans. </sentence><sentence id="2245">It's easier to travel on Sunday. </sentence><sentence id="2246">You should be all right "til <span class="populated place">Paris</span>." </sentence><sentence id="2247">And he said, "If something happens want you to escape from a <span class="spatial object">train</span> there, you will be able to do something in this case." </sentence><sentence id="2248">But I mentioned to Fred, "Fred, 30 years from now when we will think about this, we will think back of it as a dream. </sentence><sentence id="2249">We wouldn't even believe it happened." </sentence><sentence id="2250">So he said, "Are you crazy?You are a fool!" </sentence><sentence id="2251">I said, "Why do you say that?" " </sentence><sentence id="2252">How can you think of 30 years from now when we don't even know what tomorrow will be?" </sentence><sentence id="2253">I said, "You know, now that we are out of that <span class="spatial object">train</span>, nothing will -- nothing is impossible any longer. </sentence><sentence id="2254">I look forward now to, to surviving and telling about it." </sentence><sentence id="2255">That was my spirit. </sentence><sentence id="2256">And a lot of them later, again, didn't make it, and it could have happened to me, too, because I had so many instances and so many situations that I got out of that were only too, too close to call. </sentence><sentence id="2257">But at that moment, I saw the future. </sentence><sentence id="2258">And he berated me for it. </sentence><sentence id="2259">He said, "I know what you mean. </sentence><sentence id="2260">But we don't even have papers. </sentence><sentence id="2261">We don't know where to go from here." " </sentence><sentence id="2262">We go to <span class="populated place">Paris</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2263">We going to seek my Aunt out who lives in <span class="populated place">Paris</span>." </sentence><sentence id="2264">Her son at that time was hiding in the <span class="env feature">mountains</span> somewhere. </sentence><sentence id="2265">She was hiding also with a priest in <span class="populated place">Paris</span> that was recommended to her by a police captain who liked the family. </sentence><sentence id="2266">And he has known her from before, before she was a widow yet. </sentence><sentence id="2267">And he prevailed that this priest take her in. </sentence><sentence id="2268">The concierge that I went to on <span class="dlf">Rue St. Mort</span> (ph) to look for my aunt wanted to know who I am. " </sentence><sentence id="2269">I am her nephew." " </sentence><sentence id="2270">What is your name?" </sentence><sentence id="2271">I said, "Leo." </sentence><sentence id="2272">She said, "I can't tell you where she is, but I can go and see her." </sentence><sentence id="2273">She realized that I was a nephew. </sentence><sentence id="2274">I look a little bit like my aunt, too. </sentence><sentence id="2275">We have the same coloration. </sentence><sentence id="2276">She's my mother's sister. </sentence><sentence id="2277">And she brought her back a half an hour later. </sentence><sentence id="2278">And there, of course, she held us for several days in her place, and went to a <span class="building">Jewish committee</span> that was engaged in producing false ID cards. </sentence><sentence id="2279">And she made some of those, two cards for us, and with that card we crossed into the <span class="region">unoccupied zone</span> of <span class="country">France</span> near <span class="populated place">Tours</span> across the <span class="env feature">Loire River</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2280">But once across the <span class="env feature">Loire River</span>, we were arrested. </sentence><sentence id="2281">We were arrested trying to get a <span class="spatial object">bus</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2282">At the <span class="dlf">bus stop</span> the police examined our papers, took them away from us, took us into the <span class="building">police station</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2283">Did not make much of a fuss. </sentence><sentence id="2284">We told them that we escaped from the <span class="spatial object">train</span>. " </sentence><sentence id="2285">Yeah, but you are now in free <span class="country">France</span>." </sentence><sentence id="2286">You know, another ploy. </sentence><sentence id="2287">But we did not want to tell them, "Yes, we came from here." </sentence><sentence id="2288">8 Railway East (French). </sentence><sentence id="2289"> We didn't want to let on that we may have some footholds or people that we know. " </sentence><sentence id="2290">Well, here's some ration cards." </sentence><sentence id="2291">They gave us ration cards. </sentence><sentence id="2292">Within 24 hours, with this ration card, they gave us a Laisser-passer -- safe conduct. " </sentence><sentence id="2293">You have to register. </sentence><sentence id="2294">You have to appear and register at <span class="building">Centre d'Acceuil</span>," --whatever the <span class="populated place">camp</span> was called -- "<span class="building">Centre d'Acceuil</span>." </sentence><sentence id="2295">Again, Center of -- <span class="building">Reception Center</span>. " </sentence><sentence id="2296">And present yourself there with these papers." </sentence><sentence id="2297">Now why did they not take us there, but let us do it by ourselves? </sentence><sentence id="2298">Because their administration was so geared on collaborating with the Germans and inspecting everything that they thought that for us to think to not do this would be ludicrous. </sentence><sentence id="2299">Also, by them telling us, "Oh, you escape from a <span class="spatial object">train</span> from, " We told them outright, "We escaped from a <span class="spatial object">train</span>, then we went to <span class="populated place">Paris</span>, we got these papers." " </sentence><sentence id="2300">Who made these papers for you?" </sentence><sentence id="2301">I said, "I don't know. </sentence><sentence id="2302">I don't know. </sentence><sentence id="2303">We just had a friend up there who knew about somebody gave us paper." </sentence><sentence id="2304">And he doesn't worry about that, simply because that is in the other <span class="region">zone</span> with the Germans. </sentence><sentence id="2305">He is only concerned with his aspect of law enforcement. </sentence><sentence id="2306">And by telling us, "You are now in the <span class="region">Free Zone</span> of <span class="country">France</span>" -- not knowing that we were in that so-called "<span class="region">Free Zone</span>" before but we're coming from the <span class="region">north</span> -- that he will give us that confidence, inspire confidence or in any way con us into thinking that everything is fine. " </sentence><sentence id="2307">And you are going to a <span class="building">Centre d'Acceuil</span>." </sentence><sentence id="2308">You see, that euphemism again. </sentence><sentence id="2309">But we knew better. </sentence><sentence id="2310">And instead for the <span class="building">Centre d'Acceuil</span>, my friend and I went to the <span class="populated place">town</span> where he last lived in the south of <span class="country">France</span> and saw that everything was all right with him. </sentence><sentence id="2311">We exchanged addresses, because I told him, "I will go somewhere where you can get in touch with me." </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2588">Q: What <span class="populated place">town</span> is this? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2590">A: <span class="populated place">Bagneres-de-Bigorre</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2591">I left him there to his devices. </sentence><sentence id="2592">That was the last time -- no, I saw him one more time, and I will tell you that later. </sentence><sentence id="2593">I left him to his devices, he left me to mine, and I went to <span class="populated place">Bagneres-de-Bigorre</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2594">I arrived in <span class="populated place">Bagneres-de-Bigorre</span> at night, after eight o'clock. </sentence><sentence id="2595">And, and coming out of the <span class="building">train station</span>, there is a gendarme inspecting everybody who comes out of there. </sentence><sentence id="2596">And I have no papers! </sentence><sentence id="2597">They were inspecting people, not to catch them in any way, in some, in some situation of having run away or escaped. </sentence><sentence id="2598">I looked French pretty much at that time, spoke French very well. </sentence><sentence id="2599">I am dark. </sentence><sentence id="2600">In the <span class="region">southern France part</span>, people look a little bit like this. </sentence><sentence id="2601">With my beret, I could strike the pose of a Frenchman very easily. </sentence><sentence id="2602">But what he was interested in, to look into my <span class="spatial object">rucksack</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2603">If I am not carrying anything contraband. </sentence><sentence id="2604">Eggs were rationed, and wine was rationed, and bread was rationed, and butter was rationed, and meat was rationed. </sentence><sentence id="2605">I could have easily come from the <span class="country">country</span> bringing all that into the <span class="populated place">town</span> to do some <span class="building">black market</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2606">So he -- here's the comical part: I told you there's some comical parts to my escapes or escapades. </sentence><sentence id="2607">Isn't that interesting, that the word "escape" is really contained in the word "escapade?" " </sentence><sentence id="2608">Une minute," he says to me. " </sentence><sentence id="2609">One moment. </sentence><sentence id="2610">Wait a minute." </sentence><sentence id="2611">There was another gendarme a few steps away, like near the other <span class="dlf">exit</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2612">Two <span class="dlf">exits</span> are the, the <span class="building">train station</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2613">Who was inspecting a lady with a rucksack with some baggage. </sentence><sentence id="2614">This gendarme wanted to inspect my <span class="spatial object">rucksack</span>, but didn't have a flashlight on him. </sentence><sentence id="2615">He says, "Une minute." </sentence><sentence id="2616">He trusts me, right? </sentence><sentence id="2617">Had he known me, he wouldn't have, you see. </sentence><sentence id="2618"> "Un minute." </sentence><sentence id="2619">He goes over there. </sentence><sentence id="2620">In a minute goes over there, and wants that flashlight. </sentence><sentence id="2621">By the time he came back with the flashlight, I was gone, got to the <span class="populated place">Spira</span>'s <span class="building">house</span> that they rented. </sentence><sentence id="2622">A big, like a villa-type thing, and the <span class="dlf">gate</span>, lo and behold, an <span class="dlf">iron gate</span> with stakes is closed and locked. </sentence><sentence id="2623">I am not about to ring the <span class="spatial object">bell</span>, because they might come out so quickly, the owner of the <span class="building">house</span> who lives in the same <span class="building">building</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2624">By that time, nobody knew that I had escaped from <span class="populated place">Drancy</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2625">All they knew, by me having written from them from <span class="populated place">Rivesaltes</span> that I was going to <span class="populated place">Drancy</span> to be deported. </sentence><sentence id="2626">What did I do? </sentence><sentence id="2627">I climbed up that <span class="dlf">fence</span>, and there are these concrete posts at the side of the <span class="dlf">fence</span> -- you know, some of them have vases or figurines up there. </sentence><sentence id="2628">These had two lions, two smiling lions, one on each side, sitting there, looking at me. </sentence><sentence id="2629">And I climbed up that <span class="dlf">fence</span>, reached over to that circle to that <span class="dlf">pillar</span> on which the lions were sitting, climbed up to the lions and let myself down, jumping down. </sentence><sentence id="2630">In the process, moving that lion close to the edge of that <span class="spatial object">pillar</span> so that the bottom, the base of that lion was slightly overlapping the <span class="dlf">bar</span>, the, the <span class="dlf">pillar</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2631">Had I held on to it maybe a little more and dragged it with me, this thing could have fallen down and made a lot of noise and really given me away. </sentence><sentence id="2632">But it just stood there this way. </sentence><sentence id="2633">The next morning, when Spira went out and looked at it, he said, "You were lucky. </sentence><sentence id="2634">This lion could have fallen on you." </sentence><sentence id="2635">I proceeded in that -- there was a <span class="dlf">garden</span> in front and a <span class="dlf">pathway</span>, a <span class="dlf">paved pathway</span>, to the <span class="building">house</span> -- proceeded to walk up there, to their <span class="dlf">door entrance</span>, rang the bell. </sentence><sentence id="2636">And they opened the <span class="dlf">door</span>, and they almost fainted. </sentence><sentence id="2637">Agape: "How, how, how? </sentence><sentence id="2638">Where, where were you?" </sentence><sentence id="2639">Well, I started telling my story. " </sentence><sentence id="2640">Well, Leo, you are going to stay here until we decide on something. </sentence><sentence id="2641">You will not leave this place. </sentence><sentence id="2642">That was close to the eighth of November, eighth of November. </sentence><sentence id="2643">This was close to the beginning of December, already, of "42. </sentence><sentence id="2644">I stayed in this place for about a week or 10 days. </sentence><sentence id="2645">And I got, in Yiddish, you say you have <span class="spatial object">shpilkas</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2646">"deg