>> This is James Newberry.
I'm here with Murray Lynn on November 14, 2013,
at the Museum of History and
Holocaust Education at Kinsall State University.
And Mr. Lynn, would you share
your introductory statement with us?
>> Yes, I would. This documentary will bring
future generations face to face with
a terrible and shameful chapter in human history.
It invites us to reflect on what history tells
us and how that history should guide us to learn,
to remember, and apply the lessons of history to build
a better world and
a safer world than the world of
my childhood. This is my message.
>> Thank you. Okay. Mr. Lynn,
when and where were you born?
>> I was born in what was at that time,
the northeastern part of Hungary,
a community called Bilke, B-I-L-K-E,
which was roughly 125 miles northwest of Budapest.
I call it frontiers of civilization.
>> And what was your birth name?
>> My birth name was Maurice Leicht, L-E-I-C-H-T.
>> And what was the year?
>> The year was September 19, 1930.
>> And what was life like for your family
and friends in the years before World War II?
>> Our community was purged what I
call on the outer limits of human habitation.
It was a rural area.
Life was very hard.
It evoked living in the 18 or 19th centuries.
We did not have any paved roads,
we had no running water,
we had no electricity.
Life was very very hard.
My parents were small shopkeepers.
We owned a small globe clothing store,
and my parents managed to have co
living from that store in addition to doing some farming.
We had a farming and that supplemented our income.
>> And what role did
your Jewish identity play in your life at that time?
>> Faith was a very,
very important part of our lives.
It gave our people a sense of peace and a sense of hope.
Hope because we all lived for
messianic world for a better world
in the years to come and we
felt often our parents
and our community at large often felt that we
were just living in a temporary world
that we have a better future
than the world that we live in.
So it was a very hard life
but we were resigned to living
that kind of life because we didn't know any better.
>> And did you live mostly among
other Jewish people or
among Jewish people and non Jewish people?
>> Our community was
fairly well integrated with the Christian community.
We did not have a ghetto
or we were not relegated to ghettos.
We lived fairly mixed in,
fairly integrated in a Christian community.
But we did not socialize
or have any social intercourse
with the Christian community because
we were considered by most of them
as a sub human people
and they didn't socialize with us very much.
>> And can you tell me about your parents?
>> My parents were by
European standards they were well educated people.
My dad was a scholar and an educator in the community,
and my mom was a Hungarian beauty queen.
She was crowned at
the age of nineteen and a half a Hungarian beauty queen.
Very well known in the community,
very well respected, very well admired.
She was crowned as Hungarian beauty queen
at the age of nineteen and half,
16 years later,
when she was 36,
she was murdered in Auschwitz.
>> And you said that non-Jews considered
you and your family and your Jewish friends subhuman.
And so can you describe the nature
of anti-semitism in Hungary in the 1930s?
>> Let me answer that question two ways.
We did not have in Hungary
the overt antisemitism as
Germany had in other European countries
of Central and Eastern Europe.
But there was a thinly veiled facade
of dislike and distrust
and disrespect for us
because it came from the church leaders.
The church leaders for centuries
preached every Sunday that we
were godless people who
worshipped a godless ideology.
And this kind of teaching,
this kind of doctrine was deeply embedded in
the local community and indeed across Europe,
that we were a godless people
worshipping a godless ideology,
and we should be treated as Pariahs,
and we should be isolated
and not have any social intercourse.
They were encouraged not to have
any social intercourse with Jews because of that.
So we were shown to
a large degree But there was not, as I said,
overt violence until we realized
later on when we were taking to Auschwitz,
we found out they inhibited
hatred that they nurtured
and yet it was never manifested.
>> So how did your life stay the same or
change when the Nazis initially
came to power in Germany in 1933?
>> Our lives changed dramatically when
the Nazis seemingly started
winning the war in one large chunks of Europe.
The Nazis emboldened our people.
When I say our people in
our community in rural areas and Hungary in particular,
the Nazis fanned the fires of hatred.
And they emboldened the local community,
the Christian people,
the churches to unleash all their pent-up anger,
all their pent-up prostration,
all their pent-up distrust for
to unleash all that during Hitler's presence.
