Oral History Interview with Oscar Haber Part I

Oscar Haber Interview Part I

INTERVIEWED BY

ARWEN DONAHUE

MAY 17 & MAY 30, 2000

HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS IN KENTUCKY

KENTUCKY HISTORICAL SOCIETY AND UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST

MEMORIAL MUSEUM

[Copy-checked and partially authenticated by A.D.—9/1/05]

Question: Okay, it’s May 17th, 2000 and we’re conducting an interview with Mr. Oscar Haber here in his home in Lexington, Kentucky and this is an interview for the Holocaust Survivors in Kentucky Interview Project, which is being sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, as well as the Kentucky Oral History Commission. We are doing an interview that will focus mostly on Mr. Haber’s experiences after the Holocaust because he has been interviewed before by the Survivors of the Shoah Foundation. And there is a videotape that is available through the Shoah Foundation. My name is Arwen Donahue and this is tape number one, side A. Mr. Haber, let’s start with your date of birth.

Answer: March 8th, 1910.

Q: And you talked about, in your other interview and by the way if we ever repeat anything, we’ll try to just cover things that we haven’t talked about before. But I’m sure that you don’t remember everything that you said and didn’t say, so I might remind you sometimes if we’ve already talked about something. But in your other interview you did mention that you went, you had an unusual opportunity, you were growing up in a small town, in a shtetl and you were one of nine children, and you had an unusual opportunity to attend a high school, a public high school and eventually became a dentist. And I’m wondering how it happened that you had this opportunity to study in a public high school and where the high school was?

A: The high school was in Debica, which is in the district of Krakow and that was about nine kilometers of my village where I was born. And we had, from the age of three, in our house, always a teacher, special for religious purposes. But by this same occasion we were studying normal classes. So in the age of four I could already go in the village to the first class of public school and I still was a good pupil, because no one of them was on the level I was. But I finished there the fourth year and my father decided I have to go into the small city, which was Debica there. In the same time, he put us in a quarter, that means to live in the house of a Rabbi, which was teaching us the Hebrew and the religious teachings. In the same time I went to the Polish public school. And that was a very difficult experience because we have to get up in the morning at six o’clock, sometimes earlier, and before we went to the public school in the morning for eight o’clock it started, we had already to pray and to learn Hebrew and to learn everything about religious life. And more and more. So, I was there about six years living with this Rabbi. At the same time after I graduated from the normal school, from the seven classes, I applied to the high school, but I was too young. Because it was already that you can go to school, start school only by the age of seven, and I was four years old. But I was somehow fortunate, my father knew the director of this high school. And he spoke with him and he said, ‘Well I cannot do it. He has to go normal now to the sixth class at least, at least and to repeat.’ And my father said, ‘You know, make him a test.’ And I got a test and I passed the test, but still he couldn’t take me. I had to repeat the seventh grade another year. And then I was accepted to the high school. And there I matriculated there and so I continued my studies.

Q: So, what language did you speak at home?

A: Well, the first language we spoke, that was Yiddish. My father was very religious and he want us to know the Yiddish, we are spoken. But we had Polish Gentile servants, too, so we have to speak Polish too. And surrounded by peasants who are speaking Polish and you have to knew the language. In the school was Polish of course. When I went to school in Debica there was in the fourth class was already German, too. So I had German, Polish and Yiddish, and of course, Hebrew, which was, it was the liturgical language, to pray. At the age of three we started already to learn Hebrew and we knew the Hebrew alphabet and we knew to pray and most of the prayings until today, I know by heart. Most of the thick books, we learn, we have to do it. And the first when you opened eyes at the religious house, the first is to wash your hands, that’s the first things. And to make a blessing about the washing the hands and you make a blessing for the food and you have to thank God that you got up in the morning. That was the first Hebrew praying and that was at the age of three. At the age of four we started already to learn the Torah, which is the Bible, the Old Testament. And so we continued to, so therefore I am quite acquainted about religious Jewish life. And then later on, of course, in high school we learned about, in the public school we learned about history and that was very interesting, world history, too. And German literature. And therefore I, until today, I am quite acquainted with the world literature and especially the German literature and the Hebrew, of course. And the Yiddish. So, this is the way like it was. It was a very hard thing, because the distance to the town was like I said about nine kilometers, eight or nine kilometers. I don’t remember exactly. And for Saturday we used to go home, I mean to the village. And when we came to the village Saturday, there was the traditional Friday evening meal with the praying, with everything. In our house was there a minyan, which is the quorum of ten people which is praying, Jews, by Jewish law. And my late father, by himself with his own funds, he founded a Torah. He let scribe it, and we had a new Torah in our house and there was a praying in our house and my father was the master of the ceremony. And the people from the villages around, which were few, not always was there the quorum of ten people. But Saturday morning was always a praying in quorum. If it wasn’t quorum, so how many it was, but it was the normal pray. And we had to know it and to participate. And that was in afternoon, my father take a sleep one hour and he took us in the room, me and my brother, because my older brother was with me in the school at this Rabbi. He was sitting down and we had to repeat what we learned all the week. My father wanted to know what we learned and how far we are continuing to progress. And that was the way like it was in our house. Of course, Saturday was like in the Torah is resting day. And that was the religious way of life. Nothing was working, nobody was working, even the servants. Only to feed the animals, to milk the cows and that what was doing. But not working in the field, not other work was performed. Only the most necessary for surviving, which was necessary.

Q: You mentioned that one of the towns nearby, Ropczyce, had a strong Hasidic tradition. Did your family have any Hasidic ties or traditions?

A: My father by himself was a Hasid. But he didn’t go to Ropczyce because the old Ropczyce Rabbi wasn’t more. The founder of the Hasidic movement which was Reb Nafthali, which you know. And he was no more alive. There was already third or fourth generation there and there was no potential Rabbi which could, which could affinate [ph] my father there. My father used to go to Sans [ph] , which was quite a distance, about fifty miles. To go for holidays there to the Rabbi of Sans [ph]. Also sometimes OfBobof [ph], which is also a little shtetl there in the surroundings of Sans [ph]. They were the very famous Rabbis, which is the continuation of this Rabbis is now here in the United States. They are siblings and family offsprings, which are continue this Hasidic movement of Bobof [ph] and of Sans [ph]. And that was, my father was a Hasid of them. He wasn’t, by himself, he wasn’t a blind Hasidic. He wasn’t overdoing. But the basic religious things were holy for him. And that was my father. Of course my mother did everything what my father said to do. The thing was, my father, his first wife passed away. And from his first wife, gave birth a daughter and by the birth she passed away. He was a young widower. He was already thirty-five or thirty-six years old and a matchmaker found him a girl of sixteen years somewhere in another village there. And she came to live with him, and she was my mother. She gave birth to the nine children. And we were in touch with our sister, because Jewish law recognize it, one child, when it is from the same father, is a sibling, more even than one mother. That is the religious way and tradition. Interesting enough, our sister, she married a very interesting man, who was, in the beginning he was a teacher in our house, teaching us the religious ways. He was very educated in Jewish Talmudic teachings. And he married her, and he succeeded, he became quite a rich man. And she gave birth to eight children. And there are only two children survived and they are still living. One is ninety-two years old, lives in the United States. And the other one is eighty-five years, that’s the youngest one, eighty-four years old, lives in Israel.

