Oral History Interview with Melvin Goldfarb

20.U.9.GOLDFARB

MELVIN GOLDFARB

INTERVIEWED BY

ARWEN DONAHUE

MAY 12, 2000

HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS IN KENTUCKY

KENTUCKY ORAL HISTORY SOCIETY

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ARWEN DONAHUE: This is an interview with Melvin Goldfarb. It’s Arwen Donahue conducting the interview and it’s May the 12th, 2000. This is part of the Holocaust Survivors in Kentucky Interview Project, supported by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Kentucky Oral History Commission. And we’re going to be focusing primarily on Mr. Goldfarb’s experiences after the Holocaust, because he has been interviewed about his Holocaust era and pre-Holocaust era experiences by the Survivors of the Shoah Foundation. And this is tape number one, side A. In your prior interview with the Shoah Foundation you talked about how you were, about the end of the war and I thought we could start near the time that the war ended and move towards the present from there. So right now…

MELVIN GOLDFARB: When I was liberated in 1945, May the 6th, I was almost unconscious, ninety-five percent, I would say, dead. I weighed sixty pounds, but I knew that something different and I seen a lot of people around me and I seen the medics pass by me, the American medic pass by me and he motioned with his hand like he’s a goner. And I said to myself, no I want to live now. So they went around one more time. I was laying on the floor. And they picked me up and they said that, well they seen that I got my eyes open and they picked me up and they took me to a hospital about nine kilometer from Ebensee in Austria. It’s about sixty miles from Mauthausen.

DONAHUE: Before you go on and talk about that, did you, what were, were you able to speak to each other and understand each other?

GOLDFARB: I did not. I couldn’t speak nothing. I just almost was gone. I was ninety-five percent dead. But something in my mind, something that told me there is something different. I don’t know if there would be another day I would be gone, see. Be a goner. But anyway the medics picked me up and they placed me in the hospital about nine kilometers from where I was liberated. The name of the town was Goozone(SP), like I said it was a couple miles from Ebensee.

DONAHUE: How did you know that the people who liberated you were Americans?

GOLDFARB: I did not, well at first, I didn’t know. I just took it that something different happened here, because they were helping out people. They were picking me up from the floors. I was laying on the floor, unconscious almost. Then I found out, a couple of days later I found out that the Americans liberated us. We are liberated. We are free. And they took us in the hospital like I said and they nourished slowly. You know a lot of people died because when they were liberated they took in so much food, they were hungry, you know. So you ate and ate and they died while they were eating. They ate too much. But I was lucky on that, because it was under a doctor’s care and they slowly, slowly fed us. And it took me until August of ninety-six, no 1946, from 1945, May until August, 1946. That’s about fifteen months. I could stand up on my feet and I could function. It took that long a time to put me back together like they say.

DONAHUE: And during that time did you develop any friendships? What was going on in your life?

GOLDFARB: Well at that time when I was, you know, normalcy arrived at me, so I knew that my mother has three brothers in America, in United States. So I used to get, well some people got the newspaper, Yiddish, Jewish newspapers from New York. And they had announcement who survived and who was looking for whom. So I put an ad in the paper while I was in the hospital, in ‘46 I put an ad in the paper that I am Melvin Goldfarb, my mother’s name is Shiness(SP) and I’m looking for relatives. I knew she had three brothers, but I didn’t know their names, didn’t know where they were. So, one of the uncles of mine read this newspaper ad in Houston, Texas. And he was elderly and he contact his son, his oldest son, Marvin Shiness(SP) in Alice, Texas that I’m survived and if he would correspond with me. And I still got the letter today, the one he wrote me. It was in July, I think, in 1946. And they first find out that I’m alive. He wrote me a very emotional letter and he ask me if I need something. He was willing to send me the papers and food and money, if I need anything. So, I wrote him, I need, I wanted to go to the United States. There’s no future for me here. There’s nobody left, all the family is gone. And there’s no place to go. If he would send me a visa, the papers, I would appreciate it. And he did, he did send me the….But in the meantime, in a year later, I was married, marrying my wife. So he did send the paper for both of us.

DONAHUE: Had you ever met him before?

GOLDFARB: Never met him. Never, these are just a man that he knew who I am and he knew of me, but he was a wonderful human being. Some people, you know, they’re compassionate, some people have compassion, some of them didn’t. It didn’t bother them because they were not affected by it.

DONAHUE: I wanted to just zero in, if we can, for a little while on that time right after the war ended and you were in the hospital. Was that hospital run, who was running that hospital?

GOLDFARB: By the Americans, the Americans ran the hospital. It was the American zone, you know. Austria was liberated by the Americans. And they were running the hospital and it was very good treatment. And thank God for the Americans, because otherwise we wouldn’t make it, we wouldn’t be alive. The American medics, soldiers and doctors.

DONAHUE: By that time had you formed a really strong feeling that you wanted to come to the United States?

GOLDFARB: Yes, well, there was no place for me to go. We didn’t have no family, everything was destroyed, so there was no place for me to go. So, I asked the cousin, I said if you could send me the papers, I would come to the United States. And he did. And we came in 1949, we came to the United States. At that time the Immigration Service noticed that I had a spot on the lungs. I had TB while I was in the camps, so they took me off to Ellis Island for thirty days. And they observed me and they checked the lungs to see if I’m all right now. And thank God I was all right and they let me go, because otherwise they wouldn’t, if you have TB and it was active, they wouldn’t let you out. They don’t want no sick people there.

DONAHUE: What was that experience like for you?

GOLDFARB: It was a bad experience. Ellis Island, well it was not a bad place, but I mean here you go through all this, what we went through and you come to the golden land and you see, and you can’t get in there. It was a terrible effect. I was worried to death, they find something, they’re liable to send you back. Where the heck are you going? So, after thirty days they decided that the DP, I mean the TB was arrested and it was safe from the well nourishing, what we went through. And I weighed only about sixty pounds, so no wonder I had TB, malnourishment. Didn’t have nothing to eat.

DONAHUE: But you met your wife before you actually came…

GOLDFARB: I met my wife in a DP camp. You see, after 1946, after I went out from the hospital – so where do I go? There was a DP camp in Bad(SP) was the name of the city, was a DP camp established by the UMRA, United Nations Relief Organization or something and the Jewish organizations. And we had the soup kitchens there. And we went for a meal. So she was there too, she came in from 1946. She was liberated from Czechoslovakia and she came to the soup kitchen. And I was, well, there was quite a few people there. So, we met in the soup kitchen. And that’s the way we meet each other and we got married. We didn’t have any, didn’t have nothing. But we needed each other and we’re still married after fifty-four years or something. We married in 1947, October. We married in Vienna. The DP camp ceased to exist in ‘48 and more people, they first, they send us out to Lent, Eidlesburg, I think was the name of the camp. And then we had to go, in order to go to the United States to immigrate you have to go to the council and that was in Vienna. But you have to travel to the Russian territory. So, we had to hide. Oh, we had so much headaches there to get to the, but anyway we got it. We came to Vienna. We didn’t have much. There was no room, no board, no nothing, so we had to find a place to stay. That was in 1947, ‘48. We stayed about a year in Vienna.

