When the Nazis came to power, we were deprived of everything.  We couldn’t go to school; my father’s tailor shop was boycotted by non-Jews.  There was the word “Jude,” Jew written on his shop.  In 1939, all five of us were deported to Dukla, Poland.  We lived there till the war broke out.  The Nazis caught up with us again.  At Dukla, we worked in a stone quarry.  I split big rocks with a hammer into smaller rocks for the crushing machine which made gravel.  We later worked with the gravel, building a road from Czechoslovakia to Russia for the Germans.  

 

My brother David fled with his friends to Russia at the beginning of the war.  My brother Abraham and I wanted to be with our parents.  I was 16.  The Germans threw us into a ghetto in Zeszuw.  Conditions in the ghetto were unbelievable.  People died like flies.  There was little food, little water, it was overcrowded.  We had lice, the vermin ate us alive.  They had a Selection.  My brother Abraham and I were taken to work in an airplane factory in Mielec.  We received our tattoos there, KL, Konzentrationslager, or concentration camp.  We never saw our parents again.  I assume that when the ghetto was liquidated, they were sent to the gas chamber to their deaths.  

 

In the airplane factory in Mielec, we worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week.  They gave us just enough food to keep us alive and not enough to kill us.  As the Russian front started getting closer, they sent us to another airplane factory in Laitmeritz, Austria.  I was together with my brother the whole time.  We encouraged each other to stay alive, that was the main thing, to stay alive.

 

Then we were taken to Gusen II, a sub camp of Mauthausen where we worked in an airplane factory.   There we had the least food from any other camp.  It was terrible there.  We were given one-fifth of a loaf of bread as a ration for the whole day.  The bread was ersatz (or fake) bread, who knows what kind of garbage it was.  It was not enough to sustain us in life.  We would wake up at 4:00 AM; they counted us in a roll call every morning.  Then we would go get ersatz coffee.  It was hot, we needed it.  The taste was terrible, but it was hot.  For lunch, they brought soup to the factory.  They gave us a ladle; there was not enough of it.  It was watery with a few green leaves floating in it.  The American army was getting closer; they sent us to the main camp of Mauthausen.  Patton’s Third Army liberated us.  Liberation was beyond description.

 

After liberation, the Palestinian Brigade came to Mauthausen.  They asked who wants to go to Palestine.  We knew that everything behind us was destroyed.  They took us in trucks to Italy.  We were stranded there waiting to try to get into Palestine before Israeli Independence was declared.  ORT, the Organization for Rehabilitation through Training, came to our transit camp in Rome and offered to help us learn a trade.  I asked to be trained to become an engineer.  ORT sent me to a school for training and I am forever indebted to them for giving a life skill.  I later became an engineer for General Motors in charge of a division working with robotics and automation.

 

I found an uncle in living in New York who sent us papers to come to America.  I met my wife at a Hadassah dance in New York. 

You young generation, the future leaders of many communities, make sure you understand how hate, prejudice and bigotry leads to oppression and tyranny.  The Holocaust did happen, it can happen again to a different race, different religion, and different times.  Yes, it can happen again.  The future is yours.

 

Around 40 years ago, I was invited by Chuck Wolf, the director of the Jewish Home, to exhibit my artwork and give a lecture.  Looking around there, I saw a lot of elderly residents who needed help.  It reminded me of a verse from the Bible which it says, “Oh G-d, don’t forsake me when I’m sick and old.”  G-d did hear their prayers and created volunteers.  Volunteers are G-d’s helpers.  Since my retirement, I volunteer at the Jewish Home to help the elderly.  I never left them and I still continue to help elderly people.