And so our life became more difficult during Hitler,
because while we lived
a relatively passive life before Hitler,
they didn't bother us and we didn't bother them.
But during Hitler, all the pent-up anger,
all the pent-up contempt was unleashed.
And so our lives changed dramatically at that point.
>> And so why do you
think the Nazis were able to come to power in Germany?
>> Well, the Nazis came to power in
Germany for the same reason
that many dictators take over.
There was a great deal of unrest in Germany.
Depression robbed a lot of people over livelihood.
And there was a great discontent in Germany,
with the government, with their lifestyle,
and many of them blamed
the Jews for their problems, in fact,
most of them blame the Jews for the discontent,
and it was ripe for
a Nazi ideology that promised them a better life.
>> So did your family
consider fleeing Europe at this time?
Was there any sense that something
down the road would be more
extreme and you needed to leave?
>> My family would have loved to flee
those terrible conditions that we were
subjected to even before
Hitler's time, difficult harsh life.
Unfortunately, we were all slaves to poverty.
We didn't have the money.
We didn't have the financial resources
to leave that part of the country.
So we became slaves
to that lifestyle because we had no place to turn.
We would have loved to come to
this country or to other parts of the Western World
where we would have had a better life,
but we didn't have the financial resources to get there.
>> So when the fascist element took power in
Hungary and began to institute anti-Jewish laws,
how did life change at
that point and how did they affect your daily life?
>> Well, it unleashed a lot of hatred at that point.
We didn't have much,
as I mentioned earlier.
We didn't have a great deal of
violence or hatred before then.
What happened was that when the Nazis became
more emboldened because they conquered much of Europe,
they became more emboldened
to speak out against the Jewish people.
And that made our life less secure,
made our life more difficult.
They used to taunted us.
The word Jew became
more and more common in
the school system and a social environment.
The taunted us at that point,
more so than before,
these were people who were relatively quiet,
who were relatively inhibited.
They suddenly unleashed their pent-up frustration
and anger against us.
>> So can you tell me about when
the Hungarian Secret Police came
for your father in what year that was?
>> In 1942, the Hungarians at the urging,
I presume of the Nazis,
they decided that they are Hungarian fascists.
They were no better than the Nazis.
They decided that they knew
what was going to happen to us.
They were apparently apprized of what to expect.
And they were encouraged to do away with
its leaders first because if
a community is deprived
of leadership, they're more manageable.
And so they decided to
surround all the leaders in our community.
We had roughly 200 Jewish families in our community.
And so they surrounded
roughly 13-15 Jewish leaders
and took them to the Carpathian and including my dad.
I remember vividly we had a knock on
the door at 2:00 in the morning and
I was 12 years old at that time in 1942,
and the two fascist soldiers burst in with
their dogs and bayonets
and asked my dad to get
dressed and follow them to an unknown destination.
And we were all hysterical.
We pleaded with them to tell us why dad was taken,
what the charges were,
but we did not get any response.
All they kept on telling my dad is to get rest in
a hurry take with
him whatever he wanted to take with them,
but they would not respond to any of our questions.
We were all hysterical.
I had three younger brothers,
with total of four of us.
And my mom was just hysterical.
My mom was 34 at the time.
And so my dad got
dressed and took his Bible with him. That's all.
And they took my dad and
roughly 13 other community leaders
to the Carpathian section
of Hungary, 30,40 miles away.
And they forced them
to dig their own graves and executed them all.
So my mom became a widow at
the age of 34, that was in 42.
My mom became a widow and became less secure,
harsher and we were all hysterical.
We didn't know what happened to my dad
until two to four weeks later that dad
was executed along with roughly 13-15 other people.
And that opened a Pandora's box
for us because we didn't know what to expect next.
We were very insecure.
We were concerned not only about our safety,
but our livelihood as well.
So that was a turning point in our lives.
>> And for that time after you found out,
how did you find enough food to eat for the family?
How did you continue to
live at that point without your father?
>> Life was much harsher after my dad was executed.
We still maintained our farm and we
had a small little farm enough to subsidize.
With very bare necessities in this country,
this would be living well below
poverty level, the way we lived.