DONAHUE: How did you pay for your place?

GOLDFARB: My cousin send me a little money and we were on food stamps. We used to get food stamps. It was not much. At that time you couldn’t buy much even if you had money. You had to depend on the food stamps. And somehow we rented one room, an Austrian lady. And we managed it. Didn’t have much, but we managed what we had.

DONAHUE: What were your relationships like? I mean you’re living among the Austrians, so many of whom had perpetrated…

GOLDFARB: Well, I didn’t live too long. They didn’t show no malice to us right after the war, you know. But we had normal relation. We didn’t have too much to do with the population in general. The people that we met were nice, nice, didn’t have no grief coming. They treat us all right.

DONAHUE: Were you working at all while you were in Austria?

GOLDFARB: No I wasn’t working. You couldn’t get no job. Nobody would hire you, because I couldn’t speak the language. So you had to live on almost on the handouts, on the food stamps and what the cousin send me a little bit and we made out. We make out. If you have to make out, you make out.

DONAHUE: What languages did you speak at the time?

GOLDFARB: Well we spoke, well it was no English. But we spoke a little bit German, you know. German-Austrian is about the same language. We could get along with it, with the language. Well, the Polish, you don’t need no Polish there. But a little German, you could get by with it.

DONAHUE: Did you and your wife speak Yiddish together or Polish?

GOLDFARB: Yiddish, yeah. No, well like now, there’s no Polish anymore, we just speak English. But we spoke Yiddish and my wife, don’t speak too good Yiddish, but she speak Polish in her parts of the country where she’s from. From the eastern, from the Western part of Poland. See, I come from the Eastern part of Poland on the Russian border. That’s where we spoke Yiddish, more Yiddish. But in the Western part of Poland, like on the German borders, they would have spoke more the Polish language was used.

DONAHUE: During that time before you came to the United States did you consider at all going back to P[INAUDIBLE] and seeing…?

GOLDFARB: No, no was nobody, nobody there. They expelled us, ten thousand Jews they expelled and about a hundred and forty-nine survived the Holocaust actually. So, there was no place to go and I didn’t have no, no reason to go there. There’s no family, nobody left.

DONAHUE: How did you know at the time that your – I know, how did you know at the time about your extended family, that no one had survived?

GOLDFARB: Well I’ve seen that, I’ve seen this. When we came to Auschwitz we were separated, all the older people went to the left, the younger people to the right. And we knew, in the camps we knew what happening to the older people were right there sent to the crematorium at Auschwitz and Birkenau. To the gas chambers. So we knew what happened to them. We didn’t have not hope. But I had hope that my sister maybe survive. She was two years older than me. But I looked for her and there was no trace of her.

DONAHUE: When did you start looking for your, or when did you find out about what had happened? You mentioned the number of about a hundred people surviving at the camps.

GOLDFARB: Well because, in [INAUDIBLE] right after I got out from the hospital, in the DP camps we had correspondence with people that survived in Puj[INAUDIBLE]. And they lived in Germany in a little town. I forgot the name of the town. But anyway, most of Trepuj[INAUDIBLE] start to, they wanted to live in the same place. So, they knew how many survived. Because that was ‘47 already. So they knew, they knew how many people survived from Puj[INAUDIBLE] and they took count. And that’s what they decided, that people, ninety-nine people, a hundred people and forty-nine survived in the forests. And that’s it. So we knew what happened. That all of them are perished and there was no reason, no reason to go there anymore. But we did go in 1990, I think we went to Auschwitz and Birkenau, because I knew exactly where the railroad took the parents and I said a prayer, a Kaddish prayer for the dead. And that’s the only time I been to Europe.

DONAHUE: What made you decide to take that trip at that time?

GOLDFARB: Well, I said to myself. I wanted to, this is obligation that I have to say Kaddish for the dead. So, I obligated myself and I done it, what I obligated myself. It was difficult trip even then. In 1990 it was not easy for me to go back, but I wanted to. I wanted to go back and say a prayer for the dead. Memorialize the ashes, let’s put it that way.

DONAHUE: Did you return to Puj[INAUDIBLE] at that time?

GOLDFARB: No, I did not. It was empty town and nobody there. I didn’t want to go back there. I just went to [INAUDIBLE]. I went to the place where I was liberated. I went to Auschwitz, Birkenau, Mauthausen because those are close by. And then I went to the cemetery where, at Ebensee. A lot of people perished right after the war, like I said. They ate too much and just empty stomachs and they died. And a lot of people died after the Liberation, so I went and laid flowers on the cemetery. I went to a DP camp in [INAUDIBLE]. We visited the DP camp there. I went to Ebensee and I looked at the place and I said to myself, such a beautiful mountain, such beautiful scenery. And we stayed in the stone quarries and cut the stones out from underneath. And we were dead people, I mean almost dead and we worked and worked and worked. That’s just amazing that anybody can survive that and fifty-five years later telling the story about it. It just amazes me. It’s an unbelievable story. If you don’t go through it you would never believe a human being can live through all this and still function normally. Because a lot of people ask you, well how did you function in life? How did you raise a family? How did you do this? If you went through so much. Well, that’s human nature. You go through so much and if you have to, you suffer through it. And then we came in 1949, we came to the United States and we spent thirty days on Ellis Island. And then we went and stayed with an uncle. She had one uncle, my mother, in New York. Stayed a couple of weeks in New York and then we were, we had this visa to Alice, Texas. So, we went to Alice, Texas and the cousin waited on us, picked us up. Such a wonderful person. He said, well you don’t have to worry about nothing, now you just worry about your health. He picked us up in San Antonio, because Alice, Texas is a small community. And he had a hardware store and he rented a house right across the street from his house and we had a nice four room house. He gave me a job in the hardware store and I was there for three and a half years, from 1949 until 1953. Then we went, then my wife knew that her sister, also a Holocaust survivor, she was sent to Louisville, Kentucky with her husband. And she wanted to live, you know, to be together. So, we came to Louisville and we settled here. It wasn’t easy because I left a wonderful situation. I left nice place to live and I had a decent salary and I had already the youngest, I mean the oldest son was born in 1950 in August. So, I had a son already, two and a half years old. But I took a chance and I came to Louisville. It wasn’t easy for me at that time. I couldn’t rent a place. It was very hard to find a place to live. Didn’t have no money, didn’t have no trade. Didn’t have no job. I left a job there in Alice, but one thing my cousin told me; if it doesn’t work out, you can always come back to Alice. I’ll never forget this, the wonderful…. He said, well he’d hoped that it’s going to work out. But I didn’t have anything. I just left, packed up and left and that’s all. And we hoped it’s going to work out. I never did – so many times I thought about it, going back. But always the pro and con, get us fighting. And then I got a job selling appliances from door-to-door. It was a hard job, go to the Projects at night. I worked on commission basis. Then I was making a little bit too much money, so the fellow that employed me, said I’m going to cut your commission. Instead of ten percent, I’m going to give you five percent. So, I got mad. I said, you’re not giving me no five percent. I’m not going to work for you no more. After – at that time I spoke pretty good English, so I went and I got a job with the Singer Sewing Machine Company selling sewing machines. They gave you a territory and they gave you a quota. You have to sell six hundred dollars worth of sewing machines. And they gave you a car, a little wagon. And I was traveling and I must have been a good salesman. I sold it in about two or three days. I sold it. And I was looking for something to do it for myself…

END OF TAPE 20.U.9a, MELVIN GOLDFARB, SIDE A

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BEGINNING OF TAPE 20.U.9a, MELVIN GOLDFARB, SIDE B

DONAHUE: This is tape number one, side B of an interview with Melvin Goldfarb. And before we go on, I have a few questions. Do you remember a little bit about your journey to the United States and about your arrival and your first impressions?

