Morris Engleson

Interviewer: Would you tell me your full name please?
ENGLESON: My English name is Morris Engleson. That’s an Anglicized version; in Polish it would be [Moksha Engelsheen?]. But anyhow, what’s in a name? My given name is Moshe, and I come from a small town in the vicinity of Vilna, which is Vilnius now. Vilnius is in Lithuania, of course; the town is called Podbrodzie, or Podbrodz in Yiddish. Now the name would be Pabrade, which would be the Lithuanian version of the Polish name Podbrodzie.

Interviewer: When were you born?
ENGLESON: I was born in mid-1935, so I am just about 55 years old now. That made me six years old in 1941, when the Germans came in.

Interviewer: Before the Germans came in, what do you remember, your very early years? When the Russians came?
ENGLESON: OK. I remember a pretty happy sort of carefree childhood, though it turned out we were not rich. In fact, we were quite poor for a certain reason that happened earlier, which is germane to the story. Podbrodz is a beautiful scenic area. It’s a resort town. People came there for vacations. It’s well known as a vacation spot. I remember people talking about, “Oh, this famous person came, and that famous person came,” and so on and so forth. 

It’s a good [inaudible word] on two rivers with bridges across the town, or city as we called it though it’s a small town, roughly half Jewish and half mostly Polish people, maybe 5,000 people all together but 2,000 Jews in the area. It was a small place, a very safe place. The Jewish area was sort of by itself, but not any significant amount of antisemitism. The Jews and the Poles got along reasonably well together, which is unusual. I remember it as a happy place and an enjoyable place — games and playing and running by the river, all kinds of adventures and misadventures, stuff like that.

Interviewer: Tell me about your parents. What did your father do?
ENGLESON: OK. My father was in business, [inaudible] buying grain from farmers and reselling it. He was a grain merchant, you could call it. A total of seven brothers and sisters that he had. They were all married. He was one of the youngest in the family. So we’re dealing with an extended family of about 55 people. My mother’s family, she had a sister there. That’s all. They were quasi-recent immigrants, having been displaced during World War I, and they came to the area after my dad. My father’s family had lived there for many years. 

My mother’s family was more scattered. The rest of her family was in different places. In fact, one sister was in another place called Soli, which helped us out later. My father’s family comes from an old misnaged family. [Hilaria?] was misnaged-type Jewish because of the Vilna Gaon and so forth. My grandfather, alav hashalom [peace be to him], was a very, very staunch, stern type of individual but a very honorable person who believed in doing everything by the book, a well-known individual who paid for it in a certain way. 

The Nazis, when they came in usually picked on somebody they considered to be a leader of the community. I don’t know why they picked on my grandfather because he was not a rav, but we have eyewitness accounts that he was the one picked on, that they beat him, ripped his beard out, and they blinded him before they shot him. That was not a good way to end his life at age 81. He also was a grain merchant, but when I knew him, he was very, very poor because something happened 20 years prior to that, that made him poor. And that’s an important story I have to tell you because that’s what saved our lives.

It happened that he used to buy and sell grain from the local farmers. The local farmers in that area were very poor; they were sharecroppers. The primary ownership of land in this feudal society of Poland was from the large landowners, a form of nobility. However, there was one farmer who through some strange means had acquired his own land and acquired a little bit of a farm, and he was considered rich by those standards. My grandfather used to do a lot of business with this man. One day, 15 years before the war or something like that, grandfather decided that the way to really go was to become not only a merchant, but a miller, because the real money to be made was in turning the grain into flour. 

There were three mills in our town, all water-operated mills on the rivers. When one mill became available, he decided to buy it. So he bought this mill, and he spent everything he had, everything he could borrow, to buy this mill, and he had no money to buy grain. So he went to this particular farmer with whom he had dealt many times before and made an agreement that he would buy the grain on credit. I don’t know what the deal was, how much extra he paid, but the farmer trusted him and sold him the grain on credit. The grain came in. It was put into the mill. It was all filled up. 

And then, according to stories it was arson, but nobody proved anything because the other two millers were jealous, afraid that he would become too much of a competitor. The mill caught fire, and it was on the shabbos. It was on the river, and people could have put it out. They tried to put it out, but my grandfather came out and said, “There’s nobody in there; no lives are involved. You will not put it out. It’s shabbos.” He forbade them to put out this fire, and the mill burned to the ground and all the grain with it. So he was bankrupt and owed this farmer for all the grain. Now the farmer could have probably taken him to court or something, but I don’t know what he could have done. 

In any event, my grandfather then walked about twenty miles, or whatever the distance was to the farmer’s farm, and he told the farmer that he would pay him back everything no matter how long it took. It took something like 10-15 years, everything he had, everything he could get. There was a son in the United States who sent money home. Everything in the family went to this farmer to pay back for the grain. That’s why the family was poor.

The critical issue is that after the Germans came in, [inaudible word] many Jews escaped. Those who had no money, they usually did not survive. They couldn’t pay anybody; people [inaudible] very, very dangerous. Those that had money did not survive either. Eventually they came in contact with somebody who killed them for their money because it was very easy to kill a Jew; there were no penalties whatsoever. So anybody who wanted to kill a Jew and take their money, they just did. 

We had no money. Nobody would kill us for our money. But what we had was the honor of the family that spent 15 years paying it off. This farmer’s sons hid my father. They did believe that if he survived they would be rewarded, and they knew that he meant it. So through this mill that burned down, and my grandfather’s spending 15 years paying this farmer, and his sons knowing that my father was the son of this man, they were willing to take the chance. In a way he was paid for letting this thing burn down because he said we do not do work on shabbos. There’s a reason for everything.

Interviewer: Let’s go back to when the Russians came into the city. Tell us what you [inaudible].
ENGLESON: I remember that extremely well. I was standing by the road and my mother was screaming at me to come inside. It was the most fascinating sight that                         

I have ever seen. This is a little town with dirt roads, not even paved, you understand. When we say road, it was the place where carts went, wagons. I had never seen more than one automobile per month before, and here were these cars, tanks, armored carriers, whatever, going for hours and hours on end nonstop. I just couldn’t understand it. I didn’t understand where these things came from. It was like magic, and it was so fascinating to stand by the road and the dust and these things rumbling and making noises and so forth. Finally, she came and snatched me away because she said it was dangerous. It wasn’t dangerous. These people weren’t doing anything. They seemed to be going on for days. It wasn’t, I’m sure; it was hours. But it seemed as if there were millions and millions of these tanks, nonstop, going and going and going and going. 

The Russians came and took over the place, Russified it. They changed the administration. A lot of people were rounded up and sent to Siberia, the so-called wealthy, the landowners, and the anti[—-ists?], or whoever they feared. Our life didn’t change much because we were not rich to start with. We had a house, but that didn’t make us into landowners. Life went on as before. No significant changes of any kind, except it was a lot of tension, fear you could sense. Different behaviors. Of course there were stories, which I didn’t understand at the time, about the atrocities in Poland when the Germans occupied part of Poland. There were refugees that were coming through telling horrifying stories that nobody believed. It couldn’t possibly be that bad. 