But we were thankful that we had the little we
did because some of our neighbors had less than we did.
We became very insecure,
very traumatized and my mom just cried
endlessly and it just had
a very profound effect on our lives and our security.
>> And how were you receiving news at this time?
What did you know of the war?
>> We only knew about the war from hearsay.
Why? Because there were no newspapers in our town.
We were not allowed to have radios.
So those who had
secret clandestine radios passed
the news on when we met at our synagogues on weekend,
on Saturdays, news got around what was going on,
but that was second and third-person news.
And so we had no connection to direct news.
All we knew is what we heard from others.
>> And did you know of
any resistance efforts in the area,
any people moving secretly,
partisan groups in Hungary fighting against the fascists?
>> We did not have in our community as far as I know,
as far as I remember, any resistance groups.
I wish we did.
Life might have been a little easier for us.
And I have often thought about that, why not?
The Jews in certain parts of Europe
were so poor, so intimidated,
so insecure, that we did not have the courage and the
wherewithal and the knowledge to become resistant.
And this is disputed by a lot of Holocaust scholars,
what I'm going to say;
that many Holocaust scholars
claim that we did have a lot of resistance.
I for one have not found or
seen or heard of any resistance in our area.
And not because we didn't care,
not because we were not afraid,
but we didn't have the leadership.
This is the reason why they took leadership
so that when the time comes to take us to Auschwitz,
there will be no resistance,
and this is what happened.
For example, in larger communities
where they did have resistance like in Poland,
where they had over three million Jewish people living,
they couldn't take all the leaders and execute them,
so they formulated some resistance.
In our community because we were so
small and the leaders were disseminated,
we didn't have any resistance.
>> So can you tell me about the attack on your mother in
1943 when you were
visited by another member of the Hungarian Secret Police?
>> One thing that I have a difficult time with even today,
I break down every time,
I think about this because my mom was violated.
I have a real problem with talking about that.
But I remember it was a second knock on the door.
My mom was a beautiful woman.
Everyone admired her in the community,
everyone looked at her, everyone watched her.
And we had a knock on the door again at 2:00,
3:00, 4:00 in the morning.
And a Hungarian fascist soldier forced his way
in the house and wanted to see
my mom and demanded to go to bed with her.
And I was in the same room with mom,
I had a bed.
I slept on a coat,
mom was afraid to sleep by
herself after my dad was executed.
So I had a coat and he
insisted on going to bed with my mom.
And I started screaming at him and yanking him away.
He was forcing himself on my mom at night.
And he said to me,
"If you don't stop it",
he says, "You see the pistol here?"
He says, "I'm going to blow your brains
out and no one is going to care."
My mom was terrified that he's going to kill me and
my mom said to me, leave him alone.
She was willing to sacrifice herself to save me.
So I still had a difficult time.
I kept yanking him and finally,
mom told me again, stop.
Next thing I knew I woke
up at 6:00 am in the morning and he was gone.
My mom was never the same.
It broke her spirit.
She felt that she betrayed my dad,
she betrayed us,
she betrayed her faith.
She was never the same.
I don't ever remember seeing her smiling after this.
It just absolutely crushed her spirit,
and nothing would restore it.
And so that was by
far the most traumatic experience that I can remember.
It was worse than not having food to see
your mom raped, your mom violated.
Nothing that I remember is more
painful to me than that one incident.
>> And as the oldest child,
what responsibility did you feel to take care of
your family as the oldest?
>> Well, at that time,
I was either 13 or
14 because my dad was murdered in '42,
I was 12 years old.
And that happened when my mom was raped.
I don't remember.
I'm guessing perhaps six months later,
perhaps a year later,
I don't remember exactly the date.
But I did not have much of a role.
My mom pretty much ran the show at home.
My mom was a very bright, strong,
self-reliant woman, and I was too young at
that time at the age of 13
to assume any responsibilities.
So Mom had to make sure that we have enough food,
that we had enough clothing,
that we don't starve, so it was her role.
Mom tried to relieve
us of any responsibilities because we had enough on
our minds when we became orphans when we had no longer
a father and we were scared of our own shadows.