GOLDFARB: [LAUGHS] Well, the travel, we were sick on the boat. We were vomiting almost the whole journey. We seen the beautiful white bread, I’d never seen white bread in my life and they served good food, but I couldn’t eat. We were just sick as dogs until about, oh maybe, I think the journey took about ten days or longer. The last day maybe I got a little better, but otherwise we couldn’t eat at all. We were sick. When, well, when we came in, like I said, we were on Ellis Island, but the food was good. We were still hungry. Not hungry like in the camps, but still you eat with your eyes. We came to Alice, Texas, we spent all the money on the food because we were hungry. You know, you’re hungry for so long. Actually we were hungry in the ghettos, from ’41 until ‘45, four years of hunger. That’s all our wish was to eat enough bread and potatoes and then die on a full stomach. Look what God grant us, fifty-five years later and we’re still alive, thank God. And we come to this wonderful country and the opportunities they gave us. We thank God every day that we’re here, that God grant us the strength, that we were liberated by the Americans. At least as many times in business, I was in business for thirty-five, thirty-six years in old Louisville area, but so many times people come and complain about this and this. I say, you ought to kiss the ground a hundred times in which you were born here. You don’t know what misery is. You don’t know what hunger is. You think you’re hungry. You’re hungry for steaks, but you’re not actually hungry. There’s nobody actually hungry here. They say well there's hungry, there’s hungry for certain things to eat, but do you have bread and potatoes? You don’t know what hunger is. But anyway after I quit the Singer Sewing Machine Company, I was looking around for some kind of a business to go in, because I knew I couldn’t support the family from the salary that I got. So, there was a grocery for sale on Third and Brandies by the University of Louisville. And at that time I saved up a little money, but I didn’t have much money, so we went to the synagogues. Each schule, synagogue give a loan, what do you call it? They loaned out people, three hundred dollars was the maximum they loaned you out to get you started. So I went, there were about three or four synagogues and I borrowed twelve hundred dollars and the little money I had myself and I had a partner, because I couldn’t swing it myself. He had fifteen hundred dollars and he borrowed money from the schules. So we put together a little money there and we both went in the grocery business in the old Louisville area. I was there for fifteen years, eighteen years something like this, until the Urban Renewal come and pushed us out. They wanted to take the property for the University of Louisville expansion. And after I built up a pretty good business – well at that time my partner wanted to get out and I paid him out in ‘61 after seven years he’s been with me. I paid him out, so I was the sole owner of the grocery and my oldest son was twelve, twelve years old at that time. I used to open up seven days a week. So he worked with me on Sunday because nobody wanted to work on Sunday. He was a cashier, twelve years old, he was a cashier, already working. I worked for seven days for many, many years to educate, you know, to send the children, just to send them to day school cost a lot of money. There was no college yet. At that time, in ‘55 I had another son and in ‘63 I had another son. I had two sons and a son, had three sons. By 1968, I was in the grocery business from ’54 to ‘68. What is that fourteen years, fifteen years, but anyway, after I got the, after the Urban Renewal came along and they took us out, bought us out supposedly. They paid, three thousand dollars they paid me for the fixtures and they said, and that’s it. So after so many years of being in business and building up a clientele, they pushed me out from the business and I wound up being in the forties, not having much of anything to rely on or to go and do something else. I looked around at that time and there was a department store, family department store for sale on Second and Oak. And I made arrangements with a fellow, I had a little money saved up and the rest of it I paid him out. I was in the grocery business, I mean in the clothing business from ‘68 until I retired, until ‘89. I was in the clothing business and it was not an easy business to be in because it’s entirely different business. You had to go to New York every three months to buy the merchandise and in order for the people to come to you, to trade with you, you had to give them a reason to come. I didn’t have enough parking. At Second and Oak, there is no parking, just meter parking. There’s many times I wondered why the people come to me, but we treat everybody right and I give them the right merchandise for the right price and I been at it for the rest of my working days. Spent all my lifetime you could say in the old Louisville area, by the University of Louisville. First the grocery, then the department store. I treated people right. We had some nice write-up in the paper when I went out of business. People cried. Because I helped out. The needy people come to, with families, they had no shoes, so I put them in shoes and you have money, you’ll pay me. But this kind of merchants, there’re not too many left.

DONAHUE: I want to ask you a little bit more about the time before you came to Louisville. Do you, well you went from New York….What were your impressions, your first impressions of the United States? I mean coming to New York and seeing that big city.

GOLDFARB: Well, it’s overwhelming, because in New York, actually when I went, we had an uncle there in New York. And he was a working man, but you know was very, very happy to see me. His children were happy to see me. And then I had another uncle, had two uncles in New York, but the uncle already died when I came in, and his wife, the widow was left and his sons, his son, Marvin is his name, took us out for a ride around New York. And I remember that he stopped in at, what’s the name of this ice cream place? We have so many flavors?

DONAHUE: Baskin-Robbins?

GOLDFARB: Baskin-Robbins! [LAUGHS] He told me so many and I had a good portion of ice cream there. Oh, it was so wonderful. It remind me from way before the war you can get an ice cream like this. So that was just overwhelming, you know. I went through life, actually I was twenty-one years old, twenty years old. I never sit in a car. I never was in a car in my life. When I came to Texas the fellow that worked with me, a young fellow, because I needed to drive. So, he took the truck, we had a panel truck and he shifted, you know with the shift? I said, well, how am I going to learn on this? He took me out on the highway there, you try it. And I almost ran into a barn there, but I tried and I learned it. You can’t tell people that you are twenty-one years old, you never been in a car before in your life. In the old country was not, no cars, you had to walk. You walked, very few of them. And then what we went through in the camps and the DP camp, there was no cars. So I was a grown man and I never was in a car.

DONAHUE: Was that frightening to you to have, to feel like there were so many things to learn?

