The Testimony of Joseph K.

When we lived amongst these people before 1939, we knew that they hated us, because in Poland, there was nothing hidden.  ever since I could remember as a child going to school, I would see on the street--be it on a fence or on a building of a Jewish home or in front on a Jewish store or on the sidewalk--there were signs, we call it graffiti here today, signs all over the place:  "Jew Go to Palestine.  You Filthy Jew, We Don't Want You in Poland."

Forced Labor Camp:

They shaved us of all hair and this is an extremely painful experience, when men used rusty razor blades and nick you, and then they use Lysol on the cut.  That's an excruciating pain.  It just burns and some people didn't even survive that.

 Death March:

The conditions we were under at that time were so--I don't know how to describe it.  They started to march us five abreast.  When we left the camp, they gave us a half a loaf of this bread, and this was finished right away, because we couldn't trust each other.  To keep bread on yourself you invited death, because we would kill for a piece of bread.  So you had to eat it right away.  As we started to march into the woods, it must have been late in the night when they made us stop.  We lay down on ice, 'cause I remember in the morning we woke up in water.  Our bodies had melted the ice.

The soles were made out of wood, with no break in them.  It was just a piece of wood with some leather over it or canvas or whatever.  And we couldn't bend our knees or the ankles.  [We] just walked like robots, just drag, step by step.  But we knew the minute we fall down, that was the end.

It started to rain.  And it was like a cloudburst.  thunder.  Lightning.  And it was pouring.  And they just kept shooting all night.  They decimated us that night.  this was one of the most unbelievable experiences any man can even visualize.  And this was going on all night.

They started to march us off again.  They brought us into this forest area.  We're marching, and we hear this German on a motorcyce pulling up to the head of the convoy.  And the word passed on that the Americans [had] surrounded the forests.  The German guards were marching up forward.  By then there were already more guards than prisoners.  As the last guard walked by me, I started to run.  I ran away from the group--and I just kept running.

Liberation:

We came across a groups of Americans guarding German prisoners of war.  And there was this American soldier who spoke Polish and he asked us who we were, and we explained it to him.  He interpreted to the American boys, and one of them took off a submachine gun.  He handed it to me, motioning to kill the German prisoners.  I became very frightened and I gave it back to him.  I just walked away.
I couldn't believe it, that the Americans were real.  I couldn't believe it, that the Germans were actually defeated.  It took a long time for me to understand that there was a stronger power than Germany.  To us, they were the all-powerful and they brainwashed us [to] such an extent that we had no belief in ourselves.  We had no understanding for right and wrong at that particular time.

For the longest time after liberation, I didn't want to live.  I had nothing to live for.  Somehow, in my deep recesses, I was hoping to live to see Germany destroyed.  And I did live to see that.  After that, there was nothing.

Some of the survivors came back--and they were killed by the Polish people.  There's no excuse.  They were not under the occupation by the Germans anymore. They were not forced to do it.  The Russians did not tell them to do it.  But obviously they felt that they had to help Hitler in the annihilation of our people.  That is inexcusable, unforgivable.  I will never forgive them.  I can't.  I don't have a right to forgive them.
I ask a question now, as a survivor.  Why was a country like Denmark--Christians, with a Jewish people--Christians having taken upon themselves to save something like 95 percent or upward of that number of the Jewish population, and only a couple hundred kilometers to the east, Christians, too, were cooperating with the Germans to annihilate us?  I may sound bitter.  I am.

Yesterday, I made a list of members of our family.  In 1939, there were 117 people of our family.  In 1945, 11 survived.  Out of these, two survived as non-Jews on Aryan papers, five survived in Russia, never having been under the German occupation, and four of us survived the concentration camps.