My father managed land, important to the Nazis. He was able to avoid being rounded up. In 1944 however, the family was sent to Nitra, Slovakia with others, and we were put on a cattle train to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
We had a lucky break, when we arrived at Birkenau, a couple of Jewish guys from our town told us to say that we had a trade and that we were older than we were. I was 16 and said that I was 18, my brother Bernie was 14 ½ and said that he was 17. We said we were mechanics. Later they put us in a factory repairing freight cars that were damaged in the war.
They dehumanized us; I remember I became very sick; my father was able to arrange for me to go the infirmary. It was a little crazy, here they are sending thousands of people to their deaths every day, and I was in the infirmary where they took a throat culture to be sent to a lab. I remember one man who died; his son came to see him. The son was so desperate to survive that he took his late father’s ration of bread and a gold tooth from his mouth in order to survive himself.
My mother and 11 year old sister Judith were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
After the war, we walked; hitchhiked back home. We were ardent Zionists and in 1948, my father, brother, and I went to Israel. It was difficult to make a go of it then in Israel. My father had a sister in the United States. We had agreed that if it did not work out, we would join her. We could not get in at first because of the quota. We moved to Montreal, then later to Detroit.