On pins and needles! </sentence><sentence id="2647">I had to move. </sentence><sentence id="2648">And against the advice of my friends, the Spiras, I went to go out and get bread. </sentence><sentence id="2649">I had lived in <span class="populated place">Bagneres-de-Bigorre</span> many, many months, you see. </sentence><sentence id="2650">And I knew this baker, Mr. Broca -- B- R-O-C-A -- very well, who always treated me good. </sentence><sentence id="2651">When I came with a coupon for a half loaf, he gave me a little more than a half a loaf. </sentence><sentence id="2652">I became very friendly with him. </sentence><sentence id="2653">He always gave me a little more. </sentence><sentence id="2654">He, young kid and so on, I went to get bread, against the advice of <span class="populated place">Spira</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2655">On the way back from <span class="populated place">Broca</span>, walking back to the Spiras, two gendarmes on <span class="spatial object">bicycles</span> recognized me and shouted and pointed at me. </sentence><sentence id="2656">And I started running. </sentence><sentence id="2657">But against the <span class="spatial object">bicycle</span>, I wasn't fast enough. </sentence><sentence id="2658">And they arrested me. </sentence><sentence id="2659">That was on the sixth of December, 1942. </sentence><sentence id="2660">I spent one night in the <span class="building">gendarmerie</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2661">They wanted to know where I spent the night since then, that they sensed that when I ran away at the <span class="spatial object">train</span> at the <span class="building">station</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2662">And I didn't tell them. </sentence><sentence id="2663">I said, "I was here in the <span class="env feature">woods</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2664">I was walking around. </sentence><sentence id="2665">I was out of <span class="populated place">town</span>, and I came back." " </sentence><sentence id="2666">But you have friends here. </sentence><sentence id="2667">We know who they are." " </sentence><sentence id="2668">Oh, yeah, I knew a lot of people here," I said. </sentence><sentence id="2669">"But they are already gone by now, like I was." " </sentence><sentence id="2670">Abandone de <span class="building">residence</span>,""*" that was the, that was the, that was my indictment. </sentence><sentence id="2671">The Southern French <span class="populated place">Vichy Government</span> were the, the degdeg Worries (Yiddish).*deg Abandonment of <span class="building">residence</span> (French). </sentence><sentence id="2672"> police and the authorities were, again, not concerned with my escape from the <span class="spatial object">train</span> in the <span class="region">north</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2673">Only that I escaped, that I left originally my assigned <span class="building">residence</span> in <span class="populated place">Cauterets</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2674">That was what they, that was against the law. </sentence><sentence id="2675">So when they arrested me, put me in that <span class="interior space">cell</span>, the next day on the seventh of December I was taken to <span class="building">jail</span> in <span class="populated place">Tarbes</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2676"><span class="populated place">Tarbes</span> is the seat -- <span class="region">Prefecture</span>, to you. </sentence><sentence id="2677">That's the seat of the, of the <span class="building">Department</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2678">And I waited. </sentence><sentence id="2679">They assigned a lawyer to me from the Vichy Government, Maitre Laouie(ph), and on the eighth of May, 19 -- I am sorry. </sentence><sentence id="2680">Eighth of January, 1943, I was taken back to <span class="populated place">Bagneres</span> by <span class="building">jail</span> authorities to face trial. </sentence><sentence id="2681">On the eighth of January I was tried and sentenced to one year in <span class="building">jail</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2682">On the behest of the lawyer, he said, "If you are in <span class="building">jail</span>, you will be in <span class="building">jail</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2683">They cannot deport you while you are in <span class="building">jail</span>, except if there is an attack on a German position in the <span class="populated place">town</span> or something. </sentence><sentence id="2684">If there is a -- some underground or resistance action that they want to retaliate against, they can take hostages then. </sentence><sentence id="2685">In <span class="building">jail</span> you are not in the safest place, but it's safer than being on the <span class="dlf">streets</span>, on the <span class="dlf">roads</span>, and being arrested, taken to <span class="populated place">Drancy</span>." </sentence><sentence id="2686">Because they would take the political and the Jews out of <span class="building">jail</span> as hostages. </sentence><sentence id="2687">That has happened quite frequently. </sentence><sentence id="2688">Sentenced to one year in <span class="building">jail</span>--which means, if you get one year and one day, that means you serve the full year and one day. </sentence><sentence id="2689">But if you are sentenced to one year, that means you are entitled to quarter off for good behavior. </sentence><sentence id="2690">So you serve actually nine months. </sentence><sentence id="2691">Lo and behold, after my sentencing on eighth of January 1943, I escaped from the <span class="building">gendarmes</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2692">They went into a <span class="building">bar</span>, a <span class="building">bistro</span>, and I conned them into taking off the handcuffs, off their hand, because I have to go to the <span class="interior space">bathroom</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2693">You see, they were cuffed to theirs and mine. </sentence><sentence id="2694">And they figured they can do that, because, after all, I have my handcuffs on. </sentence><sentence id="2695">Where can I do? " </sentence><sentence id="2696">Can you let me go to the <span class="interior space">bathroom</span>?" </sentence><sentence id="2697">But instead of going to the <span class="interior space">bathroom</span>, I ran away. </sentence><sentence id="2698">I had seen <span class="populated place">Drancy</span>, and I didn't want to ever have to go back to <span class="populated place">Drancy</span> again. </sentence><sentence id="2699">I had seen it. </sentence><sentence id="2700">| ran away from the <span class="building">gendarmes</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2701">It was a very emotional thing, at the time. </sentence><sentence id="2702">I went to a <span class="building">grocery store</span> and asked them to get in touch with the Spiras. </sentence><sentence id="2703">Didn't want to go back to the <span class="populated place">Spiras</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2704">I wasn't going to jeopardize them. </sentence><sentence id="2705">Because the Spiras had come to the trial, and sit there and watch my trial. </sentence><sentence id="2706">And other people that I still had known there went to that trial and watched. </sentence><sentence id="2707">And they went to the <span class="populated place">Spiras</span> and told them about me. </sentence><sentence id="2708">And the girls came to the <span class="building">grocery store</span>, the daughters, to see me and to tell me that the gendarmes had been there already to want to find out where I am. " </sentence><sentence id="2709">Because he is probably your boyfriend," they said to Suzy. </sentence><sentence id="2710">Because Suzy, when I was incarcerated in <span class="populated place">Bagneres</span>, after they had called me, after that incident that I had went for bread, they had put me for one night into the <span class="building">gendarmerie</span> before the took me to <span class="building">jail</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2711">Suzy and her sister came to visit me there. </sentence><sentence id="2712">But they could do that, because they knew that the Jews knew each other. </sentence><sentence id="2713">But in this case: "Where is he?" </sentence><sentence id="2714">And they went to their <span class="building">house</span> and they said they don't not know. </sentence><sentence id="2715">All they know is that they saw me last time at -- in the <span class="building">courthouse</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2716">And in no uncertain terms, they told them that "If he will come here, we will not let him stay. </sentence><sentence id="2717">In fact, if he will come here, we will have to let you know, because we don't want him to be running around and be caught again. </sentence><sentence id="2718">He's probably safer in <span class="building">jail</span>." </sentence><sentence id="2719">They played it that way. </sentence><sentence id="2720">I ran away. </sentence><sentence id="2721">And they told me right there at that <span class="building">grocery store</span>, "Do not come to us. </sentence><sentence id="2722">It doesn't pay." </sentence><sentence id="2723">With a hacksaw, they cut my cuffs off and left them there. </sentence><sentence id="2724">And I meandered for 48 hours in the -- at night. </sentence><sentence id="2725">It became night by that time. </sentence><sentence id="2726">On a rainy night, into the direction of <span class="populated place">Toulouse</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2727">I wanted to get somewhere to get -- I had hidden some money away that they were not able to take from me in <span class="building">jail</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2728">I had hidden it in my <span class="dlf">anus</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2729">And when I left that <span class="building">grocery store</span>, my first stop was again to the baker, Mr. Broca. </sentence><sentence id="2730">He gave me some bread. </sentence><sentence id="2731">He told me that already the radio had said that the fellow who lived here before in the -- in <span class="populated place">Bagneres-de-Bigorre</span> had escaped, to be on the look out, and your name was mentioned. </sentence><sentence id="2732">So he said, "You know, you cannot stay in <span class="populated place">Bagneres</span>." </sentence><sentence id="2733">I said, "I know. </sentence><sentence id="2734">Can I have some bread, please -- to, for the <span class="dlf">road</span>?" </sentence><sentence id="2735">He gave me that, he gave me 20 francs. </sentence><sentence id="2736">And also, in the <span class="building">courthouse</span>, one of the friends that I had, when I went to the <span class="interior space">bathroom</span> -- my ploy was always to go to the <span class="interior space">bathroom</span>--had stood next to me in the <span class="interior space">bathroom</span> and also had handed me 10 francs. </sentence><sentence id="2737">So I was pretty much equipped, as far as money goes, for a little food and that sort of thing. </sentence><sentence id="2738">Couldn't make many, couldn't buy a <span class="spatial object">train</span> ticket or something like that, but I figured maybe a <span class="spatial object">freight train</span>, or pick up a, hitch a ride or something. </sentence><sentence id="2739">I wandered all night in the rain and again slept under a <span class="env feature">tree</span> in the <span class="env feature">forest</span>, leaning against the <span class="env feature">tree</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2740">And the next morning, I arrived in a little <span class="populated place">village</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2741">I forgot the name of that <span class="populated place">village</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2742">In the same <span class="region">area</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2743">But I must have gone in circles at night, because I had not been that far away from <span class="populated place">Bagneres-de-Bigorre</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2744">Went into the <span class="building">restaurant</span> and ordered a platter of beans, and sit down to eat it. </sentence><sentence id="2745">And my collar had, the coat collar from, of the rain coat, a gabardine rain coat in blue, had this collar upon my neck. </sentence><sentence id="2746">I had a <span class="dlf">blue line</span> around here. </sentence><sentence id="2747">And I was sitting there, ragged as I must have looked --because I had shaved hair from jail-- and the owner of that <span class="building">restaurant</span> went to the <span class="spatial object">telephone</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2748">I saw him go to the <span class="spatial object">telephone</span> and whisper something into the <span class="spatial object">telephone</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2749">And at that point, I was resigned not to run because I was really tired. </sentence><sentence id="2750">I was really worn out from the night. </sentence><sentence id="2751">I was really exhausted, and emotionally, I was really down in the dumps because I hadn't wandered that far from <span class="populated place">Bagneeres</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2752">I thought I had made more headway. </sentence><sentence id="2753">And in a few minutes, two gendarmes walked in, come up to my <span class="spatial object">table</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2754">And they said, "Finish the beans." </sentence><sentence id="2755">And I said, "No, that's for the boss. </sentence><sentence id="2756">I leave that for him. </sentence><sentence id="2757">He probably needs that food much more than I." I made such a sarcastic remark. </sentence><sentence id="2758">And they found money on me. </sentence><sentence id="2759">I spend the night in the <span class="building">gendarmerie</span>, and the next morning I was picked up by the gendarmes from <span class="populated