>> This is James Newberry.
I'm here with Tosia Schneider on Tuesday, July 8th,
2014, at the Sturgis Library,
at Kennasaw State University.
And Mrs. Schneider, do you agree to this interview?
>> Yes indeed.
>> Thank you so much. So please state your full name.
>> My name is Tosia Schneider.
>> And when and where were you born?
>> I was born in 1928
in a little resort town Zalishchyky,
on the Dniester River in Poland.
Today, this is part of the Ukraine.
>> Could you tell me a little bit about your family life?
>> In that little town, lived my grandmother,
my uncle, Rosenbaum, and two cousins.
My father worked in an egg export at the time.
It used to be a beautiful resort area.
They called it the Riviera of Poland.
They grew grapes in that town,
which was most unusual,
and it was a very happy childhood.
>> And you said what did your father do for a living?
>> At that time, he was working in egg export business.
>> And what about your mother?
>> My mother was a teacher,
but when we were young, she
stayed at home with the children.
>> What role did Judaism,
did your faith play in your early life?
>> The early life, all I remember is the actually
one beautiful memory is going
traveling to neighboring town of Horodenka,
my mother's home place for
Passover seder for a Passover meal and the whole family.
My mother's family was there.
My grandfather in a white silken robe
as was customary reclining on a pillow.
All the children and grandchildren were there.
My grandfather gave each child before
the service a tiny little glass cup for wine,
and I was so proud that I had my own wine glass.
I recall reading in the songs.
I fell asleep long before it ended,
but it was one of the happiest memories of my childhood.
>> Did you go to a Jewish school?
>> When I was six,
we moved to my mother's hometown of Horodenka.
At that time, I started Polish elementary school every
morning and every afternoon
from 3:00 - 5:00 Hebrew school.
>> And did you experience antisemitism in Horodenka?
>> It was subtle but it was there.
In 1935 when President Piłsudski
died and the right wing party took over,
there were some laws promagated and were
definitely anti-Semitic like ritual slaughter forbidden,
which for my grandmother was the very bad situation.
But then what I recall, really,
there was a very painful as one time seeing my father
outside with a brush trying to get
a graffiti of our house.
And on the graffiti was
Precz z Zydami, out with the Jews.
And it was especially painful for
my father because in 1920
when Poland was fighting for
its independence, my father joined.
After fighting in the First World War,
he joined the Polish Army to fight for
Polish independence and it was
extremely painful for him to see this in our home.
>> So that's because he went to fight for Poland
and then the Polish people
in the area were painting the sign on your house?
>> Exactly. Plus we heard that Jewish students in
universities were discriminated against.
They had special benches for
them in the back and out of protest,
they used to stand rather than sit.
They picked up a great deal
of anti-Semitism and oppression
from the Germans from across the border.
>> Could you talk about the numerous clauses?
>> Yes. Numerous clauses in schools, indeed.
>> And what did it do?
>> First of all, only a small number of
students could attend universities.
And then the Greek came that they
can only sit in the back seat of the classroom.
So in protest, they used to
stand for the lectures. They would not sit down.
>> The Jewish students?
>> The Jewish students.
>> Were there other examples of anti-Semitism,
anti-Jewish feeling attacks on,
your Jewish school, that sort of thing?
>> Well, I remember as
a child playing outside and there were some rocks
thrown from the nearby Ukrainian church
at us but nothing really very oppressive,
but just feeling in
the air that there was anti-Semitism
and prejudice against our people.
>> Was your town predominantly Jewish?
>> I would say 40%.
And then they were
the Ukrainian population and Polish, of course.
>> When did you become aware
of the Nazis rise in Germany?
>> I had an uncle who lived in Leipzig Germany,
and the letters were coming from him
and the family would get
together and worry what's going to happen.
And he used to say that his boss was
a Nazi but he will protect them. He liked them very much.
Well, it turned out, I think it was sometime in 1938,
where they rounded up all Polish Jews
who had Polish passports
and drove them to the Polish border.
And for a while,
it was really very ugly.
The Polish didn't want to let him in.
And for weeks they stayed in
the mud hut on the border
between Poland and Germany and eventually,
they were allowed to come into Poland.
>> And was your uncle among them?
>> Yes. My uncle was among them, indeed.
>> And how did he feel at that point?
>> Well, remember, at that time, I was
only 10, 11 years old.
He didn't exactly discuss that with me,
but it was a general consternation in
the family that something very ugly was going on.
>> How did your life change
in the days leading up to and the days
after the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939?
>> In 1939, as I said,
I was 11 years old,
and our family happened
to be vacationing in the Carpathian Mountains.