On the whole, it continued to be peaceful, and most of what I remember of the town, in fact, what it looked like and its [inaudible] is more from that time than before ’39 because I was very young, four years old in ’39. It’s hard to remember precisely. There’s one memory that I’m certain was before ’39 because I fell into something and almost got killed. It was a childhood accident. Otherwise, the Russians didn’t do anything to us, but there were various changes in the atmosphere. It was more a world war to the Russians themselves. 

Then in 1941, in June, it happened very quickly, as I assumed it happened everywhere. The Russians were there one day, and then they weren’t there. There was hardly any fighting. There was no front; there was nothing. All of a sudden there were no Russians, and there were Germans. We knew they were there because right outside of town there was a very large military camp, a big military base, barracks, where military were stationed. They lived there; they had barracks there right outside of Podbrodz a couple of kilometers, a very, very large camp, and the soldiers used to come into town sometimes. Before that, there were Poles that were there. The Russians came in and took over that camp and made it into a Russian military camp. Then all of a sudden, the Russians weren’t there, and the Germans were there. So the Russian interlude was sort of a beginning and an end and no middle to me.

Interviewer: [inaudible question]
ENGLESON: The Germans came, and the Jews were given two basic orders. One was a location order. Since the Jews tended to live in a certain area anyhow, there wasn’t really that much relocation. Some people had to move. It got a little bit more crowded, but it didn’t crowd us all that much. They just adjusted the boundaries of the Jewish quarter because the Jews and the Poles did not intermingle all that much. Even though it was a combined Jewish-Polish town, the Jews lived in one area, and the Poles lived in another area. The few Jews who lived outside of this area were forced to come in and find places with friends, relatives, whoever it may be, and it got a little bit more crowded. 

The other thing, of course, was that there were curfews, and you could not leave this quarter. There were boundaries, but no real fences, no barbed wire, no real guards to speak of. You just had to be there, and the penalty was harsh if you were found outside it. You were shot. They did do a lot of shooting of people. Terror killings. They came in and took little groups here and there. No rhyme or reason. Presumably they were leaders or whatever, but many people who were killed were not leaders, so I don’t understand what the rationale was, maybe just to generate enough fear that people would obey orders and not argue about it. 

And people had to wear the yellow star. They had to wear two stars, one front and one back. If you were caught without a star, the penalty was death. So you had to wear the star to be identified fully as a Jew, and you were not permitted to go outside the Jewish quarter. 

Life became more difficult in terms of food and making a living because all the relationships and business things, whatever the case may be, those could not exist any more. So people lived off of accumulations of savings, or whatever, but that was of no consequence because we’re dealing with only three months. I’m sure that people had enough capital and whatever to live for three months. There was no real transition to a true ghetto situation.

Interviewer: How did you view the change?
ENGLESON: The change was a different lifestyle. That was its intention, and it was very clear. The kids understood it very well. There were no arguments about the curfews and not being able to go to certain places that you used to go and so forth. It was very clear that this was serious, this was real. This wasn’t just a parental whim. You can’t go here because whatever the case might be. This was very clear. It was almost like a law of nature. 

At that age you understand that you don’t jump off the roof because it’s dangerous; it isn’t just that your parents are afraid. You really don’t jump off the roof because you’re going to get hurt, and you’re old enough and smart enough to know that you don’t want that to happen to you. It was almost that kind of a thing. It was not an issue of somebody telling you. You knew you did not do these things. It was almost as if it was a physical law. You didn’t cross this barrier because something horrible would happen. There was no issue about disobeying anybody or trying some childish tricks about these rules. You stayed where you were supposed to stay. You wore the yellow star like you were supposed to wear the yellow star. 

It was a very strange experience in terms of growing up. There was a jump of years. I would think that normally a child would not acquire that kind of mental outlook until later. In my case I was six, and it happened very fast. I don’t know exactly how the adjustment was made, but I do recall that all of a sudden I had this outlook that this was normal. This was how you were supposed to do, and it wasn’t a matter of somebody telling you. I believed it. So there was some kind of mental adjustment. I had no idea how it was done.

Interviewer: You were an observant family, a Jewishly observant family. Did that [inaudible] . . .?
ENGLESON: No, my grandfather was extremely Orthodox. Mine was not that much in those areas. Here in the United States, it would be considered. It depends. Everything is relative. But it wasn’t any big deal. All the Jews were observant in one form or another. Those who were not observant were what we called extremely traditional. 

Podbrodz and other areas were highly Yiddishist-related. We had many people there, in our own family too, that were involved — Yiddishkeit, not Jewish historical but Yiddish language and Yiddish literature. Vilna, as you know, was the place of the YIVO, the Jewish Knowledge Institute, or whatever the proper translation would be. It was a modern-type movement dealing with current events as opposed to historical Judaism and dealing with the Yiddish language as a force and Yiddish literature as a force. Many of these people were totally unobservant in the sense of holding to the mitzvot because they believed in the Torah. 

But that was the way of life, and it would have been very foreign for these people not to follow through. So they were traditional in the sense of this is how a Jew lives, whereas those who were observant were this is how a Jew lives, and this is how a Jew must live. It’s a very fine distinction in that case. Today, of course, the distinctions are much greater. I don’t think there was any impact in terms of the behavior of the town because that’s how Jews lived. All of the stuff was internal, anyway. It isn’t as if you went across the street to a Polish friend and had a ham sandwich. If you’re talking about kosher food, it was all Jewishly created in any event. The fact that the Germans were around, that didn’t change anything. At least I don’t recall it. It’s a very poor perspective from a six-year-old, but that’s how I recall it.

Interviewer: How did things change? 
ENGLESON: Things changed significantly a couple of months after the Germans came, in that places started disappearing. I don’t know how else to say it. All of a sudden, a certain place wasn’t there. There were no Jews there. It was as if it was pulled off the map and shipped off to Mars or something. Somebody would come in. “I escaped; all the rest are gone.” “Where are they gone?” “They’re dead.” “Where are they dead?” “I don’t know.” “Did you see it?” “I didn’t see anything. I escaped. Nobody knows anything, can’t find them. They’re dead.” And it was clear that they were dead. 

The question is why? There were all kinds of theories. People ascribed some very specific, rational, logical reasons for why the Germans were doing these things as opposed to just pure spite or hatred, or some manifestation of a pagan religion that made it necessary to kill all the Jews. People tried to ascribe logistical war reasons. They wiped out this town because they needed it for a military base, and they weren’t going to bother to relocate the Jews because they don’t care about Jews anyhow so they killed them. But they don’t need our place for a military base. Later, when we, my mother and brother, escaped to Belarus, the whole rationale was, “They’re killing all the Jews here, but Belarus is all right because that’s across the border.” Places started to disappear, and because they were places of like kind in terms of borders and location and other things, there was a general feeling that we too were on the list. 

The question is, what do you do about it? And we couldn’t do anything about it. So there was a great deal of uncertainty, a great deal of fear, a great deal of wondering what would happen, and people were very jittery. It was like living in San Francisco after the earthquake recently and wondering when the aftershocks were going to hit. Do you run? Do you stay? Do you come home? Are the walls are going to crumble down? Except you couldn’t go anyplace. 

There was no place to go to. People wonder why they didn’t escape or anything like that. There was no place to escape. There was absolutely no place to go. There were some who managed to escape as the Germans came in. They escaped from the Germans and went into Russia. They escaped to the Russian army. Those people really had someplace to go. They had the foresight, and they went. But for anybody who stayed, the front was so far in front of us that the Germans would [inaudible]. There was no place. So the change was more of the same kind in terms of a general feeling uncertainty and dread, not knowing.