Q: These would be your nieces and nephews actually. Right? Officially. Your sister’s children?

A: Are?

Q: They would be your nieces and your nephews?

A: Yeah, they are my nieces and we are in touch with them and we are very much in good relations. And very interesting story about these two nieces. Both of them survived the Holocaust. The one married in the war and had a daughter in the war. And she escaped, run away, being pregnant from Debica, I mean this village there, to Lvov, which was in the Ukraine. Then it was belonged to Poland, but the Russian invaded this part of the country, of Polish country. And she, when she saw the disaster in the ghetto, she put her child under a convent’s door. And was looking from far away what happened to this child. And she saw that a nun came out and she took in the child in the house. And then she ran away and she became a servant, as a Polish girl, as a Gentile at the head of the Gestapo in Lvov. That was the older one. The younger one had a friend in Lvov. She was in Lvov studying sewing, to be a seamstering. Mother, very good seamster, which she was. And she met there a boy, before the war he was leader already of the trade unions. And when the Russian came in… in the beginning he was a very big shot. But when the Russians, when the German invaded, he went with the Russian back to Russia and there he joined the Polish Army, which was organized there by the Poles after their agreement, the Polish agreement in exile with the Russians, which allowed them to organize their Army, which was affiliated to the Russian Army. And they were fighting. And he was fighting the Germans until Berlin. And he put her on a Polish family. She was a seamster and she gave birth to a daughter, but that was already in 1945 when the war is going to end. When he came from Russia to Poland with the invasion, I mean to fight with the Russian Army. And then she gave birth to this daughter. And when the war was coming to an end, he became a governor of a part which was annected from Poland from the German territory there. And he took her there, and they had another two sons, but they not living as Jews. And they very talented boys. And when it came in Poland the time where Jews moved from Poland to Israel in 1965 I guess, was it? Something like this. They came, first time she told the sons that they are Jewish and they were already both matriculated after high school diploma. And one of them was already studying engineering. And they came to Israel. But their father, himself, he in the meantime, being a governor he studied at the university at the same time to become an agronom… agronomy. And he came to Israel as an agronom. But because Israel didn’t have confidence to all these apparatchiks from Poland. I mean all this communist active parties, he couldn’t find a job. It was very difficult to find. And we were already at this time in Israel and I had some connection with people and to a member of the Israel Parliament. And I wrote to them and I warranted about him, that he’s not one of the Russian services and he got a job in agronomy. But he passed away about six or seven years ago. In the meantime, the older son is working in a very high, secret Israel Army factory. And the other son was also an engineer, but in the same time he was teaching in a school, in a vocational school. And married a girl from Venezuela. And one year ago they decided that they leave Israel and they came to the United States. And he got a job here in California. He must be very, very important engineer, because he got the, he made the green card and he can work and they bought a house. But they have one son, who is at the Israel Army. And just now I heard, two weeks ago, he went to Israel and asked to give him some off in the Army. And he came to visit him here to the United States. He will not stay. He will go back to Israel. But he decided, his wife and with the other two children to stay in the United States.

Q: Sounds as if you’ve kept in pretty close touch with whatever members of your family have survived.

A: Oh yeah, whatever I have. I have two brothers. I have a second cousin, who was… they were all in camps. And they are living here in the United States. My brothers and my second cousins. Are we are trying to keep all together here.

Q: Let’s go back to the time that we were talking about before the war. Did you end up going to high school then because your father wanted you to have oppor… special opportunities?

A: Yes.

Q: That normally your other siblings wouldn’t have had?

A: High school, further studies wasn’t the main purpose of my father. My father would have very much liked me to go on and study Jewish, maybe Rabbinical even studies. But I was very stubborn and I was in very difficult conditions, making my study very difficult. Often in hunger, often have to work and to gain my life. But I did it. And I’m happy I did it.

Q: So it was really your, becoming a dentist was something that you really wanted to do.

A: I, that was my idea. That was my idea and there was also an idea which I got from a cousin of mine who was a dentist in the other place there. And I liked the way like he was living. I was enjoying more the free life. This religious life didn’t match my character. I wasn’t never, never… even being young, following all the instructions and prescriptions, but I was never strictly convinced that that was what I want to do. I was always looking on the broad world, and life was for me, more interesting outside the religious life.

Q: You mentioned in your first interview that you were a Polish patriot.

A: Yes.

Q: Were you politically interested or involved in Polish… well, were you interested in Polish politics?

A: No, no, no, no. I was, deep in my soul I was Jewish, but I found that we are living in a Polish country, this is Poland and this is our homeland and we owe to be loyal to our country. That’s wherever I am, I found my obligation to be honest and I could avoid serving in the Polish Army which wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy. It was very difficult. But it wasn’t voluntary, because Poland was an Army which was called to the Army. That was not a voluntary army. You have to go, by twenty-one everyone has to go to the army except that somebody is unable to fulfill the demand, sick and so forth. And a lot of my colleagues and a lot of Jewish people usually they started to do everything to avoid to go into the Polish Army. I didn’t try it even. And I did it full hearted and I think it was my obligation to do it, because I owe it. I understand that it is a common responsibility when you are a citizen of a country, you live there, you have to do what belongs. But politically I was never involved in any movement, never any movement.

Q: Not…

A: I loved Poland. I loved the country. It gave us opportunity and then that’s it. I did what I had to do.

END OF TAPE 20.U.11a, OSCAR HABER, SIDE A

BEGINNING OF TAPE 20.U.11a, OSCAR HABER, SIDE B

Q: Tape one, side B. Were you involved in any Zionist organizations?