My grandmother, my mother, and myself,
my brother was a Jewish summer camp.
Life seemed absolutely beautiful.
I splashed in a brook and
I just saw the future was full of promise.
Somehow in the middle of August,
a telegram arrived from my father,
urging us to return home
immediately that war was imminent.
So my mother woke us
up because we were walking to the railroad station.
She found a tiny little store open, a grocery store.
He didn't have very much there to purchase,
but she bought all the candy cookies that he had.
And I sought to myself, well,
if the war starts like this,
it can be terribly bad.
And so I sat on a train and
munched on my sweets and looked at
the very worried faces of my family.
I didn't know why were they so concerned,
yet at every station,
we began to see Polish troops
moving west to the German border.
But what we did not know, at the same time,
German Army, trains
were moving east and on the trains, they had graffiti.
We are off to Poland to thrash the Jews.
Hundreds of miles from my little town of Horodenka they
were setting to destroy our people.
>> Did refugees begin to move through the town?
>> When the war broke out in September 1st,
1939, our town was bombed.
There were a number of civilian casualties,
and we heard stories, of course, that wars on
many other Polish cities were severely bombed.
On the third day, we very hopeful.
We heard that France and England
declared war in Germany and we saw
surely it wouldn't last very long and yet
we began to see the Polish government
fleeing into exile to Romania.
We were very close to the Romanian border,
and they were leaving.
There was discussion at home that
perhaps my father and my brother should go,
that we heard the Jewish men were taken to forced labor.
But we saw surely women and children would be safe.
No one could imagine the horror that ensued.
It was barely a week or so and suddenly,
Russian tanks appeared in the center of
town and Russian occupation began.
Poland was once again divided.
In 17 days, Poland fell.
The Western part was occupied by
Nazi Germany and our power by the Soviet Union.
>> And that was after the pact between Hitler and Stalin.
>> Hitler and Stalin.
>> So how did the Soviet occupation
change daily life education society?
> First of all, they nationalized all large businesses.
Took over the businesses and
stores and nationalized everything.
Everybody worked for the government.
My father at the time happened to
work in a large flour mill,
as he was an accountant,
and he continued in the same fashion.
And my mother got a teaching position at the time.
They allowed Yiddish speaking school Jewish school,
so she was teaching.
We children were to school for the first time
boys and girls in the same class because in Poland,
we were segregated, which was fun.
I remember my father being
concerned about what was going on around town.
I did not understand at all what communism meant.
And one time I came home with
a red kerchief on my neck and my father was irritated.
I was so proud of it.
They selected me the best students to become pioneers
of their communist organization of young children,
and I saw that was great.
I was a good student.
And my father didn't like that at all,
and slowly we began to realize
what really communism meant.
We heard rumble of trucks in the night.
People were exiled to Siberia,
political leaders, religious leaders,
both Jews and Christians,
and the thing became more and more oppressive.
>> Did conditions for Jews improve at all,
though, under Soviets?
>> Not really, but
they did not distinguish
between Jews, Poles, Ukrainians.
We supposedly were all on equal footing.
But the whole period lasted so short.
It was not even two years.
And again, I was very young at the time.
>> So were there any other types of indoctrination?
>> Yes. We were told that we live in
best of all possible world under Stalin.
But again, we were very young children.
We didn't really understand.
But I do know that suddenly you saw
the parents would stop talking when children entered.
They worried that things might be said that
we innocently might repeat.
My father was especially very
irritated with that situation.
>> Was there any warning that Germany would
attack the Soviet Union later in that year?
>> Not at all. They were taken totally by surprise.
When they started bombing our town,
the Soviets were in
total disarray and fleeing our cities.
Some of the people tried to escape with them,
to flee with them, but it was a total disarray.
I don't know what the hierarchy
of the communist party knew,
but on a local level,
it was complete surprise.
>> And what type of battles took place in your town?
>> It was machine gun battles.
There were some civilian casualties.
>> And then was
there another occupation after that by the Hungarians?
>> The first troops came Hungarians.
There were some pogroms,
some killing of Jews by
the local Ukrainian population and the villages we heard.
And then we began to see Hungarian civilians,
Jews being driven through our town.
It was a very bad situation.
Eventually years later we heard that they were
all killed, murdered.
Some of the babies they left with us and we opened in
our town an orphanage to take care of these children.
>> And what did
these Hungarian Jews say about what had taken
place before that as they were Russian troops?
>> They didn't say very much.
They were, obviously,
devastated what was happening.