GOLDFARB: Sure. I’ll never forget the first time I went in the hardware store and he told me to check the merchandise that had come in. And he used to buy it from [INAUDIBLE] from Louisville, Kentucky. Used to come in, he was in the wholesale business. He had the retail business, but he used to buy from the wholesale in Louisville. So the first shipment, I’ll never forget, the percolator and I could not remember the name percolator. For so many days I said percolator, percolator until I got it in my mind. And I checked in a percolator, three or four, six and I just couldn’t remember it. That stands out in my mind. Everything was overwhelming, but you get used to it with time. You have to get used to it. It’s a different world, a different life, a different world. Never seen refrigerators, stoves, washing machines, radios, televisions. And people say, how could you exist, how could you live? Nobody else had it. Didn’t have no running water, didn’t have no water inside. You had to go outside to find a pump that it’s not frozen. We didn’t have no water. We didn’t have no toilets in the house. We had electricity, that’s about all. In the eastern part of Poland usually, they were backwards. Now where my wife was born, she had water, she had running water at home, but no refrigerator and no stoves, no washing machines, no things that here. How could it be? How could you make out? No radio? Here in the old country we used to go, there was one rich fellow, a Jew, there was one rich one. And he had a radio. He opened up on Friday nights, we had to go to the window to listen to the music. On Friday night he played the radio. [LAUGHS] That’s the only entertainment. But we were happy, we were, you know, belonged to different organizations and we went to different lectures and we….I played an instrument at school, a mandolin. And that’s, we were busy doing cultural things. We didn’t need all this. You don’t have it, you don’t need it, you don’t miss it. That’s, a lot of people….If you think about today, what kind of, it just don’t make sense the whole thing. You don’t have refrigerator, you don’t have a stove, you don’t have a washing machine, you don’t have electric this, electric that and then we managed it somehow. My mother worked all her life and she, Thursday, Friday morning, she had everything ready for Shabbat, for the Saturday meal. Didn’t have to have all the conveniences and didn’t have [INAUDIBLE], but somehow it always come out, the meal come out and we were fed. We had plenty to eat. But it was a tough life, but life was hard in the old country. But it was a happy life, like I said, nobody had any more. We were happy what we had. We worked hard. My father and mother both worked in a store, where we were buyers of commodities from the farmers and then we smoked herrings on Friday, on Saturday night. On Sunday we smoked the herring. We had two businesses to support the family and to send us to private school, me and my sister. And then we went on vacations on the summer time and that took a lot, because we were considered the middle class. And that’s what the middle class was, working, very hard they worked. It was cold, twenty, winter time it was twenty below zero. There was no heat in the store, so you had to have a fire to warm the hands. I just don’t know. Many times I think about it and I wonder how did they make it, how did they stand it so long in the stores with no heat and come home? And she always was, to warm the back. That was the pleasure of life on Friday, she could warm her back a little bit and be by a warm stove. That was a big accomplishment. Life was hard, but like I said, it was happy. We were happy people. We lost it all. What a price we paid for our freedom. Nobody, nobody could help us actually. The whole world stood still. The whole world looked the other way. That was a tragedy beyond anybody’s imagination.

DONAHUE: I’m wondering, when you first came to the United States, did you feel angry at all, at this country for its lack of action?

GOLDFARB: No, I didn’t know. Well, the only thing I did know at that time, why they didn’t bomb the railroad tracks to Auschwitz. They were so close to Auschwitz. They would bomb at least the railroad tracks, so they won’t be able to transport so many people, so many Jews. Some of them would be alive. I would say not all of them, but at least some of them would be alive. But it did not happen, politics. The world, it’s not only the United States. The whole world stood by and done nothing. The responsibilities, everybody had a part in it. And it just, a tragedy like this, it never happened in the history of humanity and I hope it never will. Because, you know you have things happening, ten thousand people got killed, twenty thousand, but not six million, wiped out a people all together, a culture. You know that is a rich culture and there were good Jews, pious Jews, learned Jews for a thousand years. They wiped it out in a few years. And it is just unreal, but unfortunately it happened and we are the ones to tell the story. It’s a miracle that we are alive, what we went through. But it’s not our doings, it’s God’s doings. God has a part in it, because he want us to continue, the generation, a new Jewish generation to continue the Jewishness. Thousands and thousands of years, that’s been trying to destroy the Jew. The Jew is always alive. [INAUDIBLE] That’s, the Jew will never be destroyed. That’s the way I think about it.

DONAHUE: How did you get from New York to Texas, to Alice?

GOLDFARB: Well, it’s by train. After two weeks we stayed in New York and then by train we went to San Antonio, Texas and over there, my cousin, Marvin Shiness(SP) and Blanche Shiness(SP), they were waiting for me. And they took care of us, the first meal I think was a cafeteria style. They took us to a cafeteria style. I didn’t see this, all kinds of food and I piled up. [LAUGHS] It’s funny. Now it’s funny because he was saying to me, eat slowly. [LAUGHS] Nobody will take it away from you. It sounds funny now, but it wasn’t funny at that time. Oh boy. Well, I just happened to be a fortunate fellow that I had a wonderful, wonderful human being that cared for me. And his wife spoke Yiddish. He spoke Yiddish, too. In the United States, I think he came when he was sixteen or something. So he was a pretty grown man. But he was a very capable man. He almost knew everything about hardware. And at that time it was a pretty good sized store, because he had about ten people working for him. Mechanics and [INAUDIBALE] All the ordering….You remember when the Korean War broke out in 1950, ‘51, I was delivering. I delivered with another delivery man. We delivered in one day twenty-one refrigerators, Kelvinator refrigerator, because everybody was buying it. Everybody was afraid there’s not going, since the war broke out there’s not going to be no refrigerators. So, we delivered that many refrigerators. And it was hot. Usually it’s very hot there. It was a hundred and twenty degrees, but it’s a dry heat. Well was no fans, was no air conditioning at that time. And I still have a fan that I bought it in Alice, Texas about fifty years ago. I still got it today. [LAUGHS]

DONAHUE: Was there any Jewish community in Alice?

GOLDFARB: Ten Jews, ten Jewish people. Most of them were merchants. There was a slaughterhouse, the Jew had one. There was a jewelry store and a department store and a men’s store. In fact, the men’s store, the men’s store, the department store and the hardware store belonged to my cousin and a cousin of his. They were partners together and they had three stores or something. They were, I wouldn’t say they were rich, but they were pretty well off. He was a very, very nice man. He had furniture, he had everything furnished when we came to live there, in a house right across the street from him. It was very pleasant. Very, very fine man. Some people come to brothers and sisters and they didn’t want no part of them. I mean, you had so many instances where a fellow came to a brother and brother just turned his back on him. So here is a man, cousin and was very, very good to me.

DONAHUE: Was there any kind of religious observance among the Jews that lived there?

GOLDFARB: No, you had to go to Corpus Christi, forty miles or sixty miles away. Corpus Christi had a lot of Jews. And we used to go for the high holidays, for some holidays we went to Corpus Christi and we stayed over the holiday season. But there was no synagogues in Alice, Texas. Small community. We spent only a few years there, three or four years, maybe.

DONAHUE: Did you have contact with people outside of the Jewish community there?

GOLDFARB: No, well, the customers, the Mexicans. You had to speak two languages at once. I picked up Spanish and English at the same time because most of the customers were Spanish. And even the young people didn’t want, for some reason or another, they want to speak their language. They could speak perfect English, but no, they just want to speak Spanish. It’s a funny thing. Just had some wonderful people there, spoke Spanish. In fact, I had a young fellow that tried to help me out. And he built a fence around the house, because I had a little boy. At that time I had my son, my oldest son, in ’50, ’51. So they come by the house and build a little fence and tried to help. Never did want nothing from me. They’re wonderful people. In my experiences, they’re wonderful people, the Spanish speaking, Mexicans usually. But the American-Mexicans, very good.