A: It was a time I was involved in Zionist organization. It was a time I thought maybe one has to go to Palestine those times. I will not deny there was not in Poland anti-Semitism. But you know anti-Semitism until today has many faces. There is an economic anti-Semitism, there is a political anti-Semitism and there is a racist anti-Semitism. And for me and my observance, my conviction, I think if I analyze the Jewish situation in Poland, it was more economic anti-Semitism, with some reasons, objective reasons. They were nobody’s fault, but the situation became so that this anti-Semitism has his logical reasons, logical reasons, maybe it shouldn’t be, maybe it is nobody’s fault, but it was. I cannot say there was a racial anti-Semitism. Well, there is in every nation, there are some extreme people, which they can get… and they are more doing it for personal reasons and for gaining something of it. And this is also the political anti-Semitism, which is to gain something to rule over people. You know? And Jews were more educated, absolutely more educated than the common people in Poland. Because as I told you before, I started to study when I was three. You know, and this gives, whatever you study, it gives you more advance about people which are just starting to study something at the age of eight or nine or ten even. Some of them didn’t go to school, the Polish people didn’t go to school ever. There was illiteracy, too. So, when it came to elections, the Jews, they knew what they wanted. And the masses didn’t know. Maybe it is until today a lot of masses don’t know when they are going to vote, what they need and what they want. It is until today everywhere. But especially in a country like Poland, which was, which wasn’t so educated. There was a lot of people who didn’t have, it was only by propaganda, which was from mouth to mouth, from promises and so forth, you know. And then Poland, I would need to go into the situation of Poland, how Poland became free after being occupied by three countries.

Q: Well let’s not get into overall historical…

A: Yeah, I understand. I understand, but the Jews even, in each occupied party, had different opportunities. In the Russian occupied part they couldn’t progress like this we could make in the Austro-Hungarian or in the German occupied territory. So here comes the difference. Education, knowledge and education, that was, is and that would always be the point. And this gave also the impulse for political views and for a kind of organized anti-Semitism, which for the Jews, for the victims, it is not important what kind of anti-Semitism it is. He is anti-Semite, why and what, we didn’t analyze and that wasn’t important. We had to feel it and that what it is.

Q: When you were in the Army then, in 1935 and ‘36, did you, were you primarily with non-Jewish Poles?

A: Oh yeah.

Q: And how was that?

A: Ten percent was Jews. It was the same, approximately the same relative like it was, the population was about ten percent and there was about ten percent was in the Army.

Q: Were you discriminated against at all for being Jewish during your service?

A: It’s difficult to say that you were discriminating because Army is not the thing which gives you the time. You have so many things to do that you don’t have the time to play these games. But, but, the officers, the Polish officers generally, generally, were anti-Semites. What kind? They were so educated, they were so prepared. That was the elite. That they, but of course, they didn’t, they didn’t want to show up as anti-Semites. But you could feel it, you could feel it. Not everybody felt it. And then like I said, the poorer Jews went to the Army because they were not able to pay to get free from the Army, not to serve. The rich Jews who didn’t want to go to the Army, there was always finding a way of bribery. To whom? To the Polish officers, to the Polish doctors, to the Polish secretaries, so that they made themselves sick and they write and they are sick and they cannot serve. And so the poor and little Jews were serving in the Army. There were no too many of the intelligentsia which was serving in the Army. And then there was another thing. After matriculation you are going to the officer’s school. And in the officer’s school, they didn’t want the Jews to become officers. They were there because they were, after matriculation that was the law. So usually they find always a way to send them back to the normal Army, not to live in the school to become an officer. There were officers, Jewish officers, but very few, very few. It was difficult to advance, to be a Jew and to be an officer, a high officer in the Polish Army. There were higher officers only medical officers, because they needed them. They have to take them and that’s what it was.

Q: So, by the time you were in the Service, you were a dentist, were you a dentist already?

A: Yes.

Q: Yeah, so you were, your goal was just to do the service and then get out. Is that right?

A: Yeah. When the time came to go out, I got a phone from Krakow that one doctor who was by himself a Colonel in the Polish Army, doctor, dentist. He had private office. He was ready to retire and he had a private office. But he got a heart attack and they took him to hospital. And they phone to me, they knew that I would go liberated, if I will be able to replace him, to fill out that position. So the last day in the Polish Army… and even the greatest anti-Semite in my unit, came to me, they make me a party, my departure, that was ad hoc make a party for me. He came to me, he said, ‘You know I am twenty years in the Polish Army. I am professional officer, high officer. I’m a major there.’ He said, ‘You are the first Jew I know had such a good time in the Army like you have. Like you had.’ And I said to them good bye, and I left. And immediately the next day I came to Krakow and I start to work because I had to fulfill this, this… later on he was released from the hospital. He survived and he came to the office, but I still was working with him. He couldn’t work anymore. So I was working with him about a year and a half, something like this. And then I opened my own office.

Q: But you said you didn’t have such a good time in the… did you have a good time socially? Is that what he meant? That you got along with other officers?

A: Oh yeah. I had a good time, well I got along. They were all, needed me because I was there practicing dentistry. After the first, first recruiting, six months, then later on I organize a clinic and I receive patients. So they had their families and they were coming to me and I had really a good time. I came from the Army with some saved money, which the families of these officers paid to me for services. That was very, very, very little payments, but still I came with quite nice saved money.

Q: You mentioned in your other interview that you were involved with the underground army. The Armia Krajowa. How did you get involved with the army and when?

A: In 1942, when we fled, went with the, on the Aryan papers, so-called. We came to a strange village there. And there the lady, which was the owner of the farm which we were given the address from the priest to go. That was his sister-in-law. Where I was there on this farm, there the Armia Krajowa started to organize herself. And we came there, and I went there as a refuge, refugee from the occupied territory, German-occupied territory which occupied Poland from Poznan. I said I am from Poznan, and I am hiding away because I was a Polish officer and I am hiding from the German Army. So when they became knowledge, they turned to me and maybe I will join them. And I said, ‘Well I cannot be a fighter to go and, with your fighting.’ I went with them sometimes. But I organized a sanitary station, when some of them were wounded they brought them to me and I gave them some bandages or some treatments, which I had a sanitary station. And I also took care on the weapons which they had, and the magazine. They had some magazine in hiding in the shelter. And they had some weapons there, which they organize somehow. And I was taking, cleaning and taking care of it. And that was my function, I was going there and there, I was going close to every night I am going there and taking care of it. There were some actions which I am participating, but I was never going in the first line to go to fight with the Germans. Never, ever.