They said that their young men were
taken to forced labor,
the mukataba as they called it,
and they were just simply
thrown out from the homes and had to flee.
And it was especially difficult and young children.
Some of the babies, as I said,
were left in town with us.
>> Did your family or friends have
discussions about trying to flee?
>> Yes, as I mentioned,
when the war first started,
there was discussion at home,
because we saw that the Jewish men,
especially were in danger.
But the strengths and the weakness of our family
was that there was such cohesion,
we didn't want to split the family.
My father worried what would my mother
do and I if they left.
So that was our strengths and our weakness,
had they left, they could have had a chance to survive.
>> So after this, the German occupation began?
>> You're right.
>> And what did that bring on?
>> Well, the first week that they were there,
they erected eight gallows in the city center and
just randomly selected eight Jews and hung them.
They came to the Jewish synagogue,
trashed it, burned
the tallest cross and the prayer books.
And the rabbi who lived nearby,
they forced him to dance for them.
There were atrocities all around.
And then started the edicts.
All the things Jews can or cannot do.
We had to wear a white armband with
the star of David on our arm.
As I always say to the youngsters that I speak to
that this was not a band of shame for us.
We loved that symbol,
and today it graces flag of Israel,
a few Jewish stayed.
The orders were all men from the ages of 14,
I think, to 60 had to register for forced labor.
We had to wear the star
and Jewish children cannot go to school.
And I happened to live right next
door to my Polish public school.
And some of my known Jewish classmates passed by.
I ran to my mother,
I said, "Why can't I go?"
I was pretty good student.
I was a well-behaved kid,
and she just couldn't explain that.
Not only could her children go to school,
she couldn't teach, something she loved to do as well.
But day after day,
more orders were issued.
No Jewish doctors and lawyers can practice.
Jews cannot enter stores.
Jews cannot socialize with Christians.
All gold and silver and
furs had to be turned over to the German authorities.
That really got me very angry.
I had a little firm muff,
and it had a fur collar on my coat.
I had to rip it off,
so they can not freeze in Russian winter there.
Day by day new proclamations and more oppression,
and then in October of that year,
they formed a ghetto in our town.
There were a few narrow streets in the Jewish section of
town and we moved to my grandmother's house.
There's one thing I remember as
horse-drawn wagon came to
pick up a few of our possessions,
I took my little kitten,
and my mother said, "Put her down.
You can't take her with you."
I said, "Well, why not?"
Said, "There won't be enough food in the ghetto."
I was totally shocked. What do you mean?
Not enough food for a tiny little cat?
Well, it didn't take long to realize how right she was.
The ghetto was closed,
starvation and hunger raged.
>> Can you tell me about your father's boss
, Hein Muller?
>> Mr. Muller. Well, he was a middle-aged man,
and my father used to say that he is
a pretty decent man,
that he treated him okay.
One day in the middle of the night,
I wake up and I see German in uniform
standing over me and mumbling something in German,
and my blonde anger,
my blonde angel,
I didn't understand it.
And my brother came
in to the room and told me to dress quickly,
and he took me through
the backstreet to my grandmother's house.
At that time I was more
afraid of the darkness than of the Nazis.
And next morning, I heard the story that Mr. Muller,
who apparently was a bit drunk at the time,
put a gun to my mother's head,
and he wanted her to admit that I was fathered by Arian,
just simply because I had long blonde hair at the time.
It was a strange feeling.
>> So you didn't fit
the stereotypical image that [OVERLAPPING]
>> No.
People thought a Jewish person should look like.
>> Exactly. By the way,
sometime earlier I spoke to a group of
African American students and one girl asked me,
"Well, how did they know you were Jewish?
The Germans?" And I said,
no, no German knew that I'm Jewish,
but every Pole, Ukrainian neighbor knew,
and if they so chose they'd denounce me.
And that was the horror of that situation.
>> So your family had a pet dog as well?
>> Yes. Oh, God,
you read my book, I guess.
For whatever reason, I'll never know.
He was called Adolf.
Now when the Germans came,
we were terrified to call this poor animal.
I don't know what happened with him.
We certainly didn't take him to the ghetto.
But we lost the dog and he lost his name.
>> So your life in the ghetto was quite different.
Could you describe the community
in the ghetto and the conditions?
>> For me, initially,
I thought it was great.
My best friend lived two houses away.
My grandmother, my aunt,
and another uncle and aunt and three cousins,
we were all together.
I didn't think it was so terrible.
And as long as my father worked in the mill,
we had flour and we could barter for other things.
So we weren't starving as much at that point.
Then my mother decided
to hold classes for me and my friends,
which was strictly forbidden under
the threat of death to teach Jewish children.