We didn't know where
our next meal is going to come from,
and she didn't want to burden
us with more responsibilities.
>> Did you carry on
your religious traditions despite
the anti-Jewish laws at that time?
>> Yes. Our Jewish traditions have not changed to
the very last moment
because we felt religion was an opiate.
It gave us a false sense of security.
>> And you weren't going to any school at this time,
you were staying at home all the time?
>> No, we were still going to school at that point;
elementary school, high school, etc.
>> When was your family called
to go when all
of the Hungarian Jews were transported to Auschwitz,
at what point did that take place?
>> Yes. That was the third knock on the door within
a two year period and it will
always be etched in my memories for as long as I live,
where two fascist soldiers
burst into our house roughly between
4:00 and 5:00 in the morning with
their bulldogs and bayonets and asked
my mom to pack
our bags and our bags
to follow them to the train station.
And my mom was just hysterical.
She couldn't believe it.
She asked those fascist soldiers
to tell us where we're taken,
why we're taken,
what we did wrong,
and they would not respond to our questions.
My mom walked back and
forth crying and pleading for mercy and redemption.
And soldiers kept on
barking at mom to start packing and I remember
my mom yang the sheets off our beds and
blankets and started packing putting some food,
bread, and flour,
and beans and other stuff
that we would need to sustain ourselves.
She did not realize that in the end,
she wouldn't need any of that.
And so after she
started filling those blankets
and sheets up with our belongings,
she tied it on our necks
because we didn't have any luggage.
And we were led to the train station and what
stands out in my mind
more than anything else is our neighbors,
there was an orchestrated scene on
the street on our way to the train station.
It was an organized and orchestrated scene where
hundreds of neighbors lined up the streets.
And they were taunting us and throwing apathes at us,
throwing stones and spitting at us.
These were people who were our neighbors,
who were allegedly our friends.
Some of them, we thought they
were friends or sympathetic.
If not friends, certainly sympathetic with us.
They all lined up the street and yelled at us.
We hope we never return.
I hope you never return.
And it just taught us about how
that hatred was unleashed against
us and it reminded us of
the thinly veiled facade of hatred that
existed for so long that we didn't realize.
In this episode, when we were taken to
the train station with bayonets and dogs.
Hundreds of soldiers following us
with dogs and bayonets it
was one of the most frightening experience
that anyone can go through.
And neighbors lined up on the sides of
the street and hurling epithets at
us as we were led to our doom.
It reminded us how
deeply rooted that hatred was.
It reminded us of
the long and deeply rooted hatred that it was so
deeply embedded in the lives of
those people that we were not
aware of most of the times.
We knew they didn't like us,
but they were tolerant,
but all that hatred was
unleashed at that moment against us.
>> And did you have any sense of
where you were being taken at that point?
Did you wonder whether it was to a labor camp?
Did you have any sense?
>> We had no idea.
We did not have the slightest inkling.
We were told or we heard.
I don't remember which,
whether we heard the second hand or
we were told that we're going to be relocated.
That was a very broad term.
They didn't elaborate,
and we thought that this was just judgment on our part.
We thought that we're taking somewhere else and
we'll be relocated some barracks or something.
We had no idea
where our final destination is going to be.
>> And can you describe the trip on the train?
>> Well, we were first taken to
a temporary ghetto to
a temporary holding station until they got
all the Hungarian Jews together and so we were taken to
a larger community that was
a holding station until they
accumulated enough people to fill a train to Auschwitz.
And if my memory serves me right and I don't quite
remember we might have been there for
a week or maybe a little longer at his holding station.
And after that we were transported,
we were taken to Auschwitz from there.
>> And was it like a cattle car?
>> The Auschwitz experience these strains were
scenes that surreal scenes
that resembled Dantes' inferno.
They were cattle cars.
They dumped roughly 100 of us in a in a cattle car.
I'm guessing I may be off a little bit.
We had no toilet facilities,
we had no food,
we had no water, we had no air.
It was the most dehumanizing experience
that anyone can ever imagine.
It was an unspeakable experience.
I remember where people were wailing and
crying and pleading for mercy, pleading for redemption.
I remember my three younger brothers were
begging mom for food,
for water, for air.