Interviewer: [inaudible]
ENGLESON: What happened is that in September of 1941, on the Friday before shabbos shuva, which was on the 27th of September, German groups of soldiers came and organized various lawful militias, primarily Lithuanian, and maybe some Poles and those groups that I’m not aware of, and [inaudible] came to finish up Podbrodz. There were about 2,000 Jews in Podbrodz, and surrounding the city there were little towns or farms, farm communities, whatever. Jews lived all over the place. 

It happened that one of the local police functionaries was friendly with a certain Jew because there were some prior favors that they had done for each other. He knew that these people came in, and that they were organizing various things. He didn’t know precisely why, but it was quite obvious. So he came to his Jewish friend and said, “Something is going to happen. You have hours before the place is surrounded. Nobody will be able to get out.” This man sent out the alarm. Most people — a. didn’t believe it, or b. had no idea what to do anyhow.

They had no place to go and said, “If we’re going to die, we might as well die right here.” Many people such as my father believed it more or less, but they wouldn’t go because in prior times there had been false alarms and a great deal of looting. People that are afraid of losing their few possessions, and clearly they were not going to have a chance to work or do anything useful to gain more possessions — but there was some work. The Germans put the Jews to work in slave labor. It was very hard work. In fact, my father worked at slave labor and he fell down. It wasn’t deliberate; he fell off a scaffolding or something and broke two of his ribs. So at that time he had taped-up ribs. That was the situation. 

But anyhow, my father decided to send my mother, my brother, and myself out. They agreed where we would go. He knew the area very well. He was a strong man. He was very, very strong physically, my father, in spite of his broken ribs, and he felt confident that he could get out no matter what they did because he knew the area extremely well. He would be able to hide and sneak through. He said, “I’m going to stay home. If there’s looting, I’ll stop them. If something is happening, I’ll come and meet you there the next day.” 

So we packed up some food. It was the shabbos food, some chicken, I remember, and a few other things in a bundle. Dressed up as a peasant woman, took off the yellow stars, and we walked right out of town. Nobody stopped us. There were no guards; there was no nothing. The problem was we had to walk right by the military barracks, and that scared us because we were sure these people would do something. But they didn’t. They had nothing to do with us. Those were ordinary soldiers [inaudible]. And we were just peasants walking by. 

We walked right by the barracks, a couple of miles out of town where there was a little road to the side where all these German soldiers were staying. We saw them coming and going, and they just kept looking. Nothing. So we kept walking, and we had a couple of hours’ walk to get out of town to the farm of a woman that our family knew, had done some business with, farm-related presumably. She was a widow and had a teenage son, I would guess 15 or 16 years old. 

We came there. She was at home. My mother told her something is happening and we need to hide. The woman was very fearful. She didn’t want us there, but she couldn’t turn us away. She said, “OK. I won’t let you in the house. I’m afraid. Go stay in the barn.” There was a barn, and there was hay in the barn. We crawled up in the loft in the hay. The barn walls were not wood; they were kind of straw. We could see through the chinks in the straw, and during the night we started hearing shooting. It was bad. It was clear that something was really going on. There was a lot of shooting. My father was supposed to come during the night if something was happening. He didn’t come, and so we were sure that he couldn’t get out. That was the end of him. 

In the morning we didn’t know what to do. Before we could do something, a Lithuanian local auxiliary came to the house. He wanted to know if any Jews were in the area. The woman said, “I know nothing about Jews. No Jews in my house. If you want, come in and look.” He said, “There are other areas. What about the barn? Jews could sneak to the barn.” She said, “Silly. What would Jews be doing in the barn? Listen, you’ve been working very hard.” He said, “Yes, it’s been a horrible day. We were working all night chasing these terrible Jews.” She said, “Come in and have something to eat, then you can chase some more Jews.” He said, “OK.” So they went into the house and she gave him breakfast. 

He was eating breakfast, and her teen-aged son came into the barn and we heard this. This was very close. We could hear them talk and so on with the guard. He had a bolt-action rifle. I remember that. He had to pull the bolt [inaudible words]. The son came in and said, “I’m going to get you across the river. Come quickly.” Now, Podbrodz is on two rivers as I said. The one is the major river called the Zhemyane [also called Zeimera], which you will find on all the big maps; I think it was the Zhemyane which was going over there. It could have been the other one. I can’t swear to it. 

Anyhow, he came with a boat. We got into the boat. He was rowing us across the river. We were two-thirds across, and for whatever reason, this person saw us through the window. I think he got up. He stretched or whatever. He saw us through the window. He dropped his food, got his gun, ran out, pointed his gun at this young man and started shouting for him to come back or he would kill him, but this fellow continued to row for about another half a minute. We were close. If we were not closer, I don’t know what would have happened. He continued to row. We got to the shore, we jumped out, and then this fellow shot one shot or something like that. The guy turned around and came back. He got him in the boat and rowed him across. So the Lithuanian rowed across, and he was about five, seven minutes behind us. We got out of the boat, and we were near the woods — there were some woods there — and he started shooting at us. 

We just kept going into the woods, and he was right behind us. I don’t know how he missed us, but he missed us. Now we couldn’t go very fast because we were in the woods, and there were trees, and there were branches tripping us up. I was not running too fast, just a little kid. We were not woodsman people; we were townspeople. So we kept running in the woods, and he was behind us shooting at us all the time. At this moment, I was sure we were dead. It’s impossible that we would escape. She never saw him again. He just went wherever he went. She never saw us. She didn’t want to go into the woods to look for us. Anyhow, he didn’t kill us. 

So we were in these woods, and we were running in the woods, and finally we knew we had lost him, but we were lost in the woods. We didn’t know where to go, lost in the woods. We were wandering around in the woods in circles. Finally we were up on a hill or something, and in the distance we saw this spire of a church, very tall, so we knew the direction to go. 

Now a very strange thing. Many of the priests in that area were illiterate priests; they were peasants themselves. And they were very anti-Semitic. I have to say this. They were illiterate, and they believed the Jews killed God. The Jews crucified Jesus, and they preached it. Not as badly as in other places, but they preached it and they were anti-Semites. The townspeople themselves were not bad. Strange deal, this church that we saw, this priest was not only not anti-Semitic, he was what you might call a philosopher [or philo-Semite?]. He really believed that the Jews were good people, and that it was their Christian duty to protect the Jews. He was very friendly with the Jews. 

We got to this church and a woman came out, the housekeeper or whatever, and she said, “I’m sorry. The priest is not here. They’re killing the Jews in town, and he went to see if he could help. But he left word that if any Jew managed to come to this area, I am to do certain things for you. Here is some food.” She gave us milk, something to drink, and said, “I will lead you to where you can escape.” She sent us off and told us where to go, and we had not known about this thing at all. 

It was an all-smuggling network. The area is on the border between Poland and Lithuania, and it changed hands many times. The people in this area, they didn’t feel the border was real. Sometimes it was Poland; sometimes it was Lithuania. Who cares about customs? There was a whole bunch of people, a gang or whatever you want to call it, who were smugglers, and the commodity they used to smuggle was saccharin — it was a very good commodity because it was small and very precious, a substitute for sugar because sugar was very hard to get — and cigarettes. That was their big thing, saccharin and cigarettes. 