So on a room in the back of the house,
she had my friends were sitting and
studying literature and history and math.
And to this day, I marvel.
I used to say sometimes I
wondered why didn't she teach us
how to make a mole of cocktail
which would have been much more useful?
I'm sure she didn't know.
But later on, I realized why she was.
She wanted us to believe that there was a future for us.
She wanted us to believe that scholarship mattered.
And one day my little friends disappeared.
Actually they were murdered.
>> And did you hear news from the outside world?
>> Very little. There will be rumors that in
such and such town there was mass killings.
They were really rumors.
It was very difficult to hear.
Every now and then,
we heard that somebody was cleaning the room of
German commander and read
their newspaper and read
how well they were doing on the Russian front.
So it was just rumors.
To have a radio was strictly forbidden,
people were murdered for that.
So it was really very little communication at the time.
>> Did your family, friends,
your parents have any sense of what lay down the road?
>> Not really. Not in
the wildest nightmares could
they have imagined what was happening.
They saw that they would take men for forced labor.
They would take away our possessions,
our homes, and so forth.
But mass murder was something beyond their imagination.
They could not imagine any brutality.
I remember my parents were slipped in German culture.
They spoke the language well.
They loved the literature, the music.
They just could not imagine barbarity from a nation,
"as highly cultured nation as Germany was".
>> Tell me about your mother's silver candlesticks.
>> Those were my grandmother's.
It was already in 1942, I think.
It was very obvious at the time
that survival was impossible.
And then we had to leave the ghetto.
So my grandmother,
when the order was issued to give to
the Germans all the silver she refused to part with them.
So in the dark of night as all the children,
grandchildren stood around,
they were buried in the garden in my grandmother's house.
I hope someday to retrieve them,
but I think that is really an impossible hope.
>> So the Germans were deporting
people and committing atrocities
against people in the ghetto in stages?
>> Yes.
>> Could you describe that?
>> Well, the first,
atrocities to refer to it,
was in a winter time.
It was in December 4th.
The order was issued that all Jews must
assemble in front of
the Great Synagogue to be inoculated against typhoid.
It was raging in that part of the world.
Some of the people like my father was skeptical,
why would the Germans suddenly worry about our health?
So he hid us in the attic of the mill where he worked,
but a lot of people assembled that day.
Suddenly, they were surrounded by the Gestapo and
the Ukrainian police and they
were herded into the synagogue.
They were kept there for two days,
two nights, without food and water.
And the situation there was atrocious.
And then they were taken away by truck.
When the shooting stopped,
we made our way back to
the ghetto to my grandmother's house.
The whole family was assembled there except for
my tall redhead Aunt Mitch
and her three children were crying,
and her husband Daz found out that she was taken away.
We didn't know where.
My grandmother was very ailing and
elderly lady yet she was a pillar of strength for us.
She kept saying, we'll try to find
out where they've taken these people.
That we will send her warm clothes.
We will send her food and maybe we can buy her freedom.
We went to sleep somewhat reassured only to wake up
the next day and
find out about the horror that befell our town.
Half of the Jewish population, 2,500 men, women,
and children were driven to the nearby forest of Smakov,
there they were forced to this rope in
a barn and a group of five
approached the ravine with a machine gun.
The clothes that they collected from the victims,
they were selling on city streets.
Public mourning was forbidden as is
our custom of seven days
of mourning where men do not shave.
Any man who was found was severely beaten or killed,
he was not shaven.
It was a horror story.
We just couldn't believe
that such brutality could occur in our town.
>> And what did your family do in response?
Did you continue to hide?
Did you look for ways of
escaping or of working in the resistance?
>> There was a discussion at our home that
perhaps my brother should
try to flee to Romanian border yet we heard
stories that many people were shot at the border police.
But most everybody.
Some people joined the underground,
the resistance and fled into the forest.
My father was too old,
my brother was very young.
But everybody built a hiding place,
as we call the debunker,
and so did my father in the attic of our home.
It was a room disguised by a book shell.
It's like one I saw in Amsterdam not
long ago where the family when Frank was hidden.
So I remember my father carrying me in his arm half
asleep before dawn into our hiding place.
We had there some water,
some dry crust of bread,
and we sat till the sun rose.
They started and the Gestapo didn't arrive in town,
we went down another day and the ghetto began.
>> So there were more deportations after the first one?
>> No. After the first one people
were dying of starvation.
There was a lot of typhoids going on,
but no more deportations.
But then in April, I think,
I don't recall the dates very well anymore,
there was a second act,
a second round ups, one more time.