DONAHUE: Did you experience any anti-Semitism at all during that time?

GOLDFARB: No, I’ll tell you what, since I’ve been here, the only time I experienced a anti, well, I don’t know if it was anti-Semitism or not. I was in the grocery business and a fellow come in, a customer of mine come in and ask me for a certain cigar and I was out of it. So because I didn’t have the cigars, he called me the “Damn Jew” and he was so mad that he walked out. I remember his name, Walker. I’ll never forget him. Then, his wife must have noticed it, that he’s mad. He must have told his wife what he said to me, so she come running. She only lived right across the street from the store. She come running and apologized to me, that he didn’t mean to say that, but something had his mind. Because I didn’t have the certain cigars, he tell you “Damn Jew”. This is the only time I had an instance of this, like this here, the only time I had since I been here. You know, I was in the clothing business. They try to tell you, well, I’ll Jew you down. That’s the way they talk. Country people, you know, Jew you down. Well, how can you Jew a Jew? [LAUGHS] I used to tell them. So they shut up. All kinds of customers there, not a high class. In the grocery we had a lot of professors trading with us and in the clothing business I had a lot of good customers. And actually all my children worked in the stores, because I want them to get exposed to the other side of the way people live, the way people talk. There were all kinds of people. There were Blacks, there were prostitutes, there were all kinds. Living in here, you don’t know, you’re sheltered. You don’t know what in the heck is going on in the downtown area. You get exposed to it and you learn. And all three of them went there and it served them good in life. I think it’s a good experience in life, because you got to, you know, like some people don’t come in contact with – only with their own people, in the same class. And that’s wrong. You got to see the other world.

DONAHUE: And it sounds as if you were an extremely adaptable person, I mean that you could go to….After what you had been through that you could be in Alice, Texas and feel like you were doing okay there and you were learning these new languages.

GOLDFARB: Well, it’s, I suppose so, there’s many times I wonder, how in the heck do you function? How can you function going through so much in life? But you get adapted to it and some way, I mean it’s in nature, too. Some people don’t. Some people didn’t. They were sick all their lives. Because as far as I’m concerned, you got a wrecked body that’s been wrecked for so many years. God wants you to be around for a little while so you can tell the story…

END OF TAPE 20.U.9a, MELVIN GOLDFARB, SIDE B

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BEGINNING OF TAPE 20.U.9b, MELVIN GOLDFARB, SIDE A

ARWEN DONAHUE: This is tape number two, side A of an interview with Melvin Goldfarb. When, after the war when you came to the United States and you were getting settled, did anyone ask you about what had happened to you during the war?

MELVIN GOLDFARB: Well, not after the war, but before when I start, when I came to Louisville I was in the grocery business. And I had my arms like this here, and a lady come by, said what is the number? And I told her, I was in the camps and then she said, oh. And they kept on asking and asking and everybody to come into the store ask me the same story. And I got so tired of it, I went to the doctor and I took out the number. My number is 98, 889. So when I went to the doctor, I said, doctor can you do something for me? Can you take this out? He said, yes, I can take it out, but I don’t know how deep it is. So, I had an operation on the arm, on the left arm and it took it out, but the wound did not heal. It took eighteen months. And he said, he told me, if you would know how deep this tattoo, you would never do the operation. Because it was very dangerous. It could have been infected. And I had to go through a tough ordeal with this hand, because it took me a long time to heal it. But eventually it healed and it’s, it’s something that will never go away. It’s this….what do you call this?

DONAHUE: Scar?

GOLDFARB: Scar, scar the rest of my life. But this is one experience I had with the customer asking me this. First I told him it’s a telephone number, but they said, no telephone number like this. So, I said, well what do you tell them? Can’t tell everybody that you went, that you came out of Auschwitz and all this, telling my story. So, I got tired of it and I’ve done it.

DONAHUE: So, did you tell, when they did ask and they didn’t believe about your telephone number, did you start to tell them where you were?

GOLDFARB: Just a telephone number, they said, no, there’s no such a telephone number. So, instead of having everybody and explaining to everybody, I figured I’ll take it out. It’s no big deal. Take it out. But I didn’t think it’s that dangerous. I could have lost the arm. You know? But I didn’t know at the time. And the doctor didn’t tell me. He said, well we can do that. And at that time there was no lasers or nothing like this. You had to really cut out this, this piece. And it was so deep engraved in it. But it got healed and it’s all right.

DONAHUE: What about your family? Your cousin, who you came to stay with in Texas, did he ask you about your experiences and did you talk with him about it?

GOLDFARB: I told him some. I didn’t tell him everything in details. I told him what happened to all the Jews. Because he had some family, we had extensive family there. We had maybe fifty or something of people. I mean after so many years, had been established for hundreds and hundreds of years, here uncles and aunts and cousins and second cousins and third cousin, just like any family. I told him some of it, but he knew. He was very educated fellow, he read a lot, didn’t have to tell him everything in detail what I went through. But he knew, we talked after, you know, so many, many years I been there. I been there in Alice, three or four years. So, I had enough time to talk to him.

DONAHUE: Did you, did you want to talk about it at all then?

GOLDFARB: Not necessarily, no, I rather not. You know? You didn’t volunteer. This is something you didn’t volunteer, even to my own children, I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t actually told them everything. I told them some of it, but they didn’t know nothing about it till, what fifty years ago, I mean five years ago. Five, six years ago. When I was fifty years in the United States, then start talking. Told them more in detail. They knew that I was in the camps, but they didn’t know the detailing.

DONAHUE: And what made you talk about it five years ago when you started?

GOLDFARB: Because I was at my son’s in Seattle, Washington and at that time the Schindler’s List came out, Spielberg with the new film. And he said, Dad we know that you went through this, what they portray in the film and you might as well tell us or something, because I’m going to lock you up and put on the VCR and I want you to talk. And look into the camera, he had a camera and he said, talk. So, I was forced to talk and I gave them little details. And at that time I was talking already to the students and people knew that I was a Holocaust survivor, so they invited me to different schools. And I was glad to oblige to tell them the story. Some of the Catholic schools, some of the private schools, some of the public schools. I spoke to quite a number of schools in the city. And then they had, in 1995, fifty years after Liberation they had an article in the paper. Looked me up and they wanted to have a write-up about me. So I gave them an interview in the Courier Journal in 1995. That’s been fifty years after Liberation. And that’s why I opened up a little bit and talked. And I think this talk, it’s, the stroke that I had, I think that contribute some of it. I would say that. Because I’ve seen sceneries that I haven’t seen for fifty years. It come back to me and that affected, I think, because nobody knows if you would have one. That contributed to the stroke that I had. But thank God, I am okay. But it affected some of it, my speech, my thinking, my memory is not as good. But all in all it could be worse.

DONAHUE: So do you, when you do speak, have you ever felt the need to speak for yourself or is always in obligation for others?