place">Tarbes</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2760">The same gendarmes that had accompanied me to the <span class="building">courthouse</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2761">The same two men from whom, whose custody I had escaped. </sentence><sentence id="2762">Now, you can just imagine how they felt toward me. </sentence><sentence id="2763">They beat me real good, fists, key reinforced fists. </sentence><sentence id="2764">Then they took a stoking arm from a, from the <span class="dlf">chimney</span>, and they had a little a little <span class="dlf">chimney</span> -- what you call it? </sentence><sentence id="2765">A <span class="spatial object">fireplace</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2766">In the <span class="building">police station</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2767">Had took that <span class="spatial object">poker</span> and beat me on my back and on my legs. </sentence><sentence id="2768">They wanted to know why I did that. </sentence><sentence id="2769">That's bad for them. </sentence><sentence id="2770">I put them into jeopardy. </sentence><sentence id="2771">They will be fired. </sentence><sentence id="2772">And I apologized. </sentence><sentence id="2773">You see, in <span class="country">France</span>, you do not sentence a prisoner for more time because he escaped. </sentence><sentence id="2774">The prisoner gets the free time that he spent away from the <span class="building">jail</span> just added to the sentence instead of nine months. </sentence><sentence id="2775">And still, given good behavior, I was going to serve nine months and two days. </sentence><sentence id="2776">It is -- the onus is on the guardians. </sentence><sentence id="2777">The onus is on the gendarmes to make sure that that prisoner does not escape. </sentence><sentence id="2778">That's their job. </sentence><sentence id="2779">In <span class="country">America</span>, it's different. </sentence><sentence id="2780">When you escape, you get punished for that. </sentence><sentence id="2781">But in, in military training, the soldiers are trained to escape. </sentence><sentence id="2782">They are going through training. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2977">Q: Let's bring -- we have 10 minutes. </sentence><sentence id="2978">I want to bring it up and I want to move to <span class="populated place">Toulouse</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2979">How did you get, how long did you spend in <span class="building">jail</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2983">A: I spent in <span class="building">jail</span> nine months and two days. </sentence><sentence id="2984">I was taken on the ninth of September 1943 out of <span class="building">jail</span>, and transported to a forced labor -- not <span class="populated place">forced labor camp</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2985">A hard <span class="populated place">labor camp</span> in <span class="populated place">Septfond</span>, <span class="region">Department Tarn-et-Garonne</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2986">I was one of hundreds of prisoners there. </sentence><sentence id="2987">In that <span class="populated place">camp</span>, my friend with whom I had escaped had found out where I was taken. </sentence><sentence id="2988">He came to visit me, and he gave me an address that I can write to in case I manage to become free. </sentence><sentence id="2989">My correspondence to that <span class="populated place">camp</span>, which I was entitled to receive for a month, I was sitting there banging stones, rocks, making it into small stones. </sentence><sentence id="2990">My correspondence that I got there, I found out later, was kept and censored and not given to me. </sentence><sentence id="2991">The correspondence that I sent out went out, but was also read and censored. </sentence><sentence id="2992">So my friend came and gave me an address, and I memorized it. </sentence><sentence id="2993">I didn't write it down. </sentence><sentence id="2994">On the 15th of October, 1943, was the Yom Kippur. </sentence><sentence id="2995">And the Germans have a knack for doing that on a Jewish holiday. </sentence><sentence id="2996">The day before, on the 14th, we were informed that the next day we were going to be taken to <span class="populated place">Organization Todt</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2997">That is the, the organization, <span class="building">German Organization Todt</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2998">They were building <span class="dlf">fortifications</span> named after Todt, who was the armament minister who was later replaced by Speer, and when Todt died Speer took over. </sentence><sentence id="2999">Organization Todt was supposed to take us to the <span class="building">Atlantic War building</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3000">And there was 14 of us to be taken away for that. </sentence><sentence id="3001">And again, we discussed: "Will we really go there? </sentence><sentence id="3002">Is this just a ploy? </sentence><sentence id="3003">Will we wind up in <span class="populated place">Drancy</span> again?" </sentence><sentence id="3004">And there was a guard by the name of Kaufmann. </sentence><sentence id="3005">He was an <span class="region">Alsace-Lorraine</span> native -- spoke <span class="country">Germany</span> fluently and French fluently. </sentence><sentence id="3006">To me he spoke German. </sentence><sentence id="3007">And sometimes also spoke French. </sentence><sentence id="3008">He said to me, "Bretholz, Morgen begleit Ich Si"?! -- " </sentence><sentence id="3009">Tomorrow, I will be accompanying you," and then there will be no more running away. </sentence><sentence id="3010">And you know what I said to him? " </sentence><sentence id="3011">Mr. Kaufmann, " Or, "Kaufmann, " Because prisoners and guards get sort of chummy there; they develop a relationship. " </sentence><sentence id="3012">Kaufmann, you want to know? </sentence><sentence id="3013">It is true you will accompany me tomorrow. </sentence><sentence id="3014">But whether I run away or not will not depend on you. </sentence><sentence id="3015">It will strictly depend on me." </sentence><sentence id="3016">That's what I told him. </sentence><sentence id="3017">The next day, we were taken to <span class="populated place">Toulouse</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3018">A friend of mine in the <span class="populated place">camp</span> befriended me in this month, you know. </sentence><sentence id="3019">His wife lived nearby. </sentence><sentence id="3020">She was going to come to the <span class="building">railroad station</span> to bring him some food. </sentence><sentence id="3021">They allowed that to happen, bring him some food for the trip. </sentence><sentence id="3022">She brought the two kids along, too. </sentence><sentence id="3023">I said, "When you wife comes there, will you please ask her to buy me a ticket for <span class="populated place">Toulouse</span>?" </sentence><sentence id="3024">He said, "What do you need a ticket 3! </sentence><sentence id="3025">Bretholz, tomorrow I accompany you (German). </sentence><sentence id="3026"> for?" </sentence><sentence id="3027">I said, "If I run away." </sentence><sentence id="3028">He said, "You are not going to run away." " </sentence><sentence id="3029">If I run away, I want to have a ticket." </sentence><sentence id="3030">Because on the <span class="building">stations</span>, out of the <span class="building">railroad stations</span>, in <span class="country">France</span>, you have to present your travel ticket, to see that you haven't traveled for free. </sentence><sentence id="3031">He said, "What are you doing?" </sentence><sentence id="3032">I said, "Can she do it?" </sentence><sentence id="3033">He said, "Sure, I'll tell her." </sentence><sentence id="3034">She bought a ticket. </sentence><sentence id="3035">I gave them the little money that I had. </sentence><sentence id="3036">He gave it to her. </sentence><sentence id="3037">She bought me the ticket. </sentence><sentence id="3038">When we arrived in the <span class="building">railroad station</span> of <span class="populated place">Toulouse</span>, and the <span class="spatial object">train</span> was standing -- this was a <span class="spatial object">passenger train</span> with those individual <span class="dlf">doors</span> leading to each <span class="interior space">compartment</span> -- when we were lined up there to be, to be prepared, ready to get into that <span class="spatial object">train</span>, I asked Kaufmann if 1 may go to the <span class="interior space">bathroom</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3039">He said, "Oh, come on. </sentence><sentence id="3040">You don't mean that." </sentence><sentence id="3041">He said, "You don't mean that. </sentence><sentence id="3042">What do you think, I am crazy?" </sentence><sentence id="3043">I said, "Well, I can't blame you. </sentence><sentence id="3044">Okay, fine. </sentence><sentence id="3045">I can't blame you. </sentence><sentence id="3046">I'll wait until I am in the <span class="spatial object">train</span>." </sentence><sentence id="3047">That was to placate him. </sentence><sentence id="3048">But when I saw, not a <span class="spatial object">cattle train</span>, but a <span class="spatial object">train</span> with <span class="dlf">doors</span> and <span class="dlf">windows</span>, I saw freedom. </sentence><sentence id="3049">But I placated him by saying, "Oh, I go in the <span class="spatial object">train</span>." </sentence><sentence id="3050">Now, these foolish guards, We have about eight guards for 14 people, seven guards. </sentence><sentence id="3051">Instead of going with us into the <span class="spatial object">train</span>, at least a couple of them, all seven were standing in front to see that we don't get out. </sentence><sentence id="3052">And nobody watching what was going on in the inside. </sentence><sentence id="3053">So I said to my friend -- the one whose wife had bought the ticket for me -- "I am ready to go. </sentence><sentence id="3054">Do you want to go with me?" </sentence><sentence id="3055">He said, "No, I can't. </sentence><sentence id="3056">My wife is there. </sentence><sentence id="3057">My children there. </sentence><sentence id="3058">I don't want to jeopardize my life. </sentence><sentence id="3059">This is -- okay." </sentence><sentence id="3060">I went to the <span class="dlf">back window</span>, inched to the <span class="dlf">back window</span>, and says, "You just stay there and see if Kaufmann and his cohorts are coming. </sentence><sentence id="3061">You just stay there. </sentence><sentence id="3062">When you see them come, then tell me." </sentence><sentence id="3063">I went to the <span class="dlf">back window</span>, lowered the <span class="dlf">back window</span>, dropped myself, lost a shoe in the process, one of those loafer- type sandals, that I put it back on. </sentence><sentence id="3064">My beret fell off my head. </sentence><sentence id="3065">I picked that up. </sentence><sentence id="3066">My <span class="spatial object">rucksack</span> I still had, that steady companion. </sentence><sentence id="3067">On the next <span class="dlf">track</span>, there was a <span class="spatial object">freight car</span> parked on the, on the <span class="dlf">track</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3068">In standing position, I went under that <span class="spatial object">freight car</span>, went to the <span class="dlf">subterranean exit</span> -- because I knew the <span class="building">train station</span> of <span class="populated place">Toulouse</span> -- walked up there. </sentence><sentence id="3069">I had a ticket, but I never needed it. </sentence><sentence id="3070">I showed that ticket into the <span class="interior space">luggage room</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3071">I went to the <span class="interior space">luggage room</span>, and I made out that I am looking for <span class="spatial object">luggage</span>. " </sentence><sentence id="3072">It just arrived." </sentence><sentence id="3073">I said, "Where?" </sentence><sentence id="3074">He said, "Well, you have to have a, a, coupon." </sentence><sentence id="3075">You have to have a ticket for your <span class="spatial object">luggage</span>." </sentence><sentence id="3076">I said, "Well, maybe my friend, my friend, maybe my friend has it, because we came together. </sentence><sentence id="3077">But here's my <span class="spatial object">train</span> ticket." </sentence><sentence id="3078">I showed him the <span class="spatial object">train</span> ticket. </sentence><sentence id="3079">He said, "That is okay." </sentence><sentence id="3080">I walked out from the <span class="interior space">luggage room</span> right into the <span class="dlf">street</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3081">There was no friend waiting for me. </sentence><sentence id="3082">But I said, "My friend has it." </sentence><sentence id="3083">I walked out there. </sentence><sentence id="3084">And I had friends in living in <span class="populated place">Blagnac</span> near <span class="populated place">Toulouse</span>, and I made my way to <span class="populated place">Blagnac</span> and showed up at Jacques Estrajch's place. </sentence><sentence id="3085">And guess what he told me? " </sentence><sentence id="3086">I got your card you are going to the <span class="building">Organization Todt</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3087">Did you get mine?" " </sentence><sentence id="3088">No, I didn't get yours." </sentence><sentence id="3089">He said, "I wrote to you." </sentence><sentence id="3090">Then I knew that I didn't get the mail. </sentence><sentence id="3091">And I also knew that as soon as I escaped in <span class="populated place">Toulouse</span>, the first place they will be looking at will be <span class="populated place">Blagnac</span>, because that's the nearest place to my escape. </sentence><sentence id="3092">He said, "Go <span class="interior space">upstairs</span> and take a rest and sleep. </sentence><sentence id="3093">If somebody comes, I'll tell him you are not here." </sentence><sentence id="3094">I slept two hours, I came down, and guess what he told me? " </sentence><sentence id="3095">The gendarmes were here to look for you, because they know that you had written to me. </sentence><sentence id="3096">And I told them yes, you wrote you are going to <span class="populated place">Organization Todt</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3097">But otherwise, I don't know anything." </sentence><sentence id="3098">He said, "Leo, you have got to leave. </sentence><sentence id="3099">They told me that if they find you here, they have got to take me also." </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3217">Q: Where did you go? </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3218">A: He took me to an elderly couple that was living there from, originally from <span class="populated place">Paris</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3219">They were living there in the <span class="region">southern zone</span> of <span class="country">France</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3220">They kept me for a couple of weeks. </sentence><sentence id="3221">Kept me for couple of weeks. </sentence><sentence id="3222">I wrote to my friend whose address I had memorized. </sentence><sentence id="3223">He sent me my false birth certificate, with an address where to go to and on the first of November, I joined an address in <span class="populated place">Saint-Vallier</span> on the <span class="env feature">Rhone River</span> south of <span class="populated place">Lyon</span> with the <span class="spatial object">French underground</span>, presenting myself with my birth certificate. </sentence><sentence id="3224">And from that moment on, I was Max Henri Lefevre. </sentence><sentence id="3225">I was four years younger. </sentence><sentence id="3226">I was born on the 25th of October in <span class="populated place">Saint Jouin-sur-Mer</span>. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="3236">I knew the name of my father and mother, and legalized, regularized my situation with French ID papers under the name of Max Henri Lefevre. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3238">Q: All right. </sentence><sentence id="3239">Leo, thank you very much. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3242">A: You are out of breath, and so am I. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3244">Q: Yes, that is quite a story. </sentence><sentence id="3245">And we are done. </sentence><sentence id="3246">And it's only half of it. </sentence><sentence id="3247">Now I want the whole other half in the <span class="interior space">underground</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3248">What we are going to have to do is to do that. </sentence><sentence id="3249">If you did not have the appointment now, I would go for another hour. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3256">A: That is all I do in the <span class="interior space">underground</span>. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3258">Q: Yes, and I want to do that. </sentence><sentence id="3259">Let us talk. </sentence><sentence id="3260">Would you mind coming back? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3264">A: I can do that. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3266">Q: Because all that in the <span class="interior space">underground</span> is important. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="3268"> Conclusion of July 31, 1989 interview September 27, 1989 TECHNICAL CONVERSATION Tape #4 </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3270">Q: Let's take it back. </sentence><sentence id="3271">You had arrived and you were being placed with an elderly couple. </sentence><sentence id="3272">Tell us where you are, and tell me something about that. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3276">A: This is a <span class="populated place">village</span> called <span class="populated place">Blagnac</span> -- B-L-A-G-N-A-C -- in the area of <span class="populated place">Toulouse</span>, one of the major <span class="populated place">cities</span> in the south of <span class="country">France</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3277">That's the <span class="populated place">town</span> I had reached in that <span class="spatial object">convoy</span> that I escaped from on that afternoon. </sentence><sentence id="3278">It was from a standing <span class="spatial object">train</span> in the <span class="building">train station</span> of <span class="populated place">Toulouse</span>, as I explained previously. </sentence><sentence id="3279">So I am in <span class="populated place">Blagnac</span>; my friend, Jacques Estrajch, takes me to this elderly couple, just con-- suggesting, or hoping that they would keep me just for a week or two until I can make arrangements for the future where to go. </sentence><sentence id="3280">And they were very amenable, friendly. </sentence><sentence id="3281">I spent two weeks with them. </sentence><sentence id="3282">The evening hours filled with -- the time of the evening hours was filled with listening to <span class="building">Radio London</span>, was broadcasting the news from the <span class="region">front</span>, <span class="region">war fronts</span>, and all other news that pertained to the French Resistance and the war going on. </sentence><sentence id="3283">And I contacted the friend with whom I had escaped in November of 1942. </sentence><sentence id="3284">I had memorized his address and sent him the information where I was now located. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3294">Q: How did you do that? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3296">A: Meaning what? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3298">Q: Meaning, can one simply post a letter and expect it to get to its destination? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3300">A: In <span class="country">France</span>, you could just post a letter. </sentence><sentence id="3301">In <span class="region">Southern France</span>, that was in the, what you call <span class="region">Vichy Zone</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3302">If we're writing to the <span class="region">northern zone</span>, past the <span class="dlf">demarcation line</span>, there were special post cards that were printed in the <span class="building">post office</span>, preprinted with, "I am well. </sentence><sentence id="3303">Please do this." </sentence><sentence id="3304">This was almost like a form letter. </sentence><sentence id="3305">Between the occupied and the <span class="region">Vichy Zone</span>, there was this controlled correspondence. </sentence><sentence id="3306">But within the <span class="region">Vichy Zone</span>, yes, they had the Vichy stamps and the Petain stamps. </sentence><sentence id="3307">These were not the same that were used in <span class="region">northern France</span>, in the <span class="region">occupied zone</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3308">And I thus wrote to my friend that I was at this address in <span class="populated place">Blagnac</span>, and a week or so later, I received in the mail a birth certificate which was made out to the name of Max Henri Lefevre: I was born in October of 1925, four years younger than what I was really was; and my mother's name so and so; and my father's name. </sentence><sentence id="3309">And I had to memorize all of this. </sentence><sentence id="3310">And with that birth certificate, my friend, when he sent me this, sent me also a instructions as to where to go. </sentence><sentence id="3311">His brother had been -- had joined that particular group that he was sending me to, sometime earlier. </sentence><sentence id="3312">And this was a, an underground group in the area of -- south of <span class="populated place">Lyon</span>, in <span class="populated place">Saint-Vallier</span> in the <span class="region">Department of Dreme</span>, south of <span class="populated place">Lyon</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3313">A little <span class="populated place">town</span> on the <span class="env feature">Rhone river</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3314">And I joined with the <span class="interior space">underground</span> there in November of 1943. </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3315">Q: Would you describe how you got there and what the group was like? </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3316">A: The group was composed of a microcosm of, of people who were resisting the Germans or the fascist regimes. </sentence><sentence id="3317">There were some people that were still hold-outs from the Spanish Civil War that had come to <span class="country">France</span> -- this was seven, eight -- or six or so years later -- and had joined. </sentence><sentence id="3318">There were a couple of German deserters. </sentence><sentence id="3319">There was -- were one or two of Russians, Georgian Russians or Russian Georgians, who, who had been incorporated into the German army after the Germans entered <span class="country">Russia</span>, took them captive. </sentence><sentence id="3320">They incorporated Ukrainians and other nationals from <span class="country">Russia</span> into their <span class="building">armed forces</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3321">So these people may have been hurt or may have been wounded and sent to <span class="country">France</span> for recuperation. </sentence><sentence id="3322">A lot of German soldiers came to <span class="region">northern France</span> to recuperate or ride out their injuries in some way. </sentence><sentence id="3323">Well, a couple of them then ran away and joined with the <span class="spatial object">French underground</span> because they were really against the Germans. </sentence><sentence id="3324">There were some people from <span class="region">Alsace-Lorraine</span>, who traditionally were either violently anti-German or very much with the Germans from their nationalistic point of view. </sentence><sentence id="3325">But there were many <span class="populated place">Alsace-Lorraine</span> citizens who were deeply nationalistic French. </sentence><sentence id="3326">These people resisted the Germans just as well. </sentence><sentence id="3327">And there were a few of those in the -- in that group, and a lot of Jews. </sentence><sentence id="3328">What was that group? </sentence><sentence id="3329">It was really a group called the, the Vichy French had a youth movement which was called Companion de France. </sentence><sentence id="3330">These people were prepared -- young people from age 17 on -- were doing crafts and, and trades. </sentence><sentence id="3331">Learning crafts and trades, like masonry and carpentry and plumbing and <span class="building">building</span>, and that sort of thing, to prepare them for service in <span class="country">Germany</span> for the new order, to be incorporated into the new order. </sentence><sentence id="3332">This was a Petain youth movement called Companion de France. </sentence><sentence id="3333">Their uniforms were blue. </sentence><sentence id="3334">Their berets were blue. </sentence><sentence id="3335">And they sang the Petain nationalistic songs in training. </sentence><sentence id="3336">This group took on the semblance of a <span class="populated place">Companion de France camp</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3337">When we -- when I presented myself to the camp chief -- Chief of Camp, "Chief de Camp," Maurice Bardin -- B-A-R-D-I-N -- I showed him a note that I had from my friend, showed him the birth certificate, he did not ask me any questions. </sentence><sentence id="3338">He says, "Welcome to our <span class="populated place">camp</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3339">We will call you "Henri." </sentence><sentence id="3340">That's what we will call you." </sentence><sentence id="3341">And they made out the ID for us, and I was accepted as one of the, of the group. </sentence><sentence id="3342">This group was mainly engaged in sending messages. </sentence><sentence id="3343">Messages from the <span class="env feature">mountains</span> of <span class="region">Savoy</span> to <span class="populated place">Lyon</span>, or sending emissaries up to <span class="populated place">Lyon</span> with certain instructions as to what to do when the next <span class="spatial object">German column</span> comes by. </sentence><sentence id="3344">But on the surface, ostensibly, we were learning carpentry and agriculture. </sentence><sentence id="3345">And in the morning, we would get up at 4:30 and it was cold. </sentence><sentence id="3346">And I have a picture here shows the snows. </sentence><sentence id="3347">And we would take cold <span class="interior space">showers</span>, because there was no warm water. </sentence><sentence id="3348">And after that we would have breakfast. </sentence><sentence id="3349">But before the cold <span class="interior space">shower</span>, we would run a mile or two. </sentence><sentence id="3350">All part of the youth movement -- exercise before we start the day working. </sentence><sentence id="3351">But there were <span class="building">carpentry shops</span> and all kinds of other. </sentence><sentence id="3352">So if someone would come in and observe the <span class="populated place">camp</span>, it was a <span class="populated place">camp</span> of Companion de France. </sentence><sentence id="3353">And when I circulated, I had the Companion de France uniform and ID, so that I could take a <span class="spatial object">train</span> anywhere and also not have to pay with my ID, because I was part of the Vichy government Companion de France. </sentence><sentence id="3354">But 80 percent of us were Jewish, hiding out; but this was a cover, and this facilitated our movements. </sentence><sentence id="3355">It was not until sometime the end of the year -- December, the beginning of January - -that overnight we had to clear out the <span class="building">facility</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3356">The Mayor of <span class="populated place">Saint-Vallier</span> had notified us that word has come from the French Milice -- the militia, the <span class="region">Vichy France</span> collaborators with the Germans; and they were vicious, they were probably as much, if not more, vicious than the Germans -- that they will come for an inspection of the <span class="populated place">camp</span>, of the Companion <span class="populated place">camp</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3357">Evidently word had come out, or the rumor had been circulating, that there is something fishy going on there. </sentence><sentence id="3358">They wanted to have a firsthand view. </sentence><sentence id="3359">Well, when they came later, 24 hours later, the <span class="populated place">camp</span> was empty. </sentence><sentence id="3360">We received our walking papers. </sentence><sentence id="3361">I have them here. </sentence><sentence id="3362">The release papers from the <span class="populated place">camp</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3363">We got tickets to go into various directions. </sentence><sentence id="3364">I and a couple of other people was assigned to <span class="populated place">Chalus</span>, near <span class="populated place">Limoges</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3365">And we took a <span class="spatial object">train</span> to <span class="populated place">Chalus</span>, and we arrived in <span class="populated place">Chalus</span> and joined another underground movement there. </sentence><sentence id="3366">And in <span class="populated place">Chalus</span>, in connection with the Jewish hiding out community in <span class="populated place">Limoges</span>, we were engaged in producing false identification cards and to help children go get to the <span class="dlf">border</span> so that they should be able to cross into <span class="country">Switzerland</span> to perhaps <span class="country">Spain</span> and further on to <span class="country">Portugal</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3367">This was our main endeavor, except also putting up <span class="dlf">road blocks</span> and doing communication between the various underground groups in the <span class="region">area</span>. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3420">Q: Was there -- with the first group and also with the second, you talk about extensive Jewish participation, but it's also mixed clearly with non-Jews. </sentence><sentence id="3421">They obviously knew you were Jewish. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3424">A: It was never spelled out. </sentence><sentence id="3425">It was never -- it was never spelled out, the original. </sentence><sentence id="3426">In <span class="populated place">Limoges</span> it was, because there I joined a group which was called "A.J." or Armee Juive." </sentence><sentence id="3427">So there, the majority belonging were Zionist-oriented Jewish, although there were non-Jews who also worked with us. </sentence><sentence id="3428">And the Rabbi of <span class="populated place">Limoges</span>, Abraham Deutsch, he was from <span class="populated place">Strasbourg</span> originally. </sentence><sentence id="3429">He in his <span class="building">office</span> was a great liaison center for all these operations, and of course, the French authorities were not aware of it at the time. </sentence><sentence id="3430">And in <span class="populated place">Limoges</span>, I lived with a lady, Madame Bergot, who was hiding me and renting me an <span class="interior space">attic</span> together with my friend, Eugene Bass, who was shot on the 10th of June, 1944. </sentence><sentence id="3431">And we sometime had in this <span class="interior space">attic room</span> 12 or 15 or 20 young people staying over night, just squatting on the <span class="interior space">floor</span>, lying down on the <span class="interior space">floor</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3432">There was only one big <span class="spatial object">bed</span>, and sometimes we laid across. </sentence><sentence id="3433">We were lying across three, four, five people that came to <span class="populated place">Limoges</span> just to spend the night and go on to other places. </sentence><sentence id="3434">And was -- and Madame Bergot knew exactly who we were, but she is probably one of the real Righteous Christians. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3446">Q: Tell me about her. </sentence><sentence id="3447">She sounds very special. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="3450"> *>> Jewish Army (French). </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3451">A: <span class="building">Madame Margaret</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3452">Margaret -- Marguerite Bergot was an elderly woman in her middle to late 60s, who in the first World War after only having been married a few months, became a war widow. </sentence><sentence id="3453">She was a widow at 21 or 22. </sentence><sentence id="3454">She never remarried, but she always did things for people. </sentence><sentence id="3455">A gray-haired lady, whom I went to visit in 1970, when my family and I went -- no, I am sorry. </sentence><sentence id="3456">In 1954, when for the first time I went back with my wife to visit <span class="country">France</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3457">We went to visit <span class="building">Madam Bergot</span>, and later -- she was delighted to receive us and made us lunch. </sentence><sentence id="3458">And later, when my son was born, whose initials -- his name is Myron -- his initials are M.B., she made sure that she sent him a silver spoon from her set of flatware that were engraved with her initials -- Marguerite Bergot, "M.B." </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3467">Q: Lovely. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3469">A: She was a good lady. </sentence><sentence id="3470">She kept a lot of Resistance people in her <span class="interior space">attic</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3471">She helped out wherever she could. </sentence><sentence id="3472">She made sure we had ration cards for those who couldn't get them. </sentence><sentence id="3473">I could, because I was living under the name of Lefevre. </sentence><sentence id="3474">So I got my ration cards legally and legitimately. </sentence><sentence id="3475">But there were some of them who did not have false papers. </sentence><sentence id="3476">They were hiding out, and therefore could not go to <span class="building">city hall</span> and get their ration cards. </sentence><sentence id="3477">But Madame Bergot made sure they had either ration cards or bread -- either ration cards or coffee, or, or clothing like handkerchiefs, socks, underwear. </sentence><sentence id="3478">That was all rationed. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3489">Q: Where did she get them? </sentence><sentence id="3490">How did she get them? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3493">A: Madame Bergot got them! </sentence><sentence id="3494">She may have known somebody at <span class="building">city hall</span> that knew her. </sentence><sentence id="3495">She would never let on as to where, but there they were. </sentence><sentence id="3496">When we went there in 1954, in that just few hours, my wife grew very fond of her, because you could see in that lady a -- what you might call in Jewish "eshet khayil"* -- a woman of valor. </sentence><sentence id="3497">And that she was. </sentence><sentence id="3498">A beautiful person from the point of your heart and soul, and reaching out and helping. </sentence><sentence id="3499">That was <span class="building">Madam Bergot</span> in <span class="populated place">Limoges</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3500">And, of course, I first went to <span class="populated place">Chalus</span>, as I said, but later, I relocated to <span class="populated place">Limoges</span>, which was only about 10 or 15 -- 10 miles or so, or 10 kilometers from <span class="populated place">Chalus</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3501">Although I went back quite often to <span class="populated place">Chalus</span> to see friends and distant relatives there, I really spent my time in <span class="populated place">Limoges</span> in 1933 into 19 -- I mean the end of "33, December -- from the end of "43 or beginning of "44, until the end of the war, in <span class="populated place">Limoges</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3502">In May of 1944, I was -- I fell ill with a strangulation hernia. </sentence><sentence id="3503">You may recall in the earlier part of the interview that in <span class="populated place">Antwerp</span>, I was already in the <span class="building">hospital</span> to be operated on in 1940, and that never came to pass. </sentence><sentence id="3504">But finally, with all my escapades and all that, the, the hernia just -- a hernia doesn't heal by itself, and the hand-made <span class="spatial object">truss</span> that I had just didn't do the job anymore. </sentence><sentence id="3505">So one day - - one evening, walking through a <span class="dlf">park</span> on my way to actually an <span class="building">orphanage</span> to deliver some documents or papers, I -- or a message -- I just was caught by one of these attacks and lay down on a <span class="spatial object">park bench</span> and started throwing up violently until there was nothing left but bile. </sentence><sentence id="3506">And it so happens that a woman walked by in a nurse's <span class="building">hospital</span> sister-type uniform, Red 3 Woman of valor (Hebrew). </sentence><sentence id="3507"> Cross-type uniform. </sentence><sentence id="3508">And she came over and wanted to know what it was. </sentence><sentence id="3509">Perhaps she thought I had been drinking. " </sentence><sentence id="3510">You don't feel so good." -- " </sentence><sentence id="3511">Vous ne sentez pas bien." </sentence><sentence id="3512">I said, "Je sais ce que c'cest." -- " </sentence><sentence id="3513">I know what it is. </sentence><sentence id="3514">This is a hernia, and I can't push it back. </sentence><sentence id="3515">Normally you can try." </sentence><sentence id="3516">She said, "Well, what you need is a <span class="building">hospital</span>." </sentence><sentence id="3517">And I said, "I don't think I can do that." </sentence><sentence id="3518">Because you go to the <span class="building">hospital</span>, you being recognized as circumcised. </sentence><sentence id="3519">I wasn't going to take chances. </sentence><sentence id="3520">She says, "But at this point..." And she tries to touch my stomach; there was this tenderness and the pain with it. </sentence><sentence id="3521">She says, "This is an emergency!" </sentence><sentence id="3522">And she called the <span class="spatial object">ambulance</span>, and I was taken to the <span class="building">hospital</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3523">And I cannot remember them actually taking my clothes off. </sentence><sentence id="3524">That's how fast they put anesthesia on me. </sentence><sentence id="3525">Already starting in the <span class="spatial object">ambulance</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3526">And then when I got in the <span class="spatial object">operating table</span>, I was sort of half away already. </sentence><sentence id="3527">And the next thing I knew was waking up the next morning in the <span class="spatial object">hospital bed</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3528">And a very nice, young religious sister -- it was a <span class="building">Catholic hospital</span> by the name of Saint Joan of Arc -- bending over me and whispering in my ear after she had put a hot brick to my feet. </sentence><sentence id="3529">And I had a <span class="dlf">drain</span> in my stomach, in my belly, because it had begun to almost, you know, to be infected. </sentence><sentence id="3530">You know, there is the situation with the strangulation hernia creates these emergency conditions. </sentence><sentence id="3531">Whispering into my ear, "I am in charge of this <span class="interior space">ward</span>, so therefore you have nothing to fear." </sentence><sentence id="3532">Later, when I needed my documents to make a claim with the German government for certain restitutions and disability-type compensation, I had to gather papers as to all these events. </sentence><sentence id="3533">So I wrote to the <span class="building">hospital</span> to send me a copy of, of what I had undergone, what operation, just attesting to it. </sentence><sentence id="3534">Well, in the letter I wrote to them, "And if Sister Joan of Arc is still with you, please tell her that I will never forget her kind words nor her cheerful whistle when she walked by the <span class="spatial object">bed</span>." </sentence><sentence id="3535">She was always whistling a tune. </sentence><sentence id="3536">A very young, attractive cheerful person. </sentence><sentence id="3537">And they wrote back to me that she is in <span class="populated place">Normandy</span>, did they write? </sentence><sentence id="3538">Or <span class="region">Brittany</span>? </sentence><sentence id="3539">I don't recall. </sentence><sentence id="3540">And if the chance will present itself, they will send her my regards and tell her how I, how I remember her. </sentence><sentence id="3541">I wonder where she is today. </sentence><sentence id="3542">Really. </sentence><sentence id="3543">So there is a lot of reminiscences, and there are also nice bright moments in that period of darkness. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3595">Q: Let's pull it back. </sentence><sentence id="3596">You were released from the <span class="building">hospital</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3597">I would like you to describe -- you went back to your Resistance work. </sentence><sentence id="3598">Can you describe in detail what it meant to have to take letters from one place to another? </sentence><sentence id="3599">What were the kinds of risks that you ran? </sentence><sentence id="3600">What kind of messages did you bring? </sentence><sentence id="3601">Where did you travel, and who did you communicate with? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3609">A: I went to the <span class="building">hospital</span> on May the 8th, and I was released on the May 25th. </sentence><sentence id="3610">That was just several days before the landing. </sentence><sentence id="3611">The landing took place in June -- on June the 6th, 1944. </sentence><sentence id="3612">In my little diary that I also have, I wrote, sometime before my release from the <span class="building">hospital</span>, "I hope I will be released before the <span class="dlf">landing</span>." </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3617">Q: How did you know about the <span class="dlf">landing</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3618">A: Because, sometime in April or early May, we had already had in the <span class="interior space">underground</span>, through the <span class="building">Radio London</span>, messages that indicated that sometime in June, in the first couple of weeks of June, there will be major events happening, which at this time could only mean a debarkation. </sentence><sentence id="3619">Where it would happen, we did not know. </sentence><sentence id="3620">But we knew it was going to happen. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="3624">I did not feel that I would like to be confined when that happens, because there'll be a lot of turmoil out there. </sentence><sentence id="3625">There'll be a lot to do, a lot to see, a lot to be part of; and that was always my urge, to be part of something. </sentence><sentence id="3626">So that between that time and the actual <span class="dlf">landing</span>, there was very little time to do whatever we had to do. </sentence><sentence id="3627">However, how did we feel, coming to your question about transporting. </sentence><sentence id="3628">First of all, we had to produce the cards. </sentence><sentence id="3629">We made them with false stamps and seals. </sentence><sentence id="3630">And we, we were counterfeiters, you see! </sentence><sentence id="3631">That's what we were -- just like when I escaped from that <span class="spatial object">train</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3632">The emergency was there, but I did it almost like a natural thing; because the urge was to be free. </sentence><sentence id="3633">So I did it, naturally, with all the trepidations involved. </sentence><sentence id="3634">But there were also trepidations in transporting papers or doing communication. </sentence><sentence id="3635">But at the time when we did it, the danger was not that apparent to us. </sentence><sentence id="3636">It's in hindsight, as you look: "What did we do? </sentence><sentence id="3637">My God, we were really young and...and dumb!" </sentence><sentence id="3638">That sort of thing. </sentence><sentence id="3639">But when we did it, while we did it, it did not occur to us that it was in any way endangering us. </sentence><sentence id="3640">Yes, anybody was endangered who did not have proper papers. </sentence><sentence id="3641">You could go into a <span class="building">restaurant</span> as a French citizen. </sentence><sentence id="3642">You could go into a <span class="building">restaurant</span> to have a meal and the Milice(tm) would come in and, like random, make, make inspections or certain searches. </sentence><sentence id="3643">Well, if you were a Frenchman and you didn't have your IDs on you on that day and you were not involved in Resistance and you were not Jewish, you were a French farmer come to <span class="populated place">town</span>, but you didn't have your -- any kind of ID on you; you forgot it; you neglected to take it along. </sentence><sentence id="3644">Even that would endanger you, because everybody had to have an ID. </sentence><sentence id="3645">So we were just part of a whole system of, of, of hazards and pitfalls and problems. </sentence><sentence id="3646">But we did not consider our activity as something that would be any more dangerous than anybody else living under that regime. </sentence><sentence id="3647">Although we were exposed a little more. </sentence><sentence id="3648">We would have been exposed a little more to the punishment, if they had found us with the cards on us, because that could mean instant death, which happened to my friend, Eugene Bass, on the 10th of June 1944. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3674">Q: What happened to him? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3676">A: That was on the same day as <span class="populated place">Oradour</span> was burned. </sentence><sentence id="3677">I had been asked or instructed to go to <span class="populated place">Oradour</span> on that Saturday to deliver some cards, and he had been instructed to go into another <span class="populated place">town</span> that was a little further than <span class="populated place">Saint-Junien</span>, another <span class="populated place">town</span> nearby. </sentence><sentence id="3678">The <span class="spatial object">German Column</span> advanced into that <span class="region">area</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3679">Eugene had de-- before he had delivered the cards had decided, "Let me go and visit my mother in <span class="populated place">Saint-Junien</span>." </sentence><sentence id="3680">She lived there in hiding. </sentence><sentence id="3681">He hadn't seen her in a couple of weeks or a couple of months, or whatever. </sentence><sentence id="3682">He's the fellow that boarded with me. </sentence><sentence id="3683">Sort of blondish red hair, curly-haired fellow. </sentence><sentence id="3684">Eugene Bass. </sentence><sentence id="3685">He was from <span class="region">Alsace-Lorraine</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3686">He went on the nom de guerre, the war name, <span class="building">Bastinet</span> -- B-A-S-T-I-N-E- * Militia (French). </sentence><sentence id="3687"> T. He had gone to visit his mother in <span class="populated place">Saint-Junien</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3688">He arrived in <span class="populated place">Saint-Junien</span> rather than go into <span class="populated place">town</span> first to deliver the <span class="spatial object">cards</span>, which was a little further. </sentence><sentence id="3689">Got off the <span class="spatial object">train</span>, through the <span class="interior space">station lobby</span>, to the <span class="dlf">front door</span> of the <span class="building">railroad station</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3690">And the advance column of <span class="populated place">Das Reich</span>, the Germans, were there already. </sentence><sentence id="3691">And everybody walking out was inspected. </sentence><sentence id="3692">And he had a <span class="spatial object">rucksack</span>; and in the <span class="spatial object">rucksack</span>, he had the ID cards. </sentence><sentence id="3693">Shot in the head! </sentence><sentence id="3694">His name is listed in the book deportations under those summarily executed. </sentence><sentence id="3695">Eugene Bass, his name is in there. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3716">Q: How did you find out what happened to him? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3718">A: He didn't come <span class="building">home</span> that night. </sentence><sentence id="3719">He did not come <span class="building">home</span> that night. </sentence><sentence id="3720">So a few days later we contacted, a friend and I, his mother. </sentence><sentence id="3721">And she had found out from someone, some witness, that he had been killed. </sentence><sentence id="3722">And it was through the mother that we found out that <span class="populated place">Eugene</span> had been killed. </sentence><sentence id="3723">And it would have happened to me, perhaps, and others in the <span class="spatial object">train</span> that we were in on that same day, on the 10th of June, 1944, going towards <span class="populated place">Oradour-sur-Glane</span> from <span class="populated place">Limoges</span>, when we saw the <span class="spatial object">German column</span>, Das Reich -- or one part of the, part of the rear unit. </sentence><sentence id="3724">Because the <span class="spatial object">advance unit</span> had already been into <span class="populated place">Saint-Junien</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3725">And when we saw parallel to the <span class="dlf">railroad track</span> the <span class="dlf">country road</span> where the German motorized the <span class="spatial object">motorcycles</span> and the <span class="spatial object">half-tracks</span> were heading into the direction that we were heading, rolling up all that dust, so some of us decided, "If the Germans are going into this direction, we certainly do not want to go into the same direction." </sentence><sentence id="3726">So before we got into <span class="populated place">Oradour</span>, there was another halt, another <span class="building">station</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3727">There was an electric <span class="spatial object">commuter train</span> between <span class="populated place">Saint-Junien</span> and <span class="populated place">Limoges</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3728">So the <span class="building">station</span> before -- there were a couple of halts, stops, before we got off the <span class="spatial object">train</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3729">But the report on <span class="populated place">Oradour</span> that I have on that particular sheet, the write up, says that anyone with a ticket to <span class="populated place">Oradour</span> that got off that <span class="building">railroad station</span> that particular morning was taken off and immediately machine-gunned -- just like the other 900 some citizens of <span class="populated place">Oradour</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3730">The men. </sentence><sentence id="3731">The women and the children were taken to the <span class="building">church</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3732">They were told they were being photographed. </sentence><sentence id="3733">They put bales of hay and straw around the <span class="building">church</span> and put gasoline over it and destroyed the <span class="building">church</span>, burned it down with the women and children in it. </sentence><sentence id="3734">The moans and the cries filled the <span class="env feature">air</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3735">A couple of weeks later, we went back to <span class="populated place">Oradour</span> to view the scene. </sentence><sentence id="3736">And we stood there crying, with the tears. </sentence><sentence id="3737"><span class="spatial object">Tables</span> had been set up with the remains of mementos: <span class="spatial object">baby carriages</span>, buckles, shoes, baby dolls, toys that the kids had taken with them. </sentence><sentence id="3738">Oradour has been built up later -- about a quarter of a mile, a half a mile further away, a new little <span class="populated place">town</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3739">But the original area of <span class="populated place">Oradour</span> is today still a <span class="building">shrine</span> to be visited, to reminisce and to cry. </sentence><sentence id="3740">Because it was really a stroke of luck that we even noticed that <span class="spatial object">column</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3741">We would have gone in there. </sentence><sentence id="3742">The mayor of <span class="populated place">Oradour</span> at that time, on this particular moment, was arrested, put on a <span class="spatial object">table</span> and in front of his two sons, his two legs were sawed off. </sentence><sentence id="3743">Reported right in the, in the, in the <span class="spatial object">sheet</span> that I have here. </sentence><sentence id="3744">The sons, before that happened to their father said, "Please, take us! </sentence><sentence id="3745">Do to us what you want to do, but not to our father!" </sentence><sentence id="3746">They cut off his legs, and they shot the sons, too. </sentence><sentence id="3747">There was just a handful of people surviving in <span class="populated place">Oradour</span> out of 900-some people. </sentence><sentence id="3748">There could have been many more, because those who were hiding out without papers, that will never be known. </sentence><sentence id="3749">There were people hiding out. </sentence><sentence id="3750">A lot of Jewish people. </sentence><sentence id="3751">And this is exactly the place where we took some of those cards to. </sentence><sentence id="3752">So that they should not be in hiding continually, and also be able to move a little freer, travel here or there. </sentence><sentence id="3753">But at that particular time, all that was already moot because the landing had taken place, a lot of what you might call, in the Genesis terms, "tohoo va-vohoo"(r)(r) happened -- a lot of tumult. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3790">Q: Let's back up. </sentence><sentence id="3791">I don't want to get to the tumult just yet. </sentence><sentence id="3792">I would like to stay with <span class="building">Oradour</span> for a minute. </sentence><sentence id="3793">Did you meet any of the survivors? </sentence><sentence id="3794">You had come so close, you were two <span class="building">stations</span> away. </sentence><sentence id="3795">You came after it had been burned. </sentence><sentence id="3796">Did you meet anyone? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3804">A: No. </sentence><sentence id="3805">I had a call here when I wrote about this. </sentence><sentence id="3806">I wrote a piece to the Sun paper, recalling the event of <span class="populated place">Oradour</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3807">It was in 1984, 40 years after the event, and I had a lady call me at <span class="building">home</span> who told me that at one time she and her family had lived in <span class="populated place">Oradour</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3808">And when she read this she had to get in touch with me. </sentence><sentence id="3809">But they had left <span class="populated place">Oradour</span> before the <span class="populated place">town</span> had been devastated. </sentence><sentence id="3810">In fact, it was devastated in error. </sentence><sentence id="3811">In the same <span class="region">area</span>, there are two little <span class="populated place">towns</span> <span class="populated place">Oradour</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3812">One is called <span class="dlf">Oradour-sur-Glane</span>, on the <span class="env feature">River Glane</span>, near <span class="populated place">Limoges</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3813">Another one, several miles away, not that great a distance, perhaps 15 kilometers or something like that. </sentence><sentence id="3814">I don't quite have the distance in proportion. </sentence><sentence id="3815">That was called <span class="populated place">Oradour-sur-Vayres</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3816"><span class="populated place">Oradour- sur-Vayres</span> had a group of Resistance fighters. </sentence><sentence id="3817"><span class="populated place">Oradour-sur-Glane</span> had no Resistance fighters. </sentence><sentence id="3818">They had people in hiding, yes. </sentence><sentence id="3819">They had no <span class="spatial object">arms caches</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3820"><span class="building">Oradour-sur-Vayres</span> did. </sentence><sentence id="3821">The German high command, going towards the <span class="dlf">front lines</span>, coming from <span class="populated place">Toulouse</span>, the <span class="region">Division Das Reich</span> -- and by the way, they did a lot of damage in the <span class="populated place">town</span> called <span class="populated place">Brive-la- Gaillarde</span>, where they hung 90-some men from <span class="spatial object">butcher hooks</span> because of resistance activities. </sentence><sentence id="3822">And their families had to walk, walk by to view that. </sentence><sentence id="3823">That is in the <span class="building">Department of Correze</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3824"><span class="populated place">Limoges</span> was, and, and <span class="populated place">Oradour</span> was, in the <span class="region">Department of Haute-Vienne</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3825">The <span class="region">German Division</span> <span class="populated place">Das Reich</span> had been informed, by the Milice or by some of their collaborators, that <span class="populated place">Oradour-sur-Vayres</span> had a Resistance group, an <span class="spatial object">arms cache</span> there, and that they might hinder their progress towards the <span class="dlf">front lines</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3826">The advance column of <span class="building">Das Reich</span> went there to clean out that nest of resistors, so that the main <span class="spatial object">columns</span> would then have easy travel. </sentence><sentence id="3827">But all they knew was <span class="populated place">Oradour</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3828">They looked at the map, and they saw "Oradour" on the main <span class="dlf">road</span> between <span class="populated place">Limoges</span> and <span class="populated place">Angouleme</span> or wherever, and picked <span class="populated place">Oradour-sur- Glane</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3829">And the Mayor said, "We have no resistance here. </sentence><sentence id="3830">You can search the <span class="populated place">village</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3831">You can search everywhere. </sentence><sentence id="3832">I give you my personal guarantee with my life." </sentence><sentence id="3833">And it was by mistake that <span class="populated place">Oradour-sur-Glane</span> became the victim. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3864">Q: I want to take it back to events in which you were involved, okay, in which you know personally. </sentence><sentence id="3865">Let's go back to D-Day, June 6, 1944. </sentence><sentence id="3866">Where were you? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="3870"> *> Chaos, disorder (Hebrew). </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3871">A: I was in <span class="populated place">Limoges</span>, doing my daily whatever it is, communication or whatever work I did. </sentence><sentence id="3872">And it was a day of euphoria. </sentence><sentence id="3873">The papers reported it, and people were standing in front of the <span class="building">newspaper buildings</span> to read the bulletins. </sentence><sentence id="3874">And the Germans were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. </sentence><sentence id="3875">Chalus had already been liberated by the Resistance; <span class="populated place">Limoges</span> not yet, because <span class="populated place">Limoges</span> had a main <span class="building">Gestapo headquarters</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3876"><span class="populated place">Chalus</span> was a little <span class="populated place">town</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3877">I also have a little sheet here that shows the liberation of <span class="populated place">Chalus</span>, and the appeal that was made by the, by the Resistance forces to keep calm and to go on about your daily lives as usual. </sentence><sentence id="3878">You see, there were two types of Resistance forces in <span class="country">France</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3879">One was the FTPF.This was called Franc-Tireurs Partisans Francaises.*deg That was like a guerilla movement. </sentence><sentence id="3880">And the other was called <span class="building">FFI</span>, Force Francais de I'Interieur -- French Forces of the Interior. </sentence><sentence id="3881">They were under the command of the exiled French government -- De Gaulle, in <span class="populated place">London</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3882">And there was conflict between the two groups. </sentence><sentence id="3883">The ones that listened to De Gaulle were the ones that went by the rules, when De Gaulle and the French exiled government would give instructions: "Do not attack such and such a <span class="building">building</span>..." Because that <span class="building">building</span> happened to be English property. </sentence><sentence id="3884">So the <span class="building">FTPF</span> would say: "Who cares? </sentence><sentence id="3885">But in that <span class="building">building</span> there is armament produced that goes to the Germans." </sentence><sentence id="3886">So there was this conflict. </sentence><sentence id="3887">The <span class="building">FTPF</span> was also a more radical-type movement than the <span class="building">FFI</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3888">The <span class="building">FTPF</span>, for instance, had some of the Spanish Civil War refugees. </sentence><sentence id="3889">They had a communist-leaning group. </sentence><sentence id="3890">They had more of the political activistic -- activist-type people who were fighting fascism wherever they can fight fascism, wherever they can find it. </sentence><sentence id="3891">The <span class="building">FFI</span> was picking their targets and was going by the -- what might be called "the rules." </sentence><sentence id="3892">But in a unruly times, rules sometimes don't achieve anything, you see. </sentence><sentence id="3893">So this was the thing. </sentence><sentence id="3894">But we were in the <span class="dlf">streets</span>, hoping that soon we will have liberation established in <span class="populated place">Limoges</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3895">And it happened not too long afterwards, you see. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3922">Q: Which of the two partisan groups were you allied with? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3924">A: The <span class="building">A.J.</span> was independent, actually. </sentence><sentence id="3925">But we were under the orders of the <span class="building">FTPF</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3926">Yes, we were under the orders of the Franc-Tireurs Partisans. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3930">Q: How were relations between the two groups? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3932">A: They were very cordial. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3934">Q: They were. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3936">A: It was a common cause. </sentence><sentence id="3937">It is interesting that a common danger, how people's actions congeal, how a common danger becomes also a common denominator and an equalizer. </sentence><sentence id="3938">I mean, you take the <span class="populated place">London</span> Blitz, just to divert for a minute -- </sentence></p><p><sentence id="3939"> %6 Free-Shooting French Partisans (French). </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3940">Q: Let's not. </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3941">A: Ok. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3943">Q: I really don't want to get into that. </sentence><sentence id="3944">Can we pull it back? </sentence><sentence id="3945">Was there any feeling of antisemitism? </sentence><sentence id="3946">Did the A.J. feel as if the <span class="building">FTPF</span> looked down on them or treated them less well because it was a Jewish group? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3951">A: I would never dismiss that aspect of a, of a, of a situation where Jews are involved, because our history tells us that. </sentence><sentence id="3952">On the <span class="env feature">surface</span>, it did not happen. </sentence><sentence id="3953">We did not feel it. </sentence><sentence id="3954">We did not see it in so many deeds or words. </sentence><sentence id="3955">But it could very well have been there, because there was one captain of the French army who worked with us. </sentence><sentence id="3956">He was a Viennese, actually of Polish origin, but coming from <span class="populated place">Vienna</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3957">His name was Prinz. </sentence><sentence id="3958">And he was originally with the French Foreign Legion, then came into <span class="country">France</span> to join the Resistance. </sentence><sentence id="3959">And he at one time indicated to me that while our main job was to fight the Nazis, if he survives the war he will have to settle a few accounts with some people, that he knew among his unit, you know. </sentence><sentence id="3960">And after the liberation, when the German soldiers had been arrested and interned and were in <span class="populated place">internment camps</span> in <span class="populated place">Limoges</span>, he took me to one of those <span class="populated place">camps</span> to see because he was in charge of some of their units. </sentence><sentence id="3961">And he took me in one of those <span class="populated place">camps</span> and he -- I got great satisfaction to see this little fellow by the name of Prinz -- he was about 5 foot 4 -- had these tall German prisoner soldiers stand at attention and act like really like scared children once they were in custody. </sentence><sentence id="3962">Just weeks before, days before, they were the strong, the strong masters, especially women and children. </sentence><sentence id="3963">And then when the day of reckoning came, they became whimpering children themselves. </sentence><sentence id="3964">But, no. </sentence><sentence id="3965">We, during our work with the Resistance, did not see it openly, feel it openly. </sentence><sentence id="3966">And frankly, for that nonsense, during this particular period there was no time for that. </sentence><sentence id="3967">We had an enemy to fight, you see. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3985">Q: Okay. </sentence><sentence id="3986">The <span class="dlf">landing</span>, June sixth, and the aftermath. </sentence><sentence id="3987">What did you do? </sentence><sentence id="3988">How did you help, if you did help, the invading American forces? </sentence><sentence id="3989">Was your group involved? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3995">A: We were involved in -- our group was involved a little later. </sentence><sentence id="3996">A little later, with grave research and registration; because there had been -- for instance, we received parachuted provisions that came into the area of <span class="populated place">Limoges</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3997">Certain nights when, when the message, the message, the coded message would tell us to be at a certain place at a certain time, and then there would be... We were told to send a flare at a certain time, up in the <span class="env feature">air</span>, and then few minutes later we would have a drop off of clothing or food items. </sentence><sentence id="3998">The <span class="spatial object">parachutes</span> themselves would be gathered up, and the ladies would make shirts out of them. </sentence><sentence id="3999">They were in khaki or white or pink. </sentence><sentence id="4000">And in the process, in that execution of that particular parachuting help to the Resistance, some were shot down, some had to bail out for one reason or another, some were arrested. </sentence><sentence id="4001">And then later on, in the <span class="region">area</span> a little north of <span class="populated place">Limoges</span>, there was, of course, there was the region of <span class="populated place">Cognac</span>, and towards the <span class="env feature">coast</span> there were evidently fatalities. </sentence><sentence id="4002">After the landing in later weeks, some of our groups and us, we were involved in researching -- traveling and researching with farmers and with the <span class="region">countryside</span> people who might have found soldiers, American, Canadian or British soldiers, also some of the Polish-exile forces. </sentence><sentence id="4003">We helped in grave research. </sentence><sentence id="4004">It was grave registration. </sentence><sentence id="4005">That's what we did, we helped. </sentence><sentence id="4006">Later, there were some <span class="building">USO</span>" <span class="interior space">halls</span> were established, which we helped out with. </sentence><sentence id="4007">But right after the landing and when <span class="populated place">Limoges</span> was liberated, a committee was formed in <span class="populated place">Limoges</span>. </sentence><sentence id="4008">It was called <span class="building">COJDASOR</span> -- Comite Juif d'Assistance Social et Reconstruction -- the Jewish Committee for Social Assistance and Reconstruction.