Anyhow, she got in touch with this gang of smugglers. Now they were not altruistic, and they were not anti-Jewish; they enjoyed crossing borders and taking risks if they got paid. So whatever little money mother had she paid up, and we went from hand to hand to hand, a two-week walk at night. They would hand us off at the next station of this smuggling network. On the road, on the way, lots of other Jews got involved in this. Pretty soon there were 20-30 people sometimes, coming and going, each one looking to get to a certain place. 

We were looking to get to a ghetto named Soli in Belarus where my mother had a sister. She figured that’s where she could go where she knew somebody, so she told him where she wanted to go and he said, “Yes, we’ll move you this way, and these people we’re going to move that way.” It was a whole night’s work for these people, and along the way, each one you gave them a little bit of money. As long as your money held out, you were all right. They gave you food. During the day we were hiding, and at night we were walking through fields across barbed wire fences and all kinds of stuff. It was pitch dark, and they knew all the holes, all the ditches. They would say, “Stop here. There’s going to be a big ditch. Hold hands because you’ll fall down.” We’d hold on and walk across. We walked for two weeks. 

Pretty soon we were on the outskirts of this place, and they said, “That’s it. Our job stops here. You’re on your own. Do whatever you like.” And all of a sudden they weren’t there. So we were down to nothing. My mother had two wedding rings. She had her own wedding ring and father’s wedding ring with her. Everything else was given away to these people. And we had to get to this place. It was far away and also dangerous. There was a farmer with a wagon driving by, so she came to him and asked if he could drive us to this ghetto. Did he know where it was? He said, “Sure.” “Would you drive us?” “Yes.” She decided she would pay him with her own wedding ring because father’s was a memento. She was sure father was dead. 

So she gave him her wedding ring, and he drove us right to the ghetto, no problem. In the ghetto, we came right in, and I have to say this because of this feeling I have — well, I’m unhappy with certain historians and other analysts who claim that the leaders of the ghettos and the Jewish police were all nasty and hoodlums. Clearly, there were some nasty people there, as anybody who rises to power. And in the major ghettos, there were some tyrants. But in all my experiences, this one and others as I’ll tell you, these people did an exemplary, selfless job in extremely difficult circumstances. 

We came to the ghetto; they didn’t know us. They didn’t owe us. They took us in. They created papers for us as if we were members of the ghetto so we could live there. They shared their food. They shared what they had. We became members of the ghetto. They were fellow Jews. They took us in. When we escaped from this ghetto and had to go to some other places, same deal. In my experience, this is a baseless charge taken from the particular, where one can point to somebody, to the general, which I think is not justified. I just have to say this. Anyhow, we came into this ghetto, and we became members of the ghetto.

Interviewer: Did you [inaudible] what had happened in [inaudible] . . .?
ENGLESON: Yes, everybody was dead. There were other people who escaped from the roundup itself, not from the graves but from the roundup. Later on, it was clear that what happened is people were gathered up together in the synagogue as a gathering place, which is the usual place. On the next day, which was shabbos shuva, they were all taken to a military training field called Poligon, outside of town, and they were all shot. One person escaped out of Poligon itself. I don’t know how he got away. Several tried, but they were all killed because it was well guarded, and it was a fairly open place. 

They were all killed at Poligon, and they were buried there. Local people did the burials. There are grisly tales of how this happened. I won’t go into that. Everybody who was there was killed. Several hundred people did escape because of the prior warning. Most of those did not survive because of various things along the way. It was not easy to survive. But we knew that everybody there was dead, and Father was dead. 

So we were in this ghetto. In the ghetto, mother got a job just like everybody else.

Interviewer: Which ghetto were you in?
ENGLESON: Soli. She cleaned the houses for German officers. That was her job. My brother, who was 12 at the time, registered as 14. Very important. If you were 14, you were an adult; you could have a job. If you had a job, you had a card. If you had a card, you could get food, and you were not subject to children’s deportations. So he registered as 14. They didn’t care. He didn’t look 14. Nobody cared. “You’re 14? Fine, go to work.” He worked in a military factory, made barbed wire, just a job. And I ran around in the ghetto doing nothing, playing with the kids. 

There was some schooling. There was a school in the ghetto. It was not the greatest school, but there was a school where we learned mathematics, arithmetic, reading and writing, and Yiddish, but mostly we kind of ran around. We were there for one year, so it wasn’t a very long time. It was a fairly peaceful life. As ghetto life goes, it was a good life. We had food. We did not starve as people had work. They were paid in scrip, German money that could not be used anyplace else, but my mother had an excellent job because sometimes she’d bring back scraps of food. She cleaned for the officers, and some of them didn’t mind. Instead of throwing the stuff away, she took it with her. You had to be careful. You couldn’t just steal it. If you were caught, you were dead. But some of them didn’t care. 

They didn’t care about Jews one way or the other. They had other worries. Things were not going all that well on the Russian front. In fact, things were going so badly that they came to the ghetto and they had various requirements. All of a sudden, everyone had to give up their fur coats; they were shipped to the Russian front because they were expecting a hard winter at the Russian front. 

So we were in this ghetto, and it turned out that father did escape. A whole slew of adventures of how we escaped, which I could go through if time permits. Well, he ran out, couldn’t get through because everything was now watched. He could not get out as he thought he could because of a lot of people, and every alley, everything was really watched; people were being rounded up. Those who resisted were shot immediately on the spot. 

He ran. He hid in an outhouse. A lot of the outlying areas did not have any indoor plumbing; it was primitive. So he ran into this little place and closed the door, and it turned out that one of the searchers wanted to relieve himself, and he tried to get into this outhouse. My father held the door. My father was a very, very strong man because he worked as a grain merchant, and he used to carry on his own shoulders sacks of grains of 100 or more pounds very easily. Very hard physical labor. He was a short man, 5’5” and about 5’5” wide. Very, very strong. He held the door so strongly that it didn’t even rattle, and this fellow just thought it was stuck. He couldn’t get in, and he cursed and cursed and then did whatever he did outside and went away. It never occurred to him somebody was inside. 

When the wave of roundups passed this place, father sneaked through and got out, and he hid in a Polish barn right on the outskirts because he couldn’t get through. He was in this barn, inside with the door open, and a little kid walked in. The little kid saw him, and father didn’t know what to do. He could have stopped the little kid; he could have hit him with something, but he didn’t do that. He thought that he was finished because the kid went away and a few minutes later somebody came back. My father was sure he was in real trouble. It was the same kid, and I don’t believe this, but it’s the truth. The kid didn’t say anything. He put down some food and walked out. I don’t know if his parents gave it to him. It’s hard to believe it was the little kid himself. Father took the food, and he walked out. So there were a lot of good people. It’s important that people know that. There were a lot of nasty people, a lot of good people. 

He went away; he went to the place where we were supposed to meet. The woman met him and said, “I’m sorry, your family is dead. I saw them in the woods.” My father said, “Did you seem them killed?” She said, “No, they’re dead. This fellow was right behind them with a gun, and he was shooting them. They’re dead.”