GOLDFARB: Always, always, well when I, when I spoke, when I opened up to speak, I felt like people should know. The children mostly, the children should know something about it and maybe we can prevent one instance, one fight of anti-Semitism or racism or bigotry or whatever it is, then that will help out. As far as my experience is concerned, when I spoke to the children, they were listening, they took it in. They’ll register it the rest of their lives. They won’t forget. So it did, it do, I mean it does make a difference when you tell them when you were, like on the firing line. And you tell them what happened to you, they’ll take it in and they appreciate it. Some of the children even cried. That made me feel good, like they took my message. The message was the right message. To tell them that could happen, God forbid, could happen to any people if you are silent, if you don’t speak up. You don’t talk about bigotry, you see racism or anti-Semitism. You got to speak up. That’s the reason that this thing happened. No one spoke up. Nobody. Everybody was silent and that’s it. That contributed to the Holocaust we had.

DONAHUE: Did you ever get to the point where you could speak face to face about your experiences to your own children?

GOLDFARB: No. I never did speak face to face. I never did tell them. You know you could take all three boys and go and tell them what happened here, what happened in Auschwitz, what happened in Birkenau, what happened in Mauthausen, what happened in Ebensee. I couldn’t do that, because the different, the different things that I have seen, the tragedies that I have seen, throwing babies on the floor and telling the parents and the grandparents to lift it up and put it in the truck to send it to the crematorium to burn it. How could you explain that? I didn’t even talk about it. I used to break down. I just couldn’t proceed. So certain things I left out from the talk, from the lectures, you know. Because certain sceneries, you know, if you speak, you break down and I didn’t want to do that in front of the children. Usually they are fourteen years old and the influence is too much for them to bear. So I skip that. The most tragic things I skipped. I didn’t reveal that, because it’s unbelievable anyway. If you go through it, you would never believe something like this could happen. So people with so much education and the doctors and the nurses could kill the infants. Educated people can do that, how in the hell, how can you explain that to the children? You don’t talk about it at all.

DONAHUE: Do you feel that people in this country have done….Are, have worked hard enough to be aware of what happened or that…?

GOLDFARB: No, they didn’t. In fact, the Jews, even the Jewish people didn’t demonstrate. They didn’t protest. They didn’t do anything until they knew, maybe some of them knew, but if they would do something, they would protest, they would chain themselves to something, it would be an outcry. You know, blame goes to everybody, everybody around. I don’t know if they could help anything, but they could maybe influence somebody. Somebody, lawmakers. I don’t know if they demonstrated, they were outspoken. I don’t know what happened here in the United States. But I don’t think they did. They could, they could demonstrate or some kind of, they chain themselves. They show, they protest the treatment of Jews in Europe. I don’t know if they done it or not. I don’t think so.

DONAHUE: What about the present day? Do you think that….I mean there have been so many books and films. You mentioned Schindler’s List. Do you think that people have, are aware enough of what happened?

GOLDFARB: Well some of them are. There were a lot of Holocaust histories taught in school, which is very good. And especially right now with the new Internet, I mean all this new productions they have, that you could punch in and see it at home. Watch a movie if you wanted to know what happened there, what happened during the Holocaust years. You could learn it. And it’s easier to get to it and that’s a wonderful thing. The more they talk about it, the better it is. And you got to talk. You can forget this here, very quickly. And it’s something to study, something to talk about, it’s something to learn from the experiences so it will never happen again. It will never repeat itself again. That’s what it’s all about. And if I would be able to talk and I would be able to do that, I would do it. I would still do it, but unfortunately the doctor told me not to do that, because it affects my health and I figured, well my health is more important, most important thing right now. So, I don’t talk no more. But it’s on the tape and anybody wants to listen to it, you can.

DONAHUE: Did you, when did you become a citizen of this country?

GOLDFARB: In 1953. I think I became a citizen here in Louisville in 1953. I don’t remember the date exactly.

DONAHUE: Okay, but was that important, an important event for you?

GOLDFARB: It was very important to be a citizen of the United States. You know, up until now, we were, what do you call that? Statd loss.

DONAHUE: Stateless?

GOLDFARB: Stateless, ja. We didn’t belong here, we didn’t belong there. Stateless, yeah that’s stateless. That’s the description.

DONAHUE: So, you had a sense, really of belonging here?

GOLDFARB: Absolutely, yes, absolutely. We wanted to be and we worked hard and we studied hard and we wanted to be a citizen of the United States because the first child was a citizen and I wasn’t. And the child was born in 1950 in October. So he was a citizen already, automatically a citizen, but I was not a citizen yet. It was very important for me to become a citizen. And thank God, we passed exams and we became citizens in time, after five years.

DONAHUE: And what did it mean to you to be a citizen? Can you say something about that?

GOLDFARB: Well, it meant that you had the same freedoms. You have the same rights that anybody else has got. That people were born here have the same rights and I’ve got the same rights. That means a whole lot. They have the same protection that anybody else has got. It means a world of good. So, become a citizen is very important to me. �DONAHUE: Did you have a particular interest in the principles? Did you study the principles on which this country was founded?

GOLDFARB: Well, I knew this was a wonderful country and it’s the best country in the world. But some people, they don’t know about it. They criticize. It’s very easy to criticize something, they didn’t, they don’t know nothing about the other side. But if some people would complain, would criticize the United States – I’d tell them to kiss the ground a hundred times. You would tell them that. Many times in the stores, customers would complain about this, complain about that, always find fault with a lot of different things. I say, you don’t, there’s no place a hundred percent, but you live in the best country in the world. Kiss the ground that you were born and raised here. You don’t know what misery is. I went through that. I know what it is, so be lucky. And usually that shuts them up. They don’t complain anymore.

DONAHUE: Need a reminder.

GOLDFARB: Yes, they do, people do. Like they say, well, I’m hungry. Hungry for what? Hungry for steak maybe, but we’re not hungry.

DONAHUE: Did you ever have any desire to, to go to Israel or feeling strong…?

GOLDFARB: I been to Israel twice, last time I was in Israel was ‘36, high twice, thirty-six years since the Liberation. And at that time, Menachem Begin was the Premier and he spoke to us and Eli Weisel spoke and we had a nice gathering. There were ten thousand survivors at that time that lived. That was in 1981. A lot of people asked different questions and one question I’ll never forget. Asked Menachem Begin, because he was a religious Jew. He was Orthodox. Ask him how could God see this happen? Destroyed six million of us. If you are a religious Jew, where was God? Well, it’s a legitimate question to ask a man that, a Premier, an Orthodox Jew. Well, the only answer he gave, he said, well, you are here. You could have not been here either. So, you are here, so you were spared. That was his answer. Because there is no answer for that why, why, why, why. You can blame God, blame anybody, but God knows. Why he punished us – who knows? I don’t know. Why God punished us, why our generation mostly? We went through all this. And those were scholars, educated, religious Jews, observant. Why did it happen in our generation? Destroy the culture, destroy everything? No answer for that. This is a mystery and it stays a mystery.

DONAHUE: Do you have religious practice now?

GOLDFARB: What?

DONAHUE: Do you go to synagogue?