People had to relieve
themselves in their clothes because we
or if we had pots and pans in our personal luggage.
I remember mom took out some pots and
pans to relieve herself.
It was a surreal scene that you
only see a monster in horror movies.
That is the best way to describe it.
This went on for two days.
Without toilet facilities, without food,
without water and the crying and
wailing and screaming and pleading was unbearable.
>> And can you tell me about the arrival at Auschwitz?
>> When we arrived to Auschwitz,
when the train finally arrived,
it was a huge relief for us
because at last we could at least have some fresh air.
As soon as the trains arrived and
the SS soldiers opened the cattle cars.
We were surrounded by SS soldiers and barking
dogs, and also Sonderkommandos.
Sonderkommando were Jewish prisoners
who helped us unload.
And we were the eldest in
German [inaudible] meaning fast,
move fast, and they started separating us immediately.
Blind them, line them up right and left.
The ones on the left side,
mom and my three younger brothers
were moved to the left,
and Sonderkommando, a Jewish prisoner who came to help
us with removing the luggage
and moving the sick and the dead.
Many of them died.
The sick died, many young ones died on the train.
They were responsible for removing all that.
One of them came over to me and whispered in my ear,
he says, how old are you?
I said 14. He says, tell me you're 16.
I didn't know why,
but he knew something I didn't.
If I was 16, I'd be assigned to work.
If I was 14, I'll be going with mom to the gas chamber.
When the Germans approached
me when they separated mom and
I and the children and
my three younger brothers, I was 14.
My brother, the next one was 12, 10, and eight.
We were two years apart.
So the three younger brothers were whisked
away with mom and they
were asked to throw
all their belongings on a big heap and a big area.
And I remember my mom was always
concerned that she wouldn't find her luggage.
Little did she know where she was going.
And the last thing
I remember Mom when he yanked me away from her.
She said I love you, son.
I hope to see you again.
She knew that something is going to happen.
I'll never forget my mom's grief.
My mom's horror.
I've never seen horror more nakedly exposed than
my mom's face when she
was in a cal car and removed from her cal car.
She didn't know what to expect, Max.
Her eyes,
the horror on her beautiful face still haunts me today.
And so within an hour,
I was assigned a strip suit,
and my number was 83,000 on the suit.
Stripe suit, no underwear,
the stripe suit, and wooden clothes.
I was taken to a barrek.
I didn't know where my mom went,
where my three younger brothers went.
I approached a prisoner there
who has already been there for weeks.
I said, Do you have any idea where I
can find my mom and three younger brothers?
And he says,
how old were your younger brothers and I told him,
and he knew right away the answer.
And he hesitated for a while.
He didn't want to tell me.
And then he said,
come on out of the barrack,
and I'll show you where they are.
So he takes me out of
the barrack and points to the chimney.
Said that's where they are.
And that was a sinking feeling,
a feeling I'll never forget.
I didn't quite fully understand.
I was 14 years old.
I didn't quite fully understand I had a hunch.
I says, would you tell me what that means?
And he explained to me
that they were gassed and now they're burning.
That's how fast their lives were snuffed out.
And so I said to myself,
now I'm alone, I have nobody left.
I have to care for myself.
Life became more of a challenge
for me at that point to fight for survival.
So my mom and three younger brothers were gone.
I was left alone to fend for myself.
>> Can you describe the conditions in the camp
and what you were forced to do in terms of labor?
>> Well, I was in Birkenau,
which is called Auschwitz 2.
Very few people survived there.
Life was unspeakable.
Incredible. We were scheduled to work every morning.
I had to walk two,
three miles, four miles.
I don't remember the Germans
built some underground factories.
And I was assigned to carry
cement bags from the freight train
to the mixing plant where they were mixing concrete.
At the age of 14, two prisoners would put
a bag on my back and I would
haul it I don't know how many feet,
five, 600 feet, 1,000 feet away to the mixing plant,
where they were mixing the concrete.
This went on for 12 hours a day.
Then we alternated.
It was impossible to survive there on the food.
They gave us a cup of coffee in the morning
and one slice of bread, nothing at noontime.
And