Father left. He wandered through the woods. He came finally to one of the sons of the person with whom my grandfather dealt with the grain. Father said, “I need a place to hide.” He said, “This is very dangerous stuff.” Father said, “I know. I need a place to hide. We’re old friends. Whatever I have, it’s all yours. Please give me a place to hide.” “You can’t hide here. It’s all in the open. There is no place to hide. I’ll tell you what. Nobody knows you’re here. You speak Polish perfectly. You’re a cousin who came to help me with the farm.” Father said, “Fine, I’m working on the farm.” His Polish wasn’t that great, but they didn’t have to see him. If somebody saw him, he could speak well enough. 

So father worked for the farm, and it was all because they trusted him because of grandfather. In the meantime, father was thinking we’re not dead. We can’t be dead. He didn’t see us dead, so we’re not dead. He badgered and badgered this fellow, prevailed on him to get together with a friend to go searching for us. This was a very dangerous job. 

Father drew up a whole list of where we could be. One of the places on the list was Soli because my mother had a sister there. One day in the fall of 1942 — I don’t know when because we got out in December, and this was about three months prior so it’s an approximation — there was a message. Somebody was at the gate. My mother walked out, and there was this man, a messenger from father. OK. They went back, told father we were alive. Father was overjoyed, except the message from my mother says, “You better get us out. This is a bad place. They’re killing the Jews around here.” They’re killing the Jews around there, but they’ve got a place to stay. They’ve got food. Here there was nothing, just woods and animals. 

There was no place to join. There were partisan bands. They were mostly anti-Semitic. There were not family partisan bands, only men with guns. The Russian partisan bands were mostly escaped prisoners of war, and they were desperate. There were a few parachuters who came down to give them orders from Russia, but mostly they were locals. The partisan bands were very bad. They were the Army Kryova. They were the London-based Poles. Their big war was to kill the Jews. They claimed they were killing Germans. They were supposed to be very nationalistic. They hated the Russians. They hated the Germans. They hated the Jews. They didn’t bother the Germans because they were too dangerous. When they did manage to catch a smaller band of Russian partisans, they killed them or fought with them, and Jews they killed. I can tell you later, some Jewish people that I had met were caught. We saw them killed by the Army Kryova, by the Poles. So he lived with these people. He had a family. He could not work.

One month later he heard the news. All the ghettos in our area were being liquidated, and some had, and he felt it was too late. So he sent the messenger again to see if the ghetto still existed. It did. This time he sent word to be ready at a moment’s notice that as soon as he could, he would get us out. He schemed to get us out. We couldn’t just walk back. He finally made arrangements with this man and another man to go and get us out with two wagons, but the weather was bad. It was rainy, and the roads were a quagmire. You could not get through. You could not ride on wheels, and it was too warm to go on sleds. We were getting scared because the news was coming worse and worse. This ghetto. This ghetto. You could see that pretty soon it’s coming to Soli. 

Finally, they decided he had to go; he had no choice. It looked like it was getting cold. The weather was still not good enough for sleds, but if they went with wagons and if it snowed, they could never get back. The roads were either sleds in the winter or wagons in the summer. In between, nothing could get through because it was all just a big bog. Anyhow, they made a choice. They decided it looked like it was freezing out and a little bit of snow; they would go on sleds and hope it got better that way instead of the other way [inaudible]. It was a hard time to get there with these sleds because they couldn’t get through these kind of roads, but they didn’t mind because they had papers. The issue was to get us back fast. They could stay overnight and so forth. 

When they got to the ghetto — we were still alive obviously — it started snowing very, very hard, very heavy snow. All of a sudden, it was wonderful sledding. The word came in that we had to get out. My mother went to whoever she went to; half an hour later she had papers to walk through the gate. The Jewish Judenrat, gave us the papers [inaudible]. She didn’t tell them what, when, how we’re escaping from the ghetto. “Got to have papers so I can walk out with my children.” She had papers, my brother had papers, because they were working. I had no papers. They gave us papers for whatever reason, whatever excuse that I could walk out with her. We walked out. The ghetto was a real ghetto, not like Podbrodz, with guards and everything else. 

There were two gates. There was a big gate through which motorized traffic went with a thing that opened up, and there was a little gate through which people walked. We walked out the little gate. They looked at our papers, and they let us out. At the same time the big gate opened up. There was a military car, like a staff car, some soldiers, and inside the ghetto — I should backtrack a little bit. There were various selections and things happening all the time and people were being taken away for “settlement,” for “labor.” 

Children were taken now and then, but not in any great groups. Usually children hid. They had hiding places throughout the ghetto; they knew where to run. They came. We hid. There was only one time when I was not fast enough and was in a selection. That selection was the only time I came close to an SS officer. He had a round cap, and it was concave inside, one of those things. I think I saw an insignia, or maybe it was from my imagination from later, because if the insignia was right, then he was special SS from the Totenkopf [followed by another German word] because I think I remember the skull and crossbones on the insignia. 

He was selecting people for something. I don’t know what. He did not care about the children; he was looking for adults. And he was very angry about something. He had a billy club about yea big, a truncheon, and he was hitting people on the head with it. He was bloodying them, going around hitting very hard and knocking them down. He just walked right by me, didn’t bother me, was hitting the people. He took the people away. Anyhow, the trucks were coming in for another selection, only this one was for real; it was the children’s action, or aktion as they called it, and all the children were taken away from the ghetto. There was about a five-minute interval when the staff car came in and gave the orders to close the gates. We walked out, and they came in five minutes later. My mother could have walked out. My brother could have walked out because he was not a child officially. I could not have walked out; my papers would have been no good.

Interviewer: [Inaudible] show something?
ENGLESON: Yes, she had a pass. 

Interviewer: What did she do?
ENGLESON: She went to the Judenrat and she got a paper of some sort, I don’t know what, that authorized her to take me outside. That’s what I meant when I said before that she had made some arrangement. There were reasons why children could walk out of the ghetto with permission, and they didn’t know why she needed to go out. They risked a great deal because it was all phony, but they gave her the papers because she said, “We are escaping, I need a paper for my son.” And they gave her the paper, no arguments. They just did it. So we walked right out. The guard didn’t care. I just had the right paper. My brother had work papers, so he could go out and [inaudible]. She could go in and out, but she needed a special paper for me because [inaudible]. 

We got out, and we met these people that came to pick us up. They had sleds. My mother dressed up as a Polish peasant woman, and she went in a sled with one of the men. My brother also was dressed up as a Polish peasant woman, and he sat in front of the sled with the other man. I was hidden underneath some straw and hay in one of the sleds because they couldn’t dress me up as anything that made sense.

They started driving back very, very fast, and the driving was very good. The weather was wonderful. It was cold, it was crisp, it was snowy, and the sleds were very fast, much faster than wagons, good horses and they moved very fast. We made a lot of distance, but there was no way to make it in one day. We could not do that; it was a fairly a long distance. The night was dangerous. These people could stay wherever, but we couldn’t, and we couldn’t stay out in the open. 

So we drove to the nearest Jewish ghetto, and they let us in, no questions. We stayed the night and [inaudible]. There was no discussion; there was no arguing. We spent the night in the ghetto. And these were the officials of the ghetto. They didn’t have to do this. If we were caught, they’d be in trouble because clearly we didn’t just walk into the ghetto by accident. So we spent the night in the ghetto, I don’t know which ghetto. We got out, got back in the sleds, and that night we were with father.