Our father hid us in the mill where he worked.
Let me try to remember.
The last one was in the summer of that month.
The second deportation, again,
people were caught and rounded, kept it.
They sent him to the railroad station
and packed into cattle cars.
I just try to remember the date on this point.
And one more time,
our father hid us in the mill in the attic and
I recall waking up to Plaintiff West Locomotive.
And I didn't know then that my dearest friend,
Ganges, was on that trip to Belles extermination camp.
At that time, all the people were taken to Belles.
Belles, by the way, was not like Auschwitz.
You went to the right or left to work or the gas chamber.
And Belles, within 24 hours,
all the people were murdered by gas.
And then the third and final act was
that fall of 1942.
And again, the people were caught
were brought to the railroad station
and packed to cattle cars,
and then our city was declared Judenfrei, free of Jews.
And everybody had to leave within
24 hours to the neighboring ghettos,
one in Columbia, one in [inaudible] where we wound up.
>> So the only Jews who remained in
[inaudible] had to have work permits.
>> Right. My father was one of them.
They permitted 60 people to remain,
those they needed to run their more effort.
My father worked in the millers before.
The following in October of '43, I think it was,
the Gestapo came to the mill to pick him up and his boss,
Mr. Muller said that the books were
not in order that they needed him.
So they said, all right, they'll wait
24 hours while he finished his work,
and then they took him away.
And to this day,
I'm not quite sure,
he most probably perished in
Colombia and shipped off to where
they shot many people at that time.
>> How did you hear
the news that your father was taken from the mill?
>> That time, my mother, my brother,
and I were in a ghetto of tuste
[inaudible] and every week or so,
we would steal our way to the only public phone
and try to call him on the phone in his office.
And my mother used to do that all the time
but one day that October,
my mother was not well and my brother and I went.
And they were standing in that booth.
All I heard my brother say when he turned very white,
very pale and I knew that my father was gone.
>> Can you describe this second ghetto, the conditions?
>> It is almost impossible to describe.
If ever was a hell hole on earth, this was it.
And a few narrow streets so they'd
get thousands of people who
were brought in from all the
surrounding towns and villages.
Typhus was raging.
My brother had typhus at this time and hunger was raging.
It was a really horror place.
That winter though,
my mother made a last attempt to save my life.
By the way, when I look back
today as a grandmother and mother,
I wonder what was it like to have to
make a decision to save one child.
But it was easier for the girl
to pass, as they used to say.
So she met a man who helped my cousin escape,
and they ran papers.
And we went to visit my aunt and there he was sitting.
He was from Kyiv, I think.
Russian or Ukrainian, I'm not sure.
And he took one look at me and he said,
well, she doesn't look Jewish, whatever that means.
Get her ready in two days.
Let her meet me at the railroad station,
and I'll take her to a friend of mine in
a remote village and I'll tell him she's my cousin.
My mother was absolutely overjoyed.
She thought at least one of
her children would have a chance to survive.
So the next two days,
she tried to get some of my clothes together.
She borrow the little suitcase someplace.
And all the time, she was teaching
me how to behave in church.
She was teaching me some of the prayers.
As a teacher in public Polish school,
she was there when the priest
came to instruct the children.
So she was quite familiar with all that.
And every time I resolved wailing,
she kept repeating over and over again,
someone must survive to tell
the world, someone must survive.
And as you know, that today,
is the title of my memoir.
>> And did you go with that [inaudible]?
>> No. The second evening in the evening.
I said goodbye to my brother,
and my mother and I walked to the edge of the ghetto,
which I was going to steal my way out
and go to the railroad station to meet him,
and I stood there embracing her.
It suddenly became more clear than ever,
I'll never see her again or my brother.
Why would I want to live in a world
where our people was brutally murdered?
Why would I want to live a life of a lie?
And I told her I'm not going.
And to this day I'm very grateful to her.
I had a few more precious weeks with her.
She died only three months later.
I was only 14 years old,
but I had to make
a decision and she did not force me to leave.
>> So while you were in this ghetto,
were you able to escape out
and sell things on the outside at that time?
>> Yes. I had a distant cousin who once upon a time
had a store with [inaudible]
and he would give me needles and thread.
I took off my arm bag then and again,
that blond hair helped
and I would just go among the peasants
and sell that stuff because we were starving desperately.
The Russians that they allowed was extremely small.
We used to go to the unilateral Jewish community
and get some food,
but I tried once
to describe to my grandchildren would stare at me.
So I tell them sometimes I catch
myself talking to a friend
and I would say, let's go to lunch.