Q: Were you afraid at all or nervous that they would find, that they would check up on your story about having been an officer in Poznan and find out about your identity?

A: First of all, there was a case when somebody, the German has, in every village, in every town they had… will you lay down? Lay down…

Q: I have to…

A: I will approach to you a little bit. They had their spies which are spying what happens to the Polish people there. What they are talking about and what they are doing. And some of them denounced that there is some activity, that they have some activity. And they choose Easter, 1943, yeah? 1943 they choose to go to make an action and to arrest these Polish people who are in the underground. They knew from this people which they send in this Volksdeutsche and they took there ten people. Between them was the commandant of this base. His name was Bilig [ph], Biłig [ph]. He was a student of law, of the third year, second or third year. He was the commandant of this unit there in this region. And there was other, there was a teacher and there was several people. And one was liberated by the Germans. That was suspected that he was collaborating with the Germans. They released him. The other nine were taken to Auschwitz. This commandant was so beaten up that he couldn’t survive. Because one of these people who was release, he saw him. That they took him from one room to other after hearings. They took him. He was all blooding. He didn’t survive. No one of them survived. So the commandant of this part was the brother of this woman where we were working on this farm. His name was Kostetski [ph]. Max Kostetski [ph]. And this lady, which we were there on this farm, she was a very fine, noble person. She knew that we are Jewish. She knew because when we arrived there, the brother of the priest was there, just there. And he was very angry. He said to the priest, ‘What did you bring these Jews here? Why did you do it?’ And he run away very angry. And she knew, but she was a very, very [PHONE RINGS] fine, noble person. And she tried to influence her brother. I am an officer and so forth. And she was helping us a lot with bread, with food, everywhere. Even when we later on, after the denunciation, we had to live in other place. She used to come to bring us bread and all kinds of things. She did help us. I think maybe fifty percent of surviving we had to thank her. She was very, very, very kind.

Q: What was her name?

A: Pardon?

Q: What was her name?

A: Oscietska [ph], Stanislawa Oscietska [ph]. Her father was anti-Semite. Her husband was a terrible anti-Semite. And the priest was also an anti-Semite and still that was the priest who helped us and gave us the paper.

Q: What was anti-Semitic about him? Why do you say that?

A: He was anti-Semite, but he was, in my opinion he was economic anti-Semite. However, he didn’t have a business. But in the church he was preaching the Polish people to support Polish people, to buy at Polish people, but most of the businesses were Jewish. And therefore Jews were calling all of this kind of expression, they were calling anti-Semite. That was economical anti-Semitism. They want to support their own people. I don’t find it wrong. I don’t find it wrong. I think he as a priest has an obligation to his people. How we didn’t like it, how we didn’t want it, but still it did hurt us economically. But he, as a human being and as a priest, he told us, ‘I want to help you because it comes a bad time to you.’ So I cannot say he is a racist or he is a political anti-Semite. He was economical anti-Semite. He was anti-Semite. We are very sensitive. We Jews are very sensitive, but we have the reason why to be sensitive after thousands of years of discrimination. But still, if you have a little bit brain and you want to understand human nature, you can find some objective reasons why some people are behaving so, and not like you would like they will behave. We would like to be taken care on us as the Chosen People. But we are not the chosen, to take care on us. We are chosen because we have obligations. We choose to have the obligations. This is the chosen. We took the Ten Commandments, we took the Torah, we took everything, but we have to perform it. And if there is, you have to love your neighbor as yourself. You can never love like yourself, it is allegoric. But you don’t have to harm your neighbor. You have to behave. And that, which in many cases we are missing. Even in the holy books we sometimes mention, ‘We are the Chosen People. You can do to other people this and this and this. You can take interest by non-Jews. You can do this, you can do this, but not to your brothers.’ And that was a segregation which was in the Torah. There is segregation which we choose to make the segregation. This is the Chosen People, not only in the positive sense, a lot of things is negative. And therefore a lot of people who are open-minded, they are taking the teachings of our fathers, not strictly verbally. You make some selection. You have some humanitarian obligations as a human being, not blind to follow scriptures, but you have to find a way how to live with people, how to respect other people. Which is very, very important. How do you respect others, so others will respect you? And this is my conviction which I came after so many years of life and so many readings and studying of all, all this which is written in the Jewish and in the non-Jewish books and teachings. Well it’s not a… if you know [INAUDIBLE], introduction, but I mean you have to know to whom you are speaking. I think maybe sometimes I am going out of the framework which this has in mind, but I still am open-minded of everything what happens around.

Q: Yeah, I think it’s valuable for the listeners to know who, who you are, what your beliefs are and where you’re coming from and how you developed those beliefs. So, but also I wanted to find out, just make little bit clearer the chronology and the geography of what happened from the years 1940 through 1944 or so. You were, you were, you told the story in the first interview about how you went away to the Russian front. You tried to join the Army, you kind of got caught underneath the Russian occupation and then you made your way back to your home village of Brzeznica? Is that right? And then I’m a little bit confused. You mentioned that you were working in an S, were you working in an SS camp? Was it a concentration camp for Jews that you were working in? Okay, what was the name of the camp?

A: Pustkow.

Q: Pustkow. And you were interned there as a prisoner?

A: No, never. That was one of the miracles of this war maybe. There were no many Jews who are allowed to go in the camp and to leave the camp. And that was, by some miracle, maybe the reason was the German discipline, which they followed the orders of the Commandants, of the Führers. When I came to this camp, I volunteered. That was a working camp and therefore I was put into this camp as a dentist. There was no big dentistry and there was no big medicine, but still there was three medical doctors and there was rooms with beds, which in the beginning, which people when they got sick, even beaten when they were, they could come to the doctor. And they get care, they get care. In the beginning, even some times they were released from this to go to the town, to the little shtetl close to Debica there. There was other assignment to other works. But that was already not in their competence. In the beginning, how strange it would be, there was a Colonel, SS, who was the head of this health services there, Obersturmbanführer [ph] Schumacher was his name. And then, but he was maybe for two or three weeks and started only, that was only in ‘40. That was not yet nothing. That was the first beginning. And therefore the Jews were slowly getting in circulating. They took him so easy, they took him so by easy. They were voluntary, then later by force and later on by annihilation. They were going by themselves. That was the system. And then after two or three weeks, he left. But that was an order officer. A lieutenant officer.

END OF TAPE 20.U.11a, OSCAR HABER, SIDE B

BEGINNING OF TAPE 20.U.11.b, OSCAR HABER, SIDE A

Question: Tape two, side A. I’m sorry, will you repeat what you just said?