Interviewer: Let’s take a break so we can change tapes.
ENGLESON: OK.

[PAUSE]

Interviewer: [inaudible] Can you describe that for me?
ENGLESON: It was an emotional reunion. I have to say, I really don’t remember that much. There was a lot of hugging and holding. Father hadn’t slept for two days, of course. He was just walking around pacing. He was a nervous wreck. But as soon as we saw him, I knew everything would be all right because I saw the snow. And then, two months later — this was in December, 1942.

Interviewer: [inaudible]
ENGLESON: My father was in this place, the farm where these people lived, and the arrangements were made that we would stay there too, but we would hide in the barn. We did not stay there for very long. Somebody saw us, or maybe they didn’t see us, but there was a suspicion that somebody saw us. There was a great fear. But I think that somebody did see us because there were some searches going on. There was a great fear that we were betrayed and we would be caught. So we had to escape, and there was no place else to go. This was not two months later, but about four months later, towards the spring. It was March, April of ’43.

Interviewer: [inaudible]
ENGLESON: It was sort of a barn; we kind of lived there. That was not a big thing. There was another barn later, which was a major thing. This barn was transitory, and I really don’t have a great recollection because we moved around. Sometimes we were here, sometimes there; sometimes we were in the house behind the oven. It was a little kind of cubicle. It was very hot. It was a big brick oven that was also used for heating the house, and it was very hot. 

But when we were presumably betrayed by someone, we had to escape from the house. We went into the field. A lot of it was potato country, and when they harvested potatoes, they stored them in holes under the ground in the field. They would dig a big hole, and that’s where the potatoes were kept because it’s colder and so forth. We hid in a little hole underneath the potatoes in the big hole, which was a very unpleasant place because there were all kinds of worms and things and animals in there. It was just a big hole in the ground, potato bugs and whatever. It drove my mother crazy. She couldn’t stand those things. She was almost willing to go and be caught. My father just about forcibly put her in there. She was not afraid of the Nazis, but she was afraid of the potato bugs. 

Obviously, she went down eventually, but it was not a pleasant place to be, damp. Eventually I got sick. I became very sick, some kind of bronchitis, and they thought I would die. Father went out in the middle of the night, went to a farm someplace, I don’t know where, and in a sense he stole — he milked a cow and brought back warm milk, the only warm thing we could have because there was no fire. It was cold. And that’s what I drank, and I became better. So he stole some milk, not a terrible crime. 

Anyhow, after that we could not stay there anymore. Then we moved to another family. Whereas the first family had some relationship, and they had some reasons to believe that we would reward them because my father had promised, and my grandfather and all that stuff, this other family, we kind of knew them, but there was no special relationship. This other family was very poor. They had a lot of kids, very poor. They didn’t have enough to feed themselves. And they took us in, no ulterior motives. They didn’t ask for anything. And these are the people that really gave everything they could, even more than the other ones. There were two families. Amazing people. I should say their names. It’s important. Two families: [Sincabaj?] and [—-owski?]. 

We hid in a barn over there. We were in a hidden compartment in the loft. That was what I remember the most of the hiding. For a young kid, I didn’t realize it then, but as an adult, I really don’t understand how I survived it and be halfway normal because it was a tremendous sense of deprivation. It was dark. Everything was closed. There was some light from the chinks in the slats in the roof, but it was dark in the day and in the night, and there were always people, strangers, whoever, so you could not speak out loud. So for over a year, I was in the dark and I didn’t speak. That’s a crazy environment! I don’t know. I can’t say I’m completely normal, but I don’t think I’m very peculiar. So maybe that’s a good sign that people can overcome all kinds of stuff. We stayed there for just about a year.

Now I need to backtrack. One thing that kept these people going happened about two months or so after we reunited with father. You will recall from history that von Paulis [General Friedrich von Paulis] was surrounded and captured in Stalingrad in January of 1943, I think it was, and the Russians made a big propaganda deal out of it. They dropped leaflets all over, not Germany maybe, but all over the prior Russian territories. Not only telling about it, but with complete pictures so it could not be argued that it’s a fake. Von Paulis and his bedraggled remnants of an army, whatever thousands they captured, the 300,000 that were there, showing that they really were captured. This was a tremendous celebration for us. 

Father was convinced, everybody that he talked to, all the gentiles, there was no question who would win the war. It was no longer an issue of which side am I going to be on because I don’t want to be in trouble with the victors. The victors were going to be the allies. The Germans were going to lose the war. There was just no doubt, no matter what the Germans said, no matter what the Germans did. Once when Paulis was destroyed at Stalingrad, as far as we were concerned, it was a matter of how long would it take. It made life a lot easier. All the uncertainty was gone. All we had to do was stay alive. 

These people were certain that if we were alive, eventually we would be liberated. If we could do something for them because they were poor people, these last ones, and the previous ones were not so poor, but even so, we would keep our word. So it changed everything. That victory in Stalingrad has special meaning for me. It really was the turning point, as most historians say of the war in Russia, but it was also the turning point in belief in what was coming among those people who had to survive the remaining years.

Interviewer: [inaudible]
ENGLESON: Yes. I don’t know how the deal came about, but my father used to go out and work sometimes on the farm. If somebody saw him, they could get away with it. His hair had turned completely gray, prematurely gray. Rather than use his regular name, which itself was not necessarily a Jewish name — his name was Wolf, and in Polish it was [inaudible]. So it could be maybe another Jew, but it’s sort of Jewish. So they started calling him “Stari” because of his grey hair. Stari in Polish means “the old one.” So he acquired the nickname Stari, and on that basis nobody would know who he is. “Who’s that?” “Oh, that’s Stari. He came to help us.” So he could go out during the day. 

My mother could go out sometimes. Her Polish was quite decent. My brother’s Polish was not wonderful, but not too bad because he had gone to school prior to. I didn’t know any Polish. At home we speak Yiddish, and I never went to the local school. My Polish was just the words I picked up; you know, you live in a town, you pick up Polish, but it’s not as if you live in the United States. You live here, you speak English from birth no matter what your ethnic heritage. Over there, if you’re Jewish, you spoke Yiddish unless you went to school or when you got older, so my Polish was just awful. I don’t know any Polish to this day. I know Russian because this one and a half years, it was really Russian, Russia school. So I have some decent knowledge of Russian, but my Polish is useless. My brother’s Polish was not that terrible. He could go out. I could not go out. It was dangerous. If somebody saw me and said something to me, as soon as I opened my mouth, there’s no question I was not a Pole, I was a Jew. I couldn’t pretend to be Lithuanian either because the accent was just wrong. 

So they made a deal, or agreed, whatever. One night, the farmer came and said, “We’re going for a walk.” I said, “What?” He said, “We’re going for a walk.” And so we went for a walk, and it was wonderful. Just him and me, nobody else. Still who knows who would see us. It was very dangerous. There were rewards for Jews. The reward was salt. I hadn’t seen that written anyplace. The reward was salt. I don’t remember how many kilograms of salt. Salt was a great commodity, very hard to get, very precious. People wanted salt more than sugar, and if you handed in some Jews, you got salt. People looked for the reward. There were nasty people who would do it for the reward. They would do it out of spite. 