I'm starving. I said what have I said?
Starving is something entirely different.
It is just devastating.
You're craving for food.
You get lethargic,
I remember sleeping a lot.
It's very painful.
>> And you said that typhus was
raging through the ghetto,
and your mother contracted it, and then you did as well?
>> Yeah. I slept in the same bed.
And I really don't remember very much of that
except the day my mother died.
I would have a raging fever and all I remember is
my brother kneeling in
my bed and saying, our mother died.
And then I tried to look.
She was covered with
a white sheet on the floor and there were candles around
and they were flickering in my eye and
then all went dark for a number of weeks.
Now, at this point,
the Germans were going to empty the ghetto there.
And what did you and your brother have to do?
>> They sent us to the ghetto of labor camp.
This was a group of
five agricultural villages where the Germans
had a group of forced labor Jews working in agriculture.
And so did my brother and I.
It so happened the commander of our camp,
Mr. Frank was a pretty decent man.
We did not starve as badly as we did in the ghetto.
And the fact that being in an open field,
you can always find something edible,
a carrot or a potato, or whatever,
the work was difficult,
but situation was much better than any ghetto.
>> What sort of work was it?
>> We would work in
the corn fields or potato fields and then there
was some things that the Russians brought in called
[inaudible] which was like a rubber plant.
And the Germans were supposedly trying to
get a plant to have make rubber.
All I recall, it looked like a tobacco plant,
and had some kind of a white substance
when you took the leaf off. Is about all.
>> And where did you sleep?
>> We had barracks and we slept in the barracks.
>> So who are some of the people that you
worked alongside there who were in prison with you?
>> Of course, my brother was there.
And a number of people,
some of them who I still keep in touch.
One of them lives in New Jersey and one in Israel.
I still keep in touch with some of the people.
>> Can you describe the experience when you were
approached by the Ukrainian police and the SS men?
>> At one point. My father
kept always telling us that he has a very good friend,
a Ukrainian man,
who he served in the First World War.
He was just orderly.
And every now and then, he would come
to visit and he'd put me on
his knee and tell me what a great
guy my father was and what a good friend he was.
So when we were escaping from the ghetto of
Onderka he took us on a horse drawn wagon
to the next town
to [inaudible] where we used to live before.
And my father keep all saying,
what a good friend he is,
and I that he gave them some valuables that we had.
So when things got pretty bad,
I'm actually going ahead of myself
because that was before my brother was killed.
That summer, we were
working on the stretching machine around the clock.
And one time,
my group was working
the day shift and my brother worked at night.
And suddenly we heard chats all around.
They assembled us in front of
a grave that the men were forced to dig.
Then suddenly, our commander Frank
came riding on a horse and
screaming that he needed us to complete the harvest.
That's the first time in history that
he acted and said stop,
and the Gestapo left.
So that was the time where I was left all alone.
My brother was gone.
And [inaudible] said my father
told me that he has his good friend.
And all I wanted to tell him was
I'm what they did to my brother and to my family.
So I changed my clothes in
a peasant outfit and I walked through and I was stopped.
And that was the Ukrainian police and the Gestapo.
At that time, I spoke the language pretty well,
and I was allowed to pass through.
And I went to this "Good friend."
He saw me, he just turned pale.
"What are you doing here?
They just killed three Jews in the village."
It was not a very friendly encounter.
So he told me that he will allow
me to stay in the barn overnight,
but I will have to leave the place.
And so I stayed there overnight.
I hardly slept.
It was so painful to seeing how wrong my father was,
how totally deluded he was that this was a friend.
My feet were bleeding.
I was not used to walking barefoot.
So I asked him if he had some old shoes,
a colos, something that I could wear to go back.
All I wanted to do was go back to my people and
stay together with them to the end.
And he said, no, he didn't have any shoes.
And here he had all my uncle,
Rosenbaum's medical equipment.
A lot of valuable things that were given to him,
but he didn't have a pair of old shoes for me.
He did give me half a loaf of bread and I left.
And I remember the baroness just saying,
this total sense of lack of
compassion or care for
somebody who supposedly was a friend.
>> So when you returned to the camp
and this was after you lost your brother,
what was your motivation at that point to carry on?
>> All I wanted is really to join the resistance.
All I wanted to get a gun in my hands.
So I heard that there was a group in our area,
a Jewish group for partisans and that they were
coming the following day to pick up a sister.
One of them had to join the group.
And I met with them and I talked to them and they said,
yes, that they will take me,
and I should go to the Snack village next to
the water pump or whatever,
that they will meet me the next day
and then we'll all go together.