GOLDFARB: Yes, I go to synagogue. It took me a little while. But I try to observe, I try to follow my mother and father and grandparents, their tradition. You know? They were going to synagogue. They were praying. They were believing a firm believing in God. Even in going to the camp [INAUDIBLE – YIDDISH] They always, “God is with you.” So you try to follow this. I believe there is a God. I believe there is somebody that spared my life. Why am I alive? I don’t know. Why not my mother and my father, my grandparents, my [INAUDIBLE] ? I don’t know why. I don’t know. I, myself, it is a miracle that I survived, a miracle that I live now. My wife had the same miracle happen to her, so I am believing in it. I believe in God. I believe there is a God. Why he didn’t intervene, I don’t know. It’s such a tragedy because there is no explanation. There is no explanation for that, for destroying everything that they built for millenniums, built up. And also very religious scholars, good people, observant, study the Torah, observing the Torah, all the details. Why this happened? Who knows. It is a mystery. Everybody tries to explain it and there is no explanation. Can’t do it.

DONAHUE: Has your, so you were, when you were in Israel in 1981, was that for the gathering of Holocaust survivors?

GOLDFARB: Yes. Thirty-six years after the Holocaust, we had special, you know it is significance of eighteen high to life, high twice. So we had a gathering there and it was very, very cultural.

DONAHUE: Has it been important for you to have contact, friendships, conversations with other Holocaust survivors?

GOLDFARB: Well sure, we be all in the same boat. We all survived and at that time, eighty-one, it was twenty years ago. I was still young, young man. But I don’t consider myself old. Actually I consider myself to be fifty-five years old, because I was reborn in 1945. I was ninety-five percent dead, so I was reborn. I was still a young man, I’m fifty-five. You can say that. [LAUGHS] I say it to myself. Talk myself into it.

DONAHUE: Okay. Did you ever have, you ended up living in Kentucky, which I think most people don’t think that Kentucky is a place where a Holocaust survivor would want to live, because you’re not surrounded with people who under-, who know what you went through, as much as say you would have in New York. Did you ever crave more of a community of people who understand better?

GOLDFARB: Well, I was busy, don’t forget I was busy all my life, making a living. I never did look for company. I never did look for – I was seven days a week in the store, in the grocery store for so many years. Then I went in this business, in the clothing business and I was always busy making a living, providing for the family, to educate the children. I got three children that all went to the, college and they’re all educated and that took a lot of doings. I mean you come with nothing. So I establish myself and be a merchant and be a good person and be a family man and provide for the family. So I didn’t seek for company or friends or associates or something to associate with. You know? We had our own circle, her sister and her husband and his brother. But then circumstances made that that they moved out to Los Angeles and we left, we were left all by ourselves. But all circumstances happen through life that you can’t control. He died in accident, my brother-in-law’s brother died in accident and his wife died, too. So, the circle of friends that we had, we don’t have it anymore. But all through the years we had enough friends where we didn’t seek out any more friends. And we were busy, busy to make a living. Working hard. We didn’t have too many vacations or fishing trips or boating trips or this and that and the other, couldn’t afford it. Because I stressed education, I figured it is very important and because my mother and father gave me this, the few years that I had of education, private education. And I knew what education meant for the future of the children and they were educated and they do very well on their own. Don’t have to worry about them.

SIMULTANEOUS CONVERSATION

DONAHUE: How did your…sorry.

GOLDFARB: Go ahead.

DONAHUE: How did your life change after you retired then? It must have changed so much.

GOLDFARB: Well life changed because I wanted to – I figured when I reached sixty-five, I’ll retire. Well, I’ve done, I’ve worked so much and so hard and never had actual vacation time. You know some people go fishing and all this. I didn’t do it. I wanted to travel a little bit and I did. I went to Europe and I went to, you know traveled here in the United States. I never exercised. I never done anything for myself. I exercise every day. I go to the Jewish Community Center. I read a lot and I go to the libraries. And I enjoy my life now. I enjoy it very much.

END OF TAPE 20.U.9b, MELVIN GOLDFARB, SIDE A

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BEGINNING OF TAPE 20.U.9b, MELVIN GOLDFARB, SIDE B

DONAHUE: Okay, this is side B of tape number two. I’m sorry, you got cut off a little bit. You want to finish your sentence?

GOLDFARB: I don’t know what I talked…

DONAHUE: You were just saying that forty years is enough.

GOLDFARB: Forty years is enough of work. If you get well, take a little leisure time and not to have to get up in the morning. When I was in the grocery, I used to get up at four o’clock, five o’clock in the morning and stay till eight o’clock at night. I put in a good day’s work. And then in the clothing business, it eased up a little bit. I worked six days a week. I worked seven, but then I eased up, I closed on Sunday and I worked six days a week. But that’s enough hours to put in. But not because I wanted to, because I had to. In a small business, if you are not there, you are everything. The floor sweeper, the window washer and the manager and the buyer and the seller and everything. It depends on you, if you are not there, the whole business stops. A small business is rough, very rough to be in, because you can’t afford the proper help. You can’t afford to give them a big salary. You can get good people, but you have to pay them, compensate them. But you can’t afford to pay them, so you have to do it yourself. You can hire help, you know, you can’t do everything by yourself. But there’s a limit what they’ll do, because no matter who it is, it won’t be the same than you do it. So it was very hard to be a small business man. And the grocery was physically exhaustive. It’s a very hard business. You have to go in the morning to the produce terminal and buy the produce and bring it in every day. And then load the truck. Do it all by yourself. But that’s, that’s what it was. That’s what we had to do. And in the clothing business you had to go to New York every three months in order to be competitive, you had to find sources where you can buy the same stuff that big chains buy and sell them for less. Because the customers won’t come to you unless you have a reason for them to come, especially in my place where there was no parking. I had a hard time there because I wasn’t established. I didn’t have my credit. I had to convince people to extend me credit, five hundred dollars at a time. And I had to go to twenty places to get five hundred dollars credit, so it gave me credit for ten thousand dollars. It wasn’t easy. Especially in New York, because in New York you are nothing. You’re either registered in the credit department. And if you come in, you’re not established. I was in business already fifteen years or so in the grocery business, but that doesn’t mean in New York. You wasn’t rated. I wasn’t rated in any of these credit places. So I had to establish myself. It took a lot of doings, but I did it. And I was in the clothing there for so many years.

DONAHUE: Has it been hard to get used to having so much time to yourself?

GOLDFARB: Well it, from the beginning it was very, very hard to get used to that, because I was missing the people and missing the action of doing something. And as time goes on you get used to it, because you couldn’t be in business, I wouldn’t be that long in business anyway. It’s hard to stand up on your feet for so many hours, so it was time to retire and call it quit. Some how we make out. We go to the children, visit them there on the West Coast, and in Seattle, San Diego, California. And I got a son, he’s in Indianapolis now. He moved from Cleveland, so he is close by. Visit the grandchildren, you know, sometimes we go three or four times a year to visit. This is the way, that’s the way we settle in and spend our few years, what we have to live, who knows.

