To oversimplify, we lived a good life in Lodz before the war.  I moved into the Lodz Ghetto when it first was established with my father and my younger brother.  My mother passed away just before the war started.   The three of us were in the ghetto until it was fully liquidated.  We were on one of the last transports out of the ghetto, to Auschwitz, August, 1944.  My father and I were at Birkenau for four to six weeks, when we were suddenly taken away to be moved to another camp.  My brother, Motek, was not allowed to leave Birkenau to go with us.  That was the last time my father saw my brother.  

 

My father died just weeks before liberation, at Ahlem.  I was reunited with my cousins in Marbourgh, Germany.  I signed up to go with Jewish orphans by ship to America and went there in 1946.  I ended up in St. Paul, MN and was taken in by Adeleine Fremland and her then first husband Barney Garber.  Adeleine was instrumental in teaching me English and enrolling me in high school.  She was the one who convinced me to go to the University of Minnesota where I received a business degree.  I became a citizen and was drafted into the U.S. Army during the Korean War and was stationed in Germany.  I met my wife to be in Detroit; we married and settled down there.

The way our dad lead his life was his message: He was a generous and happy soul and he always put his family first.