As I started walking,
I saw across the river
Ukrainian police with a gun over his shoulder.
I was skeptical.
I was a little concerned but I kept moving.
And as I came to that place,
we were supposed to meet,
there was nobody there.
And I realized that they must have
seen the Ukrainian police as well.
I returned back to the camp,
very disappointed only to hear a few days later,
that they were all killed.
They were poorly armed.
They killed a Ukrainian policemen in the process,
one German, but all of them perished.
>> Do you remember when you first
knew that Germany was beginning to lose the war?
>> Rumors were around.
There were some people who were working
for the Germans and they would read
the newspaper and they were always
saying strategic withdrawal for what city, what town?
We began to realize,
and we had rumors that Stalingrad had
fallen Russians to COV Stalingrad again.
And then we heard rumors that they will be
strategic withdrawal for one town or another,
and we realized that the front was coming closer.
And then we began to hear the big guns from far away.
>> And did that motivate you or?
>> Yes. We were hoping that and finally had come.
>> So can you describe being liberated?
>> Well, before the liberation,
I told you five agricultural villages, the Jews worked.
We decided all to come to one of the larger ones in
the town of [inaudible] where the ghetto
was for our safety.
And strangely enough,
the German commander of that camp and Mr.
Fatty was really trying to be quite protective.
And he would not allow any of the Ukrainians to
come to the inside the area where we were.
And when he left,
we begin to see German troops withdrawing and each time,
another group was coming through,
and yet he told them that this is his people.
They are not to to hurt us or do anything.
And I remember one instance,
I was sleeping in a bar.
And again, the total disruption of food services,
we were starving. It was chaotic.
And a young German soldier came in and saw me,
and he tried to give me a chocolate bar.
I was so hungry.
I haven't eaten for days,
but I would not take it.
I would not take him to clean
his bloody hands with a chocolate bar,
and I just walked away.
I thought he was going to shoot me. He didn't.
Then we began to hear.
They took us to the railroad station where
there was a flat cars moving continuously,
and they had us throw everything on it.
Grain, animals, pigs, chickens,
whatever, and everything to go back to Germany.
And then suddenly Russian tanks
appeared and we were free, finally.
>> How did you feel when it was over?
>> First, it is the elation.
Well, it wasn't simple the day
that we were liberal related.
They flew, each took a place over the camp,
, and were throwing a sensory bombs.
Barracks were burning very fast,
and they didn't want any survivors.
They didn't want any eyewitnesses to what had happened.
Many people severely burned and killed in the attack.
And then finally, the Russians came
into the town and we were free.
The first self civilization,
then the realization for
immediately that I was left totally alone.
I was hoping that perhaps some
of my family survived in Rodenka,
but I knew, of course,
that my immediate family was gone.
>> What were you wearing at the time?
>> Filthy clothes we wore to work and to sleep
summer in winter for two years.
When I left the ghetto,
my mother told me to put my best dress on.
We were totally destitute, barefoot.
I didn't have any shoes in the winter time,
so some friends made me wooden shoes.
We worked outdoors without gloves,
without stocking and sub zero temperatures in Poland.
They're the strange thing,
some people should do some research about it.
I was never sick for a day.
>> Why do you think that was?
>> Your body reacts in a strange way.
If I work out today,
anybody without shoes stalking
working for 12 hours outdoors,
you will die of pneumonia the next day.
It didn't happen. It's a kind
of self preservation mechanism or something.
>> So what did you do in the days and
weeks immediately after deliberation?
>> I hitchhiked with a Russian,
to try to get to my hometown of [inaudible],
because before we left the ghetto,
we heard that my uncle,
who was a chemist and his wife,
dentist and her partner,
dentist were being hidden by a Ukrainian peasant.
So I was hoping that just maybe he had survived.
When I came there,
there was only a handful of Jewish people there,
and they told me don't stay overnight.
It's dangerous to be here,
and your uncle and his wife were
murdered by the very peasant who supposedly was to sail.
>> Did you soon go to a displaced persons camp?
>> No. I went back
to this town of [inaudible] in the ghetto.
We were a handful of people.
We all stayed together in one empty house for safety.
And then somebody said that
across the border in Romania, there was food.
Then maybe we should try to get
some food because we were afraid to go to the villages.
We were totally, as I said, destitute.
So with the Russian army truck,
we made our way across the border to Romania.
And there, I remember being
very tired and falling asleep
on the floor in some empty apartment.
Waking up in the morning,
and looking in the window,
I saw I died and went to heaven. I couldn't believe it.