While we were hiding there, there was a family hiding in the woods, and one day some so-called great patriotic partisans who were fighting for their country — Poles, in this case — found them, took them out and shot them [inaudible]. When they came into the house, they asked for something to drink, and they told the farmer, “Go bury those people.” They were sitting there talking in the house next door to the barn where we were, and then they left. They were Poles. Army Kryova. From London. 

There were other partisans, mostly Russians. One day, my father was caught by them. He was sure they were going to kill him. Then they looked him over and decided he was a Jew. They didn’t know who he was because he stumbled on their camp going through the woods. They said to him, “Don’t worry, we’re not going to hurt you. We’re just like you.” In Russian, “Mi toshe takoye,” which means “We are also like that.” Those were the exact words they said. Father repeated it. “In fact,” he said, “they gave me food.” They had shot an animal, don’t know where, probably a farmer’s animal. And they gave him a quarter of beef to take with him and sent him on his way, didn’t hurt him. They were prisoners of war. 

The Russian prisoners of war were treated abominably by the Germans. There was a prisoner of war camp not far from Soli, and obviously, the Jews were all eventually eliminated. Soli was sent off to [inaudible], and the prisoner of war camps were not eliminated, but none of them survived. The living conditions in the ghetto were a hundred times better than the prisoners of war. The Jews used to give them food if they could. 

They were starved to death and worked to death, those Russian prisoners of war. When they escaped, their hatred for the Germans was something unimaginable. They would very gladly die as long as they could take some with them. Many of them became very sympathetic to the Jews, especially if they came from a camp like the one I described where Jews in the ghetto tried to help. So even though the Russians were not well known for their love of Jews, the Russian escaped prisoners of war were not that bad as far as the Jews were concerned. This particular band helped my father. We learned later that this band was wiped out. They’d gotten into a firefight with somebody, and they were all killed.

Anyhow, so we were living in this little place, and about once a week or so from then on he used to come and we’d go for a walk for an hour or so, at night always, look at the stars, talk a little bit. It was not a very [imaginative?] conversation because my Polish was not that great. They were wonderful people. One day there was a big scare that somebody had seen us, and we didn’t know what to do. They decided to take a tremendous chance. I can’t understand how these people decided to do this because if you found us in this place, clearly we were strangers. It was totally insane. We would just integrate with the family. 

I remember he put me in bed with his daughter. It was at night. Somebody was supposed to come searching. We crawled into bed together as if we were living together. I was young enough. She was a little kid, younger than me. It was considered all right under those conditions because the family was very crowded. The only thing I remember is the giant bed bugs. They were about this big [laughs], huge red things, which we did not have in the barn. In that respect, the barn was better. We had rats or mice, and they were not good things to have. They were scary at night. These bed bugs bit. They were big. They bit huge holes in your flesh. Of course, there were lice and other things. We suffered from dysentery, lice, and all kinds of intestinal parasites. Very, very bad sanitary conditions. The local people suffered from the same things. It wasn’t just us. They were just local conditions. 

So that made a big difference, the walks at night. Then eventually, the Russian army came in and we went right with them. We didn’t stay. Nobody stayed. Anybody who survived didn’t stay. We ended up as refugees, just moving from place to place.

Interviewer: [inaudible] Tell me about the German search.
ENGLESON: Nothing happened. It was either a false alarm or whatever apparently. There was a search of surrounding farms. They didn’t come to us, but there was a search in the surrounding areas and some Jews were actually taken. But in this case, we had no place else to go. We couldn’t go in the woods. We had no place to go, and they decided if there was going to be a search, we would all commingle, and the Germans wouldn’t know who’s who. So we just became one big family. It was a big family, lots of people. It seemed like a thousand kids. I think it was  something like eight or nine children. It was a very poor family, staunch Catholics. They saved us.

Interviewer: What did you do [inaudible]?
ENGLESON: Father educated me. He taught me reading, writing, mathematics, whatever he could orally. That’s where I got my primary education. It wasn’t a bad education because I did manage to survive high school and university here and so forth. Apparently it worked. But it was a very difficult time because we couldn’t speak very loudly [inaudible]. Most of the time, I either slept or looked out through the little holes. We couldn’t do anything else. Couldn’t move, no exercise. Just sit and wait. I really don’t know. The mind turned off. I don’t have that many memories of what I did because I didn’t do anything. 

Interviewer: The Russians [inaudible]?
ENGLESON: All of a sudden, somebody, I don’t know who, said, “It’s all over.” And that’s it. It’s all over. There was no fighting. There was no shooting again. Just like the first time. The Germans left, the Russians came. Before the Russians left, the Germans came. The Germans ran off, and the Russians rode right through, a lot of turmoil. Nobody knew what was going on. Nobody cared. We liberated our house, gave it to one family. All the possessions we could, gave it to the other family. Everything we could find, and we left. It was a graveyard. 

We just followed the Russians. They kept moving, and they were moving a lot faster than we were. Pretty soon we were in Germany, and then we ended up in the American zone, and then we were in a displaced person’s camp. Then it was no big deal, just four years of waiting for a visa from my father’s brother in the United States. We were displaced persons. Once we got to the United States, where we could really do something, then we continued correspondence with these families, and we shipped them money and packages as much as we could because we were also poor. We started with nothing. To them, it was a great deal. Then suddenly these people disappeared. We don’t know what happened. I think some bad things probably happened because these people were very individualistic and did not take too well to authority, so I don’t know what happened, especially the so-called rich farmer. I don’t know what they did to them. This was during the late days of Stalin. Some crazy things happened during that time.

Interviewer: [inaudible]
ENGLESON: All of a sudden, within one year, they both disappeared. They didn’t answer the letters or they couldn’t [inaudible] anymore. So I don’t know what happened. Anyway, that’s the situation.

Interviewer: Tell me if you would again [inaudible]. 
ENGLESON Right.

Interviewer: Could you describe the DP camps? You were very young.
ENGLESON: Yes. The DP camp was a carefree time for me.

Interviewer: Which DP camp were you in?
ENGLESON: First we were in Berlin, and then we moved out of Berlin on the airlift in 1948. That was my first airplane ride, in a military transport. And then we ended up, I think it was in Bavaria, in a camp called [Garbersee?]. There were schools, decent schools. I think the schools were good. It was the same as any other child. We had an apartment and lived there. My parents did some minor work [inaudible] boredom for the parents as they were not permitted to have real work. Some amount so you could just survive. Filling out millions of papers, great introduction to bureaucracy. 

But for the kids, it was quite good. There was a great deal of freedom from pressures from outside. There was schooling, a great deal of education. The teachers were enormously, enormously dedicated because this was the first chance to raise up the survived generation, so there was a lot of dedication and input, more so than the normal situation might call for. Children were precious, so we could get away with all kinds of stuff. It was not a bad time from a child’s point of view. 

Of course, it was not the greatest from other aspects in terms of settled life, knowing what’s going to happen to you and having a place that’s your own. We weren’t citizens. We weren’t going to live there. We weren’t going to settle in Germany. It was just a transit camp, and you couldn’t call it home. But in terms of living conditions, friends, and so forth, I feel it was nice. The adults were very nice to the kids.