Answer: The Jewish doctors, they were the first. But if there were some people unable to work, they couldn’t release them. It has to sign, the SS doctor has to sign. And that what he was doing another four weeks. But later on, they left it to the Jews, but the situation became worse. There was no releasing. Treating and to work, treating and to work, no release anymore. In this time I came to… when I organized this little dental clinic there, so called clinic, everything was provisional.

Q: When was it that you organized that clinic?

A: In 1940 already. The end of 1940 I organized it there. And what could I do? If somebody has toothache, I could help, or to make an extraction, to pull out a tooth. And that was the things. There was no other things, no fillings. I had to make fillings only when an SS man didn’t want to go to the SS. They were not allowed to go to a Jewish dentist, not to a Polish even, nor to a German. They had to go to an SS. But they knew that they will have a special treatment at the Jewish dentist, so some of them came. And that was a very difficult task, because I didn’t have, I didn’t have this equipment, which the German have. The German has the most modern and the most [INAUDIBLE] equipment. The SS had the most modern. And there was a lot of cases, which I couldn’t treat them at all, and I send them to go there. But they were insisting, they were insisting. And so in beginning, that was about a year. I had an ID, SS ID, that I could come to the camp and I left. The bus was standing, I show only the ID and I left. In the beginning the doctors were also leaving, living in Debica. And coming only to work there.

Q: The Jewish doctors?

A: The Jewish doctors, yeah. And even some of the workers were allowed to go Saturday and Sunday for a day home, but they have to come back. If they didn’t come back, they brought them by force and that was a terrible thing then. So, after a year approximately, there was an order to take the ID’s, SS ID’s from all the Jews. But I think, I am not sure, because I was there a volunteer, there was an order of the Commandant of this camp, of the head, Gillar [ph] SS Oberführer, who gave, day order, which he gives to the soldiers every day orders. He said, ‘The Jewish dentist can come to the camp whenever he wants. And every time when he comes to the post they will give him a post who bring him in the camp and when he is finished, he will come to pick him up and take him out from the camp.’ That was unbelievable. That was unbelievable.

Q: Did that happen because he had a special fondness for you?

A: Because it was in the order. I don’t know. I don’t know. I cannot comprehend it until today. I cannot understand it why.

Q: Did you know him personally?

A: No. No. I knew the Commandant, the head of the… I’ll tell you, I mentioned before, the Germans were strict in their orders. I was a volunteer, and I was assigned by the working office, the special working office, which gave the contingent for the camp, for the people. Bring them and give them to different works. And because of they gave me this job, I didn’t belong to the SS, I belong all the time to the working office. And the head of this working office was a German, he became German. He was a German from origin. But he was Polish all the time. Only when the Germans came in, he became a German. And he was an officer in the Polish Army with a German name. Eilmiss [ph] was his name, Jule Eilmiss [ph]. And he was very good to me. I was very good to him. I gave him from time to time, I gave him all kind of bribes. And maybe they respect because I was affiliated to this, maybe this was the reason that I didn’t belong to the SS, I belong to the working. And that was the reason. And when I came to this post and I said, ‘I am the Jewish dentist. I need to go to the camp, please give me company.’ And they give me an SS man, who brought me to the camp. By the entrance to the camp there was another SS man, but he respected this SS man, he gave me over to him. He opened the gate and let me in. And when I was ready, I went to the office and I said, ‘I want to go out.’ They call to the camp, to the post, and the postman came and take me out from there. So, this is, everything is miraculous. Well, it is miracle that I am alive and that I am here. But that was something which was really extraordinary. I didn’t hear for a similar case in all my experience of camps and Jewish labor.

Q: Were you treating Jewish patients only or were there other prisoners there, who were non-Jewish? I mean political prisoners or something, who you were treating?

A: My treating was only Jews. There was close to it a Polish camp for political Polish prisoners, but I didn’t go in there and they couldn’t come here. They brought in, once they brought in two Polish prisoners, too, which I had to give them some treatment. But the SS Commandant sit down and took my treatment and the second Schaffner [ph] of the camp took my treatment. And other SS people came in my private practice home. Because I make in the house where I live like this Polish peasants, I make also a little clinic that what gives me my income. A barter business, people brought me food and I treated them. And so some of these SS people came in and they brought me also some tea, some coffee, because it was not on the market, even black market was not to get it. But the SS had everything. And they came in there, most of these SS people which were, plus they knew me, because I was going into the camp, out and in, and out and in, so I was really tolerated in this place like persona grata.

Q: Okay, so you were doing that until 1942, when the area was evacuated and the Jews were ordered to the ghetto?

A: The Jews were evacuated earlier. The only Jewish family was my family which allowed, which the Kreishofman [ph] allowed them to stay there. They allowed only me, but because the Polish officer didn’t understand German, so I take this opportunity and I left all my family there in this village. But there came the Final Solution and they want, nobody could, no Jew could be free. So I would have to go to the camp. My wife, Fryda, had to go with all the family together to the ghetto. From there they went to annihilation, as you know. Some of them went to the camp, to other camps, the brothers, my brothers. My three brothers came to other camps.

Q: So your, at that point your family, did they all go to the ghetto in Ropczyce?

A: Ropczyce and from Ropczyce they send them immediately to Senczyczow [ph], which was the next little town. And from there, about two weeks, they send them all to annihilation. I don’t know exactly until now. I think to Treblinka. I guess they went to Treblinka, all of them. Except my brothers which went to the other camp, to Rzeszow, from Rzeszow to Mielec. From Mielec there was the factory of airplanes, Hermann Göring Werke. And they were there. And there my oldest brother was killed there by the Germans. And these two brothers survived. And they were taken from there to Germany and they make all the marches and all the way through. And they survived in Germany.

Q: And your Polish, was your Polish good enough that you could pass well without worrying about language problems as a Pole?

A: My Polish was better than all the Polish Polish. Our Polish was exceptional, very good. Otherwise the priests wouldn’t give us papers. That was the basic things, appearance and language, that was the things which was the most important. And there was no, any blemish in my language and so till today the Polish people who come here and we are friends, Polish people. They say our Polish is immaculate.

Q: Did you have any, Fryda was talking in the interview that we did with her a little earlier today, she was talking about some of the challenges of being in church and having to adopt this persona, where you had to, everything had to be just right. Do you remember any trouble that you had with that?