There were street cars running in the street,
people properly dressed,
women in lipstick and high heels.
I just couldn't believe it only 40 miles where I
was, such devastation here.
Life was more or less normal.
So as a few as bedraggled Jews
came and stood down in the street.
Some other Jewish people surrounded us,
who had family across the border.
There were a lot of families on
both sides and they wanted to hear,
of course, what happened in Poland.
We didn't bring any good news at all.
Yet one of the people who was there
was a cousin of my mother's,
and he took me home with him.
So that's how my roaming started.
I stayed with them.
They tried to adopt me,
and I stayed with them for some years.
We made our way to the American zone in Germany.
And there I had a cousin in Peekskill,
New York, and she sent me papers to
come to the United States in1949.
>> Did you have to wait for more than a year?
>> Yes. I was in high school there in Germany,
which could write another book
on a Jewish kids in the German high school.
And of course, none of them
knew anything that was going on.
But the thing I remember most about that period,
that, I was very close to Nuremberg,
some 12 miles and I did attend some of
the Nuremberg trials of the top Nazi.
>> Could you describe that?
>> It was a horrific thing.
Every country was occupied,
had a delegation and
the polish delegation issued tickets,
whatever, permits to go in.
And as they were walking in,
there will be one MP and one of the accused.
I was standing as close as I'm standing to you.
I saw these ordinary ugly people.
These are the people who in
there decided to murder
innocent people by the millions to torture them.
It was just beyond belief that these looked like human,
and they were the murders on a large scale.
>> So you immigrated to the United States in 1949?
And could you describe that trip?
>> Well, we started out in Bremen,
and I remember
the SS Marine Flesher was my ship.
Great hope of hoping to start a new life.
And after I got pretty
sick when we were crossing the channel, it was fine.
And as we approached the Harbor of New York,
and we saw the Statue of Liberty,
it was really a feeling of a new life beginning,
perhaps a life of freedom.
And then I went to Peekskill,
New York, and my cousin was very kind, very nice person.
But one thing she told me, is,
forget about the past and start a new life,
as though that was possible.
So I never talked about it.
People didn't ask and I didn't tell.
>> Did you complete your education?
>> It was very ragged.
It was here and there in Germany.
I completed what would have been
two years of college in America.
But my cousin told
me in order to be able to work in America,
you have to have a high school diploma.
So I went back for three months
to Peekskill to high school.
So they put me in eighth grade to
see how my English was,
in three months, I took the regions
exam in New York and passed.
>> And when did you meet your future husband?
>> That was way back in Poland.
He was my first English teacher.
Of course, I was 16,
he was 18, but there were no schools.
It was 1945. Everything was destroyed.
And he happened to have
the best education during the ghetto
because [inaudible] was where he was,
the Jewish professors couldn't teach.
So they got together some of the best four students,
and Fred was among them,
and gave them private lesson.
By the time the war was over,
he had the best education.
He had no trouble completing here his PhD.
He was a professor at
Georgia Tech for a number of years,
and then at MIT visiting professor.
But that's how we met.
We had no common language.
He didn't speak any Polish.
I didn't speak in German,
and I hated the passion anyway.
But that was a long time ago.
We're married now 64 years.
>> Can you tell me about your family?
>> We have three sons and five grandchildren.
One of them just graduated from Amherst,
grand daughter is a starving artist in New York.
She graduated from UGA in Fine Arts.
One in theater,
and we still have one in school studying chemistry..
>> So you're a member of
the congregation at the Temple on Peachtree Street?
>> Indeed. I taught Hebrew there for 20 years.
>> And is it correct that you started that Hebrew school?
>> Yes.
>> And when was that?
>> '75/'76.
>> And when did you
start sharing your experiences in the Holocaust?
>> I remember the Bremen man asked me once to speak
and I went with Ali Gross as he spoke in high school,
and I said, "No, I can never do that.
This is beyond me."
And then as time passed by,
I decided I really need to write down what had happened.
I had to keep the promise that I made
to my mother to tell the world.
So I wrote the memoir
at that point, they keep asking me,
bring me to speak to schools and so I
did all over Georgia.
>> And has that been a good experience for you?
>> It was a promise kept.
Because as I said that my mother kept
insisting that someone has to tell what happened.
I felt that that's something I needed to
do as a survivor,
I was eyewitness to this.
I needed to tell the world.
Unfortunately, that's still going
on in other countries as well.
Genocide is not over.
>> And could you show us your book here?
>> Yes, indeed. This is the English version,
and it's been published in France as well.
>> Well, thank you very much, Ms. Schneider.
>> You're welcome I'm sure.