DONAHUE: It seems from what you’ve said that you’ve, you’ve talked a lot more about your Holocaust experiences in the last few years and maybe had more time to remember and then you returned to Europe…

GOLDFARB: I don’t want to remember. I’d rather not think about it, because it’s too painful no matter what. The pain is still there. The pain will never go away. The more you think about it, the more pain you’re going have, more aggravation, more health. It’s going to ruin the health, so I try not to. Try not it. I read, I go to the library, I concentrate on different things. I try not to think about it because you dwell on it, you get sick, even today.

DONAHUE: Are your friends mostly Jewish or non-Jewish?

GOLDFARB: Well I don’t have, we have a neighbor of ours, he retired the same time I did. He’s a non, he’s a Catholic. We’re very good friends, but he just unfortunately died about a month ago. We went out to eat together, we went out in the picture shows, in a lot of different places we were together. Unfortunately he died last month and I was – he died in front of me. He collapsed while he was putting air in my tires in the lawn mower outside. I have a riding lawn mower. He put air in the tires and he collapsed and he died in a second. And I said, Bill, what happened to you? Nobody to talk to. Such a wonderful person. I lost a good friend. We get together in the center, in the Jewish Community Center, there’s a few people there that come the same time I do. We talk and we spend a little time together. But everybody is for himself. If you don’t have a real family that you were brought up and raised and educated – it makes a difference. So, that’s the way it is.

DONAHUE: Is there anything else that you’d like to say?

GOLDFARB: I think I said enough. [LAUGHS]

DONAHUE: I have a couple more questions before we close up. One was that you mentioned something which stood out to me about when you, after you arrived in Louisville and you were working and you were making ten percent commission and then you got cut down to five percent. And the man said, no greenhorn should be making that much money. And I’ve heard from other people that they were discriminated against just for being immigrants.

GOLDFARB: That’s right.

DONAHUE: Did you feel like people were looking down on you because you were an immigrant? Or did you ever feel like you were looked down upon because you were a Holocaust survivor?

GOLDFARB: No, not because I’m a Holocaust survivor, because I’m a greenhorn, I’m not supposed to make that much money. At that time I was making ninety dollars a week. Ninety dollars a week was a lot of money in the fifties. And he just couldn’t see, couldn’t comprehend, he said, he’s going to work for five percent. Why pay him ten percent, he’s going to work for five. Forty-five dollars a week is enough for him, which was a good salary, forty-five dollars a week. But just because I was bringing that much business to him and I was beating my brains out like I said. I was going at night, ten o’clock at night in the Projects there. It was dangerous, at that time it was dangerous, but I wanted to make more money. I figured well, you don’t pay me a salary, you pay me commission. I’m bringing in the business. Why don’t you pay me what you promised me? So when he cut me off and he wanted to five percent, at that time I was mad and I quit and I got a job there with Singer Sewing Machine. This kind of people that promise you one thing and do something else, I don’t want to have to do with it. I don’t want nothing to do with it. And that’s why I got mad and I quit.

DONAHUE: Yeah, you’re supposed to get rewarded for being a good businessman, right?

GOLDFARB: Bring in all the business, ninety dollars, he ought to make me a hundred or a hundred and eighty dollars. What’s wrong with it? Pay him the money so he’ll bring in more business. More enthusiasm. But I just don’t know, that’s the philosophy they had. He’s a greenhorn, he shouldn’t be making that kind of money. Ninety dollars was a lot of money. It was like four hundred dollars today, maybe five hundred dollars. And for a newcomer to make that kind of money, he just couldn’t stand it. Too prosperous, too much money.

DONAHUE: Another question unrelated to that one, was when you talked about your first speaking experience when you went to this school in Trimble County. I wondered how, I mean of course it was very influential on the students and they probably, many of them probably had never even met a Jew before, let alone a Holocaust survivor.

GOLDFARB: No, they didn’t know what a Jew look like. [LAUGHS] He’s got a horn maybe. They never seen a Jew and they never seen a Holocaust survivor. They received the message, such a wonderful way, because they actually cried when they went out with me to the car. They just didn’t have enough of me. And I was really surprised because those people, like you said, I mean, they don’t, not only they don’t know what a Jew looks like it. [LAUGHS] You’d think he would have horns or something. But they received the message very well. That made me, it made me feel good, because you could see, you could hear, you could tell, you could smell the tension, the attention and the tension. You could feel it in the room. You see a room full of students, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, I mean those are grown-ups. And they received the message wonderfully. So I think, well it is worth it to speak to them because they’ll never forget this. This is a lifetime experience for me and for them too, because I never experienced anything like it. People receive a message like this and then they talk about it. It made me feel good because they know what it is all about. They received the message.

DONAHUE: Do you remember any of the questions or comments you received that really might stand out?

GOLDFARB: No. They usually ask me the same questions you ask. Do you believe in God? Yes, I believe in God. This is a common question in quite a few schools. In fact, this is the only question, well any question they ask, they ask, they come up with this too. How could you believe in God if something like this could happen to you and your family and all this? Well, I believe it and that’s it. Because a miracle happened. I am alive here. I am standing in front of you and tell you this story. There is no explanation why. I can’t explain it. Maybe more scholarly people will be able to explain it, but I can’t.

DONAHUE: We’re looking now at the letters that some of the students….These are all from the Trimble County school?

GOLDFARB: Different ones, schools.

DONAHUE: Different schools. Different schools where Mr. Goldfarb spoke and students wrote letters to him afterwards.

GOLDFARB: “Dear Mr. Goldfarb, I really enjoyed your talk on the Holocaust. It made me think about how lucky I am…”

DONAHUE: “the things that I sometimes take for granted.”

GOLDFARB: “the emotions as you told about your experiences made me sad for you.”

DONAHUE: “It is wonderful that you can tell us now about these horrible things that went on. Also I’m happy that you survived it and others did. But to think of all the other people who did not survive.”

GOLDFARB: “It really upsets me. Thank you.”

DONAHUE: “so much. You will never know how much the world loves you.” It’s beautiful. Mr. Goldfarb, I want to thank you so much for…

GOLDFARB: You’re welcome.

DONAHUE: …this.

GOLDFARB: It’s too emotional, even as I read the letters, I get emotional.

DONAHUE: Well, I certainly thank you so much for this. In concluding this interview I’d like to state that the Shoah Foundation interview with Mr. Goldfarb was conducted on February 19, 1996 by Leah Dickstein. And that interview helped prepare for this follow-up interview, so we didn’t cover all of the information. We didn’t repeat much of the information that had already been covered in the Shoah Foundation interview. The Shoah Foundation, the complete name is the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. It’s located in Los Angeles, California and those interviews that they conducted should be widely available in the future through various….It hasn’t quite been determined how they will be available, but they will be. And also for those who are listening to this interview, who live in Kentucky, the Jewish Community Center of Louisville did conduct an interview with Mr. Goldfarb and that’s available. And that similarly deals mostly with his Holocaust era experiences which we did not cover today. And that Jewish Community Federation of Louisville interview with Mr. Goldfarb was also conducted by Leah Dickstein in April of 1995. And thank you. This concludes the interview with Melvin Goldfarb.

END OF TAPE 20.U.9b, MELVIN GOLDFARB, SIDE B

END OF INTERVIEW

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