My father died in 1935 when I was 12 years old from tuberculosis.  Our family was very poor.  My mother died in 1938 at which time I went to live with my uncle.  My brother lived with our grandfather.  I had no schooling after 1938.  In 1939, the Russians occupied Poland until 1941 when the Germans came in.  There was no private enterprise under the Russians and they would come at night arresting people and send them to Siberia.  Jews started to wear yellow armbands with stars when the Germans occupied Poland.  The Judenrat was formed and deportations started.  The ghetto was formed with horrible overcrowding and lack of food.  People were dying in the streets.  In 1942, the ghetto was liquidated.  Marcus had obtained an ID and was able to work for a company and made a little money.  In 1943, while working for this excavation company, they would take equipment into the forest and build bunkers for people to live in.  These bunkers were approximately 20 x 12 and would hold at least 20 people, very crowded.  They would bring enough food for three months.  At the end of the three months they would have to find more food which at that time was hard to find.  While looking for food, they were arrested and taken to Plaszow.  Any people who were able to stay in these bunkers all survived.  In Plaszow, there were appells every morning where they would have to stand naked for hours in the cold.  Selections were made by Amon Goeth and these people were sent to Auschwitz.  Volunteers were needed to work the salt mines and Marcus volunteered.  There were barracks but no water when they arrived.  He stayed at the salt mines for six weeks and they could hear the front moving closer.  At the end of six weeks they were taken back to Plaszow in box cars that were overcrowded with no facilities.  From Plaszow they were loaded again onto trains to Vienna and then on to Mauthausen.  They were told whoever wanted to work to go to the warehouse for a uniform and they were taken to the rock quarry.  If they could not carry the boulders they were killed on the spot.  Marcus did not work in the quarry and after five weeks his name was called with 500 others and they were taken to St. Valentin.  There they had to build barracks and they worked in a tank assembly plant until April 1945.  In April they were taken to Ebensee by bus, passing people on death marches.  At Ebensee they had to stand out in the open naked for hours at a time.  After two weeks they were liberated by American soldiers.  The city people were ordered to bring in food for the prisoners and the Americans set up a hospital to treat the sick.  Marcus stayed at Ebensee for two to three weeks after liberation.  At that time, with the group of men he was with, they wanted to go back to their hometown.  They ended up in Melk and were forced to join the Russian army.  They knew they needed to get out of the Russian army and got leave papers and never went back.  From there they went to Budapest where they registered with the Polish consulate who gave them some money and found them places to stay.  They stayed in Budapest until November.  At that time, they decided to go to Linz, Austria where he lived until 1948.  He was given an apartment to live in in the same building his future wife was living in.  He also got a job in the DP camp.  One night he went to a dance and asked a girl if she wanted to dance.  That girl would become his wife.  They married in May of 1946 and had their first child in Linz.  Paula had an aunt and uncle who lived in Detroit who provided affidavits for them to come to the United States and they arrived in the United States December 24, 1948.  

Stay healthy, use common sense.