Interviewer: How did you [inaudible]?
ENGLESON: Eventually a visa came. As I say, my father had a brother here, and he vouched for us. He signed us up. We came under the Displaced Persons Act; I think it was the second one that President Truman signed, I’m not sure which one. But we did not come as pure refugees in that sense. We came as sponsored refugees because it was a relative who sponsored us. He vouched that we would not become wards of the state and so on and so forth. The displaced person’s quota permitted us to come sooner than maybe 50 years later. I don’t know how long the quota would have lasted. We came as part of a normal quota of sponsored people, and so we went on a ship, first big ship. It was a terrifying first trip. I get terribly seasick. Airplanes are fine. Ships are not good for me. 

I came to the United States. That in itself is an interesting story because I did not speak any English, and I was old enough to go to high school. There are no tricks, no [Yiddish word] as we say in Yiddish. You’re supposed to go to school, you go to school. So I was signed up and went to high school. “You don’t speak English? Well, you’ll learn.” And you know what? I did. Maybe with an accent, but I think I can speak every single word. So I came here, and I went to high school, and that’s it. As far as I’m concerned, I’m an American because that’s where my primary education came from, my real education. The only real schooling that I’d had was all in bits and pieces in very peculiar circumstances.

Interviewer: Could you tell me about that first year here?
ENGLESON: In high school? Well, it was not easy. But I’ll tell you, I was very naïve. Of course, I was not used to any big cities or towns or anything of that nature.

Interviewer: What city? Where are we?
ENGLESON: This is in Brooklyn. We’re in Brooklyn, New York. Nice place. New Utrecht High School, if you wish to know the exact place. The people were nice. The teachers were understanding. At least, I thought so. If I wanted to be cynical, I would say they were uncaring because they didn’t care what happened to me. They let me do whatever I did, and they passed me when maybe they shouldn’t have. They just passed me along. All I can say is they were very nice; they understood my circumstances or they didn’t want to make it hard for me. I don’t know which. I had a better background in certain areas than the kids that came, like mathematics, history, other areas. The home education and the education in the camps was very, very good. It was a very high level education. I had only one problem. I couldn’t speak English. 

So I had terrible trouble in English, English language and other areas that require good facility of the language — history, English history, social studies, where you have to understand what the teacher says. Other disciplines were no big deal. Mathematics is mathematics. Two plus two is four. Symbols are symbols, and I knew all that. I was ahead of my class. In the other areas I did not do well to start with, but I think the teachers really were understanding rather than careless. They gave me barely passing grades at first. That was because my content was good, but the execution was terrible. It’s amazing how well you can learn a language if you live among the people, and you speak it and you interact. I’m not a great linguist. My brother is the linguist; he speaks half a dozen languages quite well. I know other languages, but only because I’ve lived and used them. In terms of learning languages directly from books, it’s very hard for me. But it wasn’t that difficult. 

By the time I was a junior, I was a pretty decent student. I made friends, peculiar friends who were willing to be friends with a strange kid like me. But as you interact and you learn the language, fine. The big problem was I had to learn some new tricks. My lunch money was taken away from me and a few other little things. Nothing personal. It was normal. That’s how it works. And I learned how to protect myself. 

I think a lot of the special ed classes and so forth today are maybe doing it all wrong. From my own experience, it’s too formalized, and there’s too much recognition of the differences. I think what’s needed is to mainstream kids who have normal intelligence and to be patient with their difficulties, give them a chance. Let them learn in whatever magical way people absorb knowledge just like little children do, unless they’re too old to do that. I found that at 14 it still works, probably wouldn’t work if I were 24. So I was just mainstreamed, left to my own devices, and just by interaction I learned that l-i-o-n is “lie-on” and not “lee-on.” After a few corrections, you remember, and that’s all there is to it.

Interviewer: [inaudible]
ENGLESON: Yes. Something that’s got nothing to do with my own experiences, but there’s a great deal of talk of German reunification right now. I don’t think I have a unique perspective, but I’ll just tell you something that bothers me greatly. It’s not that the reunification is coming, because it has to come. I prefer that it would be 20 years from now when the generation that did these things are not around anymore. I have nothing against the new generation [inaudible]. What bothers me greatly is the loss of memory, and that’s why I’m so happy to be here. 

I was watching a newscast six weeks ago. There was a huge rally. Chancellor Kohl was giving a rally — lots of signs, “Ein Deutschland, Ein Volkland” and various things like that. Legitimate. The people were saying how horrible it was that they couldn’t reunify and so forth. It happened that the same day our local newspaper had pictures of the same rally, and the same day I received Newsweek and it had pictures of the same exact rally. This was a very strange coincidence. Everything was fine. I was a little upset about this big rally because I’m worried about reunification, but that’s immaterial. Then I saw the name of where this rally was held, and I was sick. The thing that I’m still sick about is I have not seen a single commentary or mention of it anyplace. The rally was held in Erfurt. 

People should know that Topf and Sons, who built the crematoria of Auschwitz, were from Erfurt. Even if they don’t know the history that Topf and Sons had the same problems that all contractors have with government. It didn’t work right at first. They protect themselves. They say, “No, this is all new science. We don’t understand it. The mechanics of huge piles of human flesh and how the convection currents — we don’t understand it, but we’ll run some experiments, and we’ll promise you we’ll fix it and production will be per the quota of 10,000 a day.” And great German engineering, they fixed it. When the Hungarians were brought in and they had this big emergency, they were able to run production at 20,000 a day. Why is it that nobody would say, “We’re having this great rally in Erfurt, and we will reunify because things are different now, and we know that we will not permit another Topf and Sons to come into this world”? That would be a great rally. 

Not a single commentator that I’ve seen in all the news media mentioned the existence of Topf and Sons, but the revisionist historians say, “Those were chimneys. They were baking bread or something.” That bothers me greatly; it really upsets me, even though I was not in Auschwitz, and I cannot have any recollection of it. When I saw those pictures all of a sudden all those banners and everything, everything changed. It wasn’t people; it was just chimneys and stuff because it was Erfurt. I have no idea if Topf or his son or his son’s son are around anymore, and I really don’t care; it’s got nothing to do with it. But there is a thing about knowing some relationships, and somehow those have disappeared. I don’t understand why. Surely people know a little bit more history than that. I’m not a great historian, but I know that Erfurt is Topf and Sons. That’s my comment.

Interviewer: Thank you.
ENGLESON: Thank you for having me.

Interviewer: We’re going to take pictures of your photographs. Leave the mic on. When we’re ready, we’ll ask you to give a one-sentence description of each one. We’ll turn the monitor around so you can see where the camera is.
ENGLESON: This is a yellow star, as anybody can see. It’s a standard one. It happens to be my mother’s, which was probably not very clever of her to hold onto it because if you were caught, you cannot pretend not to be Jewish if you have it with you. But she held on to it, and we have it now. And to the side of it is a five-mark coin, ghetto money. The Jews who did labor were paid in this kind of money. So you could sort of spend it, but you couldn’t spend it, if you understand what I mean. That’s a five-mark ghetto money coin.

Interviewer: [inaudible]
ENGLESON: This is a copy of a photograph that somebody, I don’t know who, took after the war, probably 1946, 1947, I don’t know precisely when. It is a place called Poligon where about 2,000 Jews are buried. I don’t know exactly when the fence was put up, again probably after the war. These are the burial grounds where the people from Podbrodz were killed on September 27, 1941.