** </sentence><sentence id="4009">This was mainly geared to help refugees -- people who had lived in the <span class="region">area</span> and hidden out, and could not do any kind of work during that period and really were penniless, to, to put them on their feet again. </sentence><sentence id="4010"><span class="building">OSE</span> was one of the organizations connected with this. </sentence><sentence id="4011">The Organization for Secours aux Enfants." </sentence><sentence id="4012">A children's organization, <span class="building">OSE</span>. </sentence><sentence id="4013">You are familiar with that, and some of those Zionist organizations were involved, like WIZO" and Hadassah. </sentence><sentence id="4014">And this whole program, that whole committee was supported by the American Joint Distribution Committee. </sentence><sentence id="4015">So we had an <span class="building">office</span> in <span class="populated place">Limoges</span> at <span class="dlf">15 Avenue du Midi</span>, and some of us, from our group working previously with the underground with the false ID papers, became employed by that <span class="building">office</span>. </sentence><sentence id="4016">And as later, after liberation of <span class="populated place">Paris</span>, which was in August of "44, and later the victory when people came back from the <span class="populated place">camps</span>, again this Committee did a good job of, number one, helping them to get over the first <span class="dlf">hump</span>, and later to establish themselves with a <span class="building">residence</span>. </sentence><sentence id="4017">Even helped them find relatives, because the Committee was in touch with the <span class="building">Red Cross</span> and other organizations and institutions that were, after the war, spring up here and there to just see who had survived and who can be reached. </sentence><sentence id="4018">And all these communication means were used to, whether it was by <span class="spatial object">telegraph</span> or radio or whatever. </sentence><sentence id="4019">But the <span class="building">COJDASOR</span> was that committee that was established afterwards, and I worked for that. </sentence><sentence id="4020">But between the landing and actually the liberation, there was just a very short time. </sentence><sentence id="4021">Because, because <span class="country">France</span> fell pretty fast to the forces of Resistance, and then the Germans were arrested. </sentence><sentence id="4022">And the rest took place in the north of <span class="country">France</span>, of course, where the advancing Allied troops just entered <span class="populated place">Paris</span> in August of "44. </sentence><sentence id="4023">And had one major scare in the winter of "44, when after the Battle of the Bulge the Germans actually advanced far enough to pose a renewed threat to <span class="populated place">Paris</span>. </sentence><sentence id="4024">But that -- again, time took care of that. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="4055">Q: But you were in <span class="populated place">Limoges</span>. </sentence><sentence id="4056">Can you describe the day of liberation? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="4059"> *7 United Service Organization </sentence></p><p><sentence id="4060"> 8 The actual name was: Comite Juif d'Action Social et de Reconstruction; Jewish </sentence></p><p><sentence id="4061"> Committee for Social Action and Reconstruction (French). </sentence></p><p><sentence id="4062"> * The name of the organization is <span class="building">Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants</span> (French), and is referred to as the <span class="building">Children's Rescue Network</span> in English. </sentence></p><p><sentence id="4063"> "deg Women's International Zionist Organization </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="4064">A: As I said before, it was almost an unbelievable feeling to know that the day has finally come. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="4066">Q: Not D-Day, June sixth, but the liberation itself. </sentence><sentence id="4067">When <span class="populated place">Limoges</span> was freed. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="4070">A: Oh, the liberation, yeah. </sentence><sentence id="4071"><span class="populated place">Limoges</span> was freed, was just another normal day, except seeing Germans patrolling the <span class="dlf">streets</span> and Gestapo patrolling the <span class="dlf">streets</span> and being in charge here and being in charge there, you saw columns of Gestapo and Germans being led down the <span class="dlf">street</span> by Resistance fighters. </sentence><sentence id="4072">The great victorious German army led down the <span class="dlf">street</span> by young people in rag tag outfits. </sentence><sentence id="4073">That was the...that was the impact. </sentence><sentence id="4074">Just a few weeks earlier, I was in a <span class="building">railroad station</span> and saw a <span class="spatial object">column</span>...a unit of German soldiers, waiting for a <span class="spatial object">train</span> that they were taking to some direction. </sentence><sentence id="4075">They were sitting on the <span class="dlf">platform</span>, on their <span class="spatial object">tucksacks</span>, on their equipment, with their guns standing up, leaning against each other, bayonets drawn, you know. </sentence><sentence id="4076">They have this triangular thing, arrangement there. </sentence><sentence id="4077">One of the soldiers was opening up -- cutting open a can of sardines with his bayonet. </sentence><sentence id="4078">Trying to open it up; and then he ate the sardines out of his -- out of the can, swallowing them all in all. </sentence><sentence id="4079">And in his language, I recognized he must have been either an Austrian or a Bavarian, because having been born in <span class="populated place">Vienna</span>, I knew what the Austrian accent was. </sentence><sentence id="4080">And he said, in German -- which I will not tell you in German, but I will tell you that in the English translation, "The people that are walking by here," he says, "those French people here. </sentence><sentence id="4081">They will look at us and will say to themselves, "Schen schaut Sie aus, diese Reichsdeutsche Armee!""*"--"She sure looks good, that victorious German army!" </sentence><sentence id="4082">Ina facetious way. </sentence><sentence id="4083">And when we saw those German prisoners walking down the main <span class="dlf">street</span> of -- with their arms raised on top of their heads, disarmed...that came to my mind. " </sentence><sentence id="4084">You look good, you victorious German Army! </sentence><sentence id="4085">Now that you are guarded by a rag tag outfit, you act like you are the victims." </sentence><sentence id="4086">Or something like that. </sentence><sentence id="4087">That was the main impact. </sentence><sentence id="4088">And that picture, that -- imagine that scene repeated itself over and over in <span class="country">France</span> in all the little <span class="populated place">villages</span> and <span class="populated place">towns</span> that became liberated, one by one by one. </sentence><sentence id="4089">The collaborators were arrested, too. </sentence><sentence id="4090">Unfortunately, there was also during that period a lot of spur of the moment, perhaps hasty, emotional reaction to those that we, the underground had perceived as being collaborators, like selling, dealing <span class="building">black market</span>, or cohorting or fraternizing with some of the German officers -- including some of the people that we had known, our own people. </sentence><sentence id="4091">And it was not uncommon for someone whom we knew who did <span class="building">black market</span>, even if they were Jewish, to be executed actually without trial, without jury, without due process. </sentence><sentence id="4092">But the emotions were so high that these things happened in I wouldn't just say a few cases. </sentence><sentence id="4093">There were quite -- there were many. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="4118">Q: Leo, we have five minutes left. </sentence><sentence id="4119">I think it makes sense to wrap it up in this hour rather than go to another tape. </sentence><sentence id="4120">Tell me what, very briefly, I want to save a few minutes for pictures. </sentence><sentence id="4121">But tell "| "She looks beautiful, that German Army" (German). </sentence><sentence id="4122"> me, after the war, you were involved in this organization. </sentence><sentence id="4123">How did you get to the <span class="country">United States</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="4130">A: Thad an aunt in <span class="populated place">Baltimore</span>, who already in 1941 had sent me papers to...the affidavit to join her here in <span class="country">America</span>. </sentence><sentence id="4131">But with the advent of the <span class="populated place">Pearl Harbor</span> and <span class="country">America</span> entering the war, those documents expired, fell by the wayside. </sentence><sentence id="4132">In 1946, I received new papers, new affidavits, from my aunt here in <span class="populated place">Baltimore</span>. </sentence><sentence id="4133">I applied for the right to immigrate to the <span class="country">United States</span>, and I joined here my aunt here in 1947. </sentence><sentence id="4134">I have a sheet here that shows that I was on a preferential quota -- I was born in <span class="country">Austria</span>. </sentence><sentence id="4135">And also, one that my travel to the <span class="country">United States</span> is in the national interest of the <span class="country">United States</span>, simply because I worked for that group that did grave registration and I was also involved in the postal censor, postal censor service in <span class="populated place">Paris</span> later, under the guidance of a army lieutenant, Sonja Beaumont. </sentence><sentence id="4136">A lady. </sentence><sentence id="4137">I was with the <span class="building">postal censor service</span> for a little while in <span class="populated place">Paris</span>. </sentence><sentence id="4138">I spoke several languages, and so I was a few months there in that capacity. </sentence><sentence id="4139">So I came to the <span class="country">United States</span> in 1947. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="4150">Q: And you married? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="4152">A: I married in <span class="country">America</span>. </sentence><sentence id="4153">Married an American young woman in 1952, and we have three children. </sentence><sentence id="4154">And in January of this year, we became grandparents for the first time, and that is the -- that's good ending to the story. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="4158">Q: Wonderful ending to the story. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="4160"> End of Tape #4 CONCLUSION OF INTERVIEW Tape #5 DOCUMENTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS Qd) Birth Certificate. </sentence><sentence id="4161">The false one, under the name of Max Henri Lefevre. </sentence><sentence id="4162">Made out five years younger than he really was. </sentence><sentence id="4163">A document that every Frenchman had in his possession, and by virtue of which Leo became a Frenchman. ( </sentence><sentence id="4164">2) Document of registration with French labor authorities, in the name of Max Henri Lefevre. ( </sentence><sentence id="4165">3) Documents certifying to deportation of Leo's mother and two sisters from <span class="populated place">Vienna</span> to [<span class="populated place">Izbica</span> (ph)I, <span class="country">Poland</span>, in April 1942, and to the fact that they did not appear on any list of returnees. ( </sentence><sentence id="4166">4) Wedding picture of Leo's parents, June 1920. ( </sentence><sentence id="4167">5) Leo at age 8 with his sister, then age 6. ( </sentence><sentence id="4168">6) Snapshot from Leo's Bar Mitzvah in 1934, showing Leo with his mother and sisters and an uncle. ( </sentence><sentence id="4169">7) Leo with his two sisters, on the day of his Bar Mitzvah in 1934. </sentence><sentence id="4170">His sisters were then 11 and 6. </sentence><sentence id="4171">The snapshot was taken in the <span class="interior space">courtyard</span> of the <span class="building">house</span> where they lived. ( </sentence><sentence id="4172">8) Leo's mother. </sentence><sentence id="4173">Picture was sent to Leo by his mother in August of 1939, while he lived in <span class="country">Belgium</span> as a refugee. </sentence><sentence id="4174">His last communication with his family before the war broke out (9) Summer 1940. </sentence><sentence id="4175">Snapshot of Leo's sister, Henrietta, then doing Hachshara work with the hope of eventual emigration to <span class="country">Palestine</span>. ( </sentence><sentence id="4176">10) Leo's younger sister, Edith, holding a cat. </sentence><sentence id="4177">She was then 14. </sentence><sentence id="4178">Photograph sent to <span class="populated place">Leo</span> in February 1942, just two months before the family was deported to <span class="country">Poland</span>. ( </sentence><sentence id="4179">11) -- Leo in <span class="populated place">Saint-Vallier</span> in 1943, in his Companion de France outfit. ( </sentence><sentence id="4180">12) Yellow star with the word "Juif" [Fr: "Jew"]. </sentence><sentence id="4181">The "badge of shame." </sentence><sentence id="4182">Worn by Leo, as required by French and German authorities, until he began hiding under his false identity. ( </sentence><sentence id="4183">13) Leo's granddaughter, Andrea. </sentence><sentence id="4184"> </sentence></p></dialogue> |
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