A: Not at all. First of all, I adopted it very easy because living in a village, you are involved in the peasant’s life. You want, you don’t want, you don’t have the time even, but still. And so I knew about the habits and about everything how the Poles live. And we were living, even being Orthodox, my father was a very, very, very accepted in the community, in the peasant community. They respected him very well and they came and they lived together. And my father being an Orthodox Jew with [INAUDIBLE] you have seen. And he spoke immaculate Polish very well and so did all my family. And interesting enough, the children all were speaking Polish home, only when father wasn’t there. When father was in field, because we had a farm, so my father was usually, in the summer time always in the field. As you know in a village there is always work, never endless, endless work. When my father came, approaching the house, Yiddish, immediately Yiddish we have to speak at home, only Yiddish.

Q: But your family was unusual then. I mean, I think it was common for Polish Jewish families to be pretty segregated and to just associate with other Jews. But your family was much more integrated it sounds like.

A: Well the question of integration was more common in the shtetl, where there were around Jews. We didn’t have, our closest Jew was living a mile from us. A mile in Poland is like hundred miles here. Distances are different. And the other Jews were coming to us to study religious things by the teacher which we have in our house. And they were really poor Jews, poor Jews. It is difficult to describe. Well, in the last years, the situation improve. But I remember as a child I came in the house of one of the oldest citizens in this village that has Haskila Ascheim [ph]. And he had two sons… three sons, one went to the Austrian Army and later on to the Polish Army, because it was just a change from Polish liberalization. It was a widow with five children. Of course, the sons came to learn in our house. Not too much, not too much, but the basic prayers, the basic prayers they learned. The other son had also five children and they were very, very talented children, very talented children, but they didn’t have the opportunity to go to school, only to the community school, I mean to the elementary school. But they were [INAUDIBLE], they studied by themselves. And this two sons became even writers and the lawyer in the village there. And one of the sons became a dentist. And the daughter married. Not that this is the point. The point is that this three sons with their families, in the beginning there was here two children, here one child, the other one also two children. They were living in one house, where there was only three rooms. Of course no bathroom, nothing like this. In addition, in the big hall, this old Jew had a pub. He was selling alcohol to the Polish people were coming, drinking there. Everything in this one house. Later on they move on, they somehow organize them, their living. And they have their own houses. No one survived, as far as I know, of all these families. No one. Of all these villagers, no one survived. Only one son and a son-in-law went to America. But I’m sure he’s not more alive and I don’t know if he had family. I don’t know. One grandson came also to America with a very tricky way. His father, who was already in America, sent him a girl from the United States, which he married there, so he could travel to America. But he’s not alive. He died. He was a sick boy. Lyman [ph] was his name. No one of all this family is around that I know, who survived.

Q: You went from, okay, so in 1942 you went to the Priest’s sister. I’m forgetting the name of the town.

A: Jurkow [ph]. Jurkow, by Szczow [ph].

Q: And that was near the time when you got involved with the AK?

A: Yes.

Q: Did you, we didn’t get to just talk a little bit more about your experiences in the AK. Did you have any, do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

A: Well, I’ll tell you. Thanks to this, my involvement in the AK, I could find a place after I had to escape because of the Gestapo which came. And thanks….the right place…

Q: Yeah, it’s going to, so I’ll… you don’t have to hold it.

A: Oh, and your hand. I have to support your hand.

Q: I guess… sometimes I have to lift up my hand.

A: Therefore I wanted to take from you. I understand it. I give you support.

Q: Tell me when you get tired.

A: Yeah, you’ll feel it. [LAUGHS]

Q: Go ahead.

A: Thanks to my involvement in the AK, I could find a place when I had to escape when the Gestapo came to pick us up. That was the positive thing what I have of it. Well, I didn’t experience too many fights except one when it was already 1944, when our unit was affiliated to a other unit and together we make an attack on a police station, German-Polish police station and the dam of Roznow [ph]. Roznow [ph], that was a big dam which they built on the Danube River, not Danube, but Dunajec river. That was a big dam. There was a little one later of in Szczow where in the beginning the Jews built it. But that was only in 1941, ‘42. But later on they took away all the Jews in other camps. I don’t know what they did to them. I don’t know. And there was then a fight, which was quite a real fight with this police, but the Polish police hand over herself and the Germans, some escaped, some were killed. And that was the source where the AK gets more weapons there, from there. No, I am not. You can hold it. I have here support. That was really when I, by my walking in the nights to the base where we have the weapons there, I met some of the AK men, which usually no AK men knew more than other two. That was a conspiracy. And interesting enough, the main active AK man in our unit, which was really an active guy, he was doing by himself a lot of things, he was a released criminal prisoner from Polish prison. And from him I got also for myself a gun, which I had one, but I didn’t have enough ammunition for it. And he was the one who give me another gun and then I have some more ammunition, some more for security. [PHONE RINGS] I didn’t use it because I didn’t need it, but I was ready in case I will need it. I had a grenade and I had a weapon, I wouldn’t go into prison voluntarily. I will kill some Germans and myself, that was my preparation to do. Otherwise I didn’t have anything special.

Q: Did you have any, I know that it was a challenge, the AK has a reputation for being very anti-Semitic. Did you have any trouble or close calls with that? With anybody finding out you were Jewish?

A: The only thing which I know, which came through me in the place where I was living, in the neighboring village was another unit of AK and there was a commandant, and all the orders who came from the main office were passing from one unit to the other. And through me was passing from this unit, through me to my unit. And that was already in 1944, by the end of 1944. I usually tried to know what happens because I didn’t have a radio. I was relying on the news which I got from the acquaintance, what they get to me. But from this, from this orders who came, I found some orders what happens at the front. There was always messages what is to do and so forth. And the last message which I got, I opened it too. Then I close it and I send it farther. There was a message, the Russians are approaching, not to hand over, not to give them over our units. And before they come in to clean up all the rest of the units of the people which are, which you will find in the forests, whether it is Russian partisans or other kind. It didn’t mention exactly Jews, but who was there in the forest? That was the only thing which I have personally met. From person to person, I didn’t met, only I say the other two AK men and they didn’t know that I am Jewish. They didn’t know. And they, we never spoke about it.

Q: Were you afraid at all during that time?

A: Well that is difficult to say, afraid. But you are always watching what you are saying, what you are doing, not to be different. You have to drink alcohol, the moonshine like they are and to do everything like they are doing when they come together. Even if you don’t know them, but you have to go on the way like this. And if they are cursing, you have to curse, if it is damn, or another. You have to be always, not try to be different, not try to be different, that’s the main point what you have to do. Scared? Of course, you are always scared. You know, when I was watching and going walking in the night from one village to the other, if I heard a frog jumping, my ears were so sensitive, I heared it. Because I want to know what happens around me, to be always prepared and always the hand on the gun. And I didn’t continue to go until I found out what is this noise, if it is not people. I find the frog and then I continue to go. That’s it.

Q: How did you meet Frantiszek Muschau, who you talked about in your other interview?

A: He was working on this farm…

END OF TAPE 20.U.11b, OSCAR HABER, SIDE A

BEGINNING OF TAPE 20.U.11b, OSCAR HABER, SIDE B

Q: So you were working together, and you got him involved eventually in the AK?

A: I recommended to my commandant, I recommended my commandant to accept him. I also accepted the other one, who became the priest, the anti-Semite, which was. And this Muschau was a very nice man, very nice man. And he was not like the common peasant. He was already more civilized because he was working in France as a miner, several years. And he came up from France. He brought some furniture from France. And he was already more progressive. And we exchanged different opinions about the situation, the political situation. About the Germans, about the Russians, so forth. We were politicizing. He was inviting me in his home. We are drinking and eating there. And he invite the neighbor. He has a neighbor there, one Kilbasa [ph], who came also and they want to hear what happens in the world. And I have also some news from my fellow man. So they accepted all the news from me as an intelligent Polish officer and Polish patriot, of course. And that was always, with the alcohol, with moonshine. I drank moonshine in my life, maybe I could make a bath in it and swim.

Q: Was that hard to get used to? Drinking that much without slipping when you were drunk? I mean, letting something slip?

A: I never allowed to be drunk. I always want to have my clear mind, because that was the most dangerous thing, to lose your mind. To be drunk. So when I felt, I run it out somewhere, I make like I am drinking another one, another one, but I didn’t drink it. But still it was quite a bit . I am happy that I could tolerate it as much as I could.

Q: What happened towards the end of the war? Did you have, you had information about what was happening through your involvement with the AK that you knew where the Russian front was and whether they were advancing and so forth?

A: Well you could hear. First of all, there was a situation about four months, more than four months. The Russians stopped on the river, they didn’t cross the river Vistula to help the Polish resistance, the Uprising in Poland for political reasons. They want the Poles to be annihilated by the Germans and then will go and kill the Germans. That was a very courageous thing to make from the Russian side. But that was a very, very bad thing instead to help to fight the Germans. The Germans killed a lot of Polish people. And of course, a lot between them the Jewish, which were fighting with the Poles, from the rest which remained there between the Poles. And we have all the news about the uprisings. There was, in the bunker where the commandant, ours, was sitting, they had a radio, which they are listening to Radio London, from London, BBC, they have all the news and the movements of the Russian Army. And I knew in one day they brought to me, two English pilots, who escaped from the camp, from the German camp, and I had to transport them to the Russians, because the United States had air bases in Russia. Because the United States were already allies with the Russians. And I was already, I said already good bye to Fryda and I was already on the way to go. But in the meantime when they came to the next base they told me not to go farther because the field are mined everywhere. I will not be able to cross. So I left them at this Polish unit there AK where I brought them there and I came back to Fryda there. And we are waiting the other four months and then you didn’t need the knowledge, you heared the bombardment with the Russians started on the river there, from a distance to bombard artillery. And then they started to move. And that was it. And so we became so-called liberated.

Q: One second before we go on, I just want to make sure I understand your… So, you were involved with the AK, but you were also working on a farm? Is that right? So how did you? When did you?

A: In the night.

Q: Oh, at night time you worked with the AK?

A: The AK didn’t work in the day. They were always working in the nights.

Q: Were you, you weren’t, were you getting any sleep?

A: Oh well I came, it wasn’t until late at night. It was till twelve, one o’clock. And then in the day I was sleeping there. Where we had a shelter with Fryda there, over the pigs there. We had a shelter there and there we were sleeping. We had enough sleeping there. Enough sleeping.

Q: Did the people who were sheltering you know that you were working…?

A: Oh no. They knew that I am AK, and that I am officer, but no, they are not suspicious that I am Jewish. No, no, no. Because the son, which is studying for priest. He was by himself, he said, if I will catch a Jew, I will cut in pieces and they should salt on it. As I said, he was a very, very bad anti-Semite. His parents were not anti-Semites. They were very simple peasants. They didn’t understand and think about it. Well, they boarded Jews and they went to the shtetl, they had their acquaintance with Jews. But of course they preferred, they loved the Polish and the Catholic. It is normal, it is normal. But they didn’t hate especially the Jews. But the son, which was already studying priesthood and they knew already, they told him already, at this time they were still teaching that the Jews killed Jesus and so forth. So, this young priest, no wonder that he hated Jews. That was indoctrinated.

Q: So you mentioned the “so called” liberation. Did you feel in any way as if you were free?

A: It was a very, very, very mixed feeling. On one side you felt the Russians are coming, you will not be more in danger as a Pole, but as a Jew, you continue to be in danger. And then came the reality. You find out what happened. Because until now, you heared only, they killed here, they killed here, they killed here. But the disaster so big, you realized only slowly when you were liberated. When you came to the big city, Krakow, which has before the war, in the war even, in the beginning, ninety thousand Jews and you barely find five or six people which are Jews. That was a trauma which you couldn’t, you couldn’t hand it. You were, and you were asking by yourself, why me? Why didn’t Anna do what I did? You start to analyze and to understand and those are things that you cannot understand until today. Because there were wiser people than me, speaking Polish better than me or the same like me, having connection with people. Why didn’t they survive? Why didn’t they choose our way? Was it right we did? And what is the role we have to play by being alive? Try to organize a Jewish life, or forget about it? No Jews, no Jewish life. You are Polish. Go on, be a Pole. And that’s what many Jews do it, did it. And there are until today Jews which are living as Poles. They said, ‘Forget about it.’ But we couldn’t do it. Our roots are too strong. I don’t know. We didn’t know what to do. We didn’t know what to do. We were poor like mices. We had to look, to find something to eat, not to speak about finding a way to organize your life, to start to be a human being. You are out of it, you are no human anymore. You start to realize you live surrounded in animosity. And you look for some Jews. And I found some. I remember the first night we didn’t have where to go. No home. But somehow we met somebody. I don’t remember. I think I knew these people or recognize them as Jews. And I did ask him, ‘Who else is here?’ He said, ‘Come with me.’ And I went with him, or with her better. And we came in a dark room and there were already several Jewish people, survivors from all kinds of surviving. And we sit there in this room, in this dark room and started to sing Jewish songs, Yiddish songs, very nostalgical Jewish songs. All the Yiddish songs were sad, all were sad. But in this moment, they were healing. They were like Balsam on a wound. Remembrance for a moment, your heritage. And we passed this night, I don’t remember, on songs and somehow sleeping sitting on a broken couch. All together there were maybe six, seven people. And each one with his song, not with story. We didn’t talk yet about story. We, somehow, I don’t know how to explain it. Is it shame or is it… I don’t know. But we are here. We left everything behind and we are sitting here. Nostalgia, remembering Yiddish songs. Don’t think even what to do, where to go farther. But we woke up in the morning, woke up. We didn’t take our work clothes. We were in the clothes which we had, these poor clothes. We find out from one of them that one of my friends survived. Where is he? Who is it? He was before the war, he was a lady beautician parlor. Father was a barber, and he had a nice sister. And I used to come to their house before the war. And he survived on papers. But he was already in the Russian intelligence. Polish uniform, the Russian intelligence. And somehow I met him. I don’t remember exactly how. And I asked him, ‘What is to do. Where to go? I don’t have a house. I don’t know where to go.’ He said, ‘I got back my apartment.’ There are two bedrooms, a kitchen on the third floor in the [INAUDIBLE] Jewish section. But he says, ‘You can go there. And somehow we will find there some way to sleep.’ But there were already some people in, which survived Auschwitz. That was a girl, a boy, and another girl. And then came other people. I don’t know who this were. We all were there, but we didn’t have a bed to sleep. We slept on the floor. And I decided, we decided to look around, and we went to my village. To this older woman, who took us on. And she fed us, she gave us to eat. And we left in their house some of our clothes, some of our furnishes. And she was already, she, not her son, who lived nearby… because my mother, my grandmother, my brother’s sister lived in her house and I lived in the son’s house. There I make a little clinic there in his house. And we went there to sleep in the night in his house. In the night, somebody was knocking at the door and the window. And there’s, in Russian, ‘Kroy [ph]! Open! You have here Jews!’ He said, ‘I don’t have Jews. They are Polish people like you, like we.’ They came in. He opened, because this was soldiers which were in the camp, where there was once a camp. There was a field hospital for wounded Russian soldiers. And this were wounded soldiers which were there in this, but they were strong enough to go in between the Poles and to make connections with them. And I understand, I am not sure, I am ninety-nine percent sure. They went to the rich Poles where we left a lot of things and he told them to go there, the Jews came here. You have to kill them, very simple. And for them to kill a Jew is like kill a German. They like a soldier, especially a wounded soldier, a front soldier. And they came in and said, ‘Are you Jewish?’ And I understand Ukrainian, too, because in the Polish Army where I served there were mostly Ukrainians there. I said, ‘There’s no Jews here.’ ‘Who are you?’ We had the papers. Said, ‘We are here, only sleeping here. We are Polish.’ Well, okay, they left. They went to the house of the mother, the mother’s house and they the same. ‘Where are the Jews here?’ ‘There are no Jews.’ They gave some shots in the air and they left. In the morning we said to the son of our, we told him to help us to move. We want to move back to Krakow. But there was no communication, there was no train. And I want to take some of this furniture to have something to sleep. So, he took the horse of his mother and the other horse from a neighbor and a wagon and we started to move to Krakow. That is about sixty miles from, hundred kilometers, hundred ten kilometers, something like this.

Q: What had happened to your house in Brzeznica?

A: Our house was burned.

Q: When did that happen?

A: It was burned. It happens when we were there still. After we left, close to the house there was a railway and a spark of this coal fire fell on the house there and it burned. So, there were not house. And these Polish people, who used to live in the house, took over our house. He was living in the barn which was close to it. There was a horse barn and coal barn and he was living there. So for us he wasn’t moving out and I didn’t want him and I didn’t want to be there. So we started the way to go. And we didn’t want to go with the main road because there still the Russian Army was moving. And they were taking the horses from the Polish people for their use.

Q: About when was this? Do you know the approximate date?

A: It was 22nd, no 25th of January, 1945, after the Russians came in. We start there the way to Krakow. It is not describable the conditions. We had to take food for the horses first because you couldn’t buy this. Nobody would sell it. The money didn’t have any value anymore. And the horses, if you don’t feed them, they will not go. And you have to have the food on the way back, too. So the most of the wagon was food. And we took also some of the furniture which we left there and some of clothings we left there, also. They took it out from the ground, they dig it out. And they give us back everything, everything. They were very honest people. On the way my wife was more dead than alive. She was fainting and I had to do, to work on her. And by the way we were going around way, it was a longer way but more secure. [INAUDIBLE], where the army wasn’t going. I knew the Polish geography very well. I know how I will get to Krakow by longer, around ways. We came to an ort [ph], which was called Zakroczym. First of all we passed a place which is called Tochow [ph]. At Tochow there used to live a sister of my mother, with her family. Her husband, her daughter with her husband. I don’t know how many children she had in the meantime. And the sons all run away to Russia, and they survived in Russia. The husband too, the old husband, too. But he died in Siberia, in Russia. They all were sent to Siberia to Infada [ph], to Sever [ph], to Jakutz [ph], or Jakutzia [ph]. That was where they banished all the criminals in the older country revolutions there. With all the history there, there were trees which ten people have to surround it. Such a tree, such forest. And they brought them there and they said to them, ‘Here you have to live.’ No houses. Their houses were from snow, and their windows were from ice. And they had to work there, but all right that’s about them. That’s another story. But I came to this Tochow. And I did ask the Polish people there because no Jew was there, ‘What happens?’ They said, ‘All were killed and some remained they were sent to the ghetto at Tarnow.’ That was the end. No one Jew was there. No one Jew. So I continued to the next shtetl which was Zakroczym. And of course we have to feed the horses. And we want to come down to move a little bit like I say to you, to try if we can go. We were sitting on the wagon all the time. And this poor Polish guy, this Soltys Stanislaw was with us, he was the foreman. And while we wanted to come down, Fryda fell down on the ground, fainted again. I save her. I put her on the ground laying down, make some exercises with her. Put her on the wagon back, she faint again several times. And when we fed the horses, we went to continue to go. But the night approach and in the night you couldn’t, you are not allowed because it is curfew. The Russians didn’t joke. Whom they found on the street they killed. So, I went to the first Polish house there where there was a little bit space…

END OF TAPE 20.U.11b, OSCAR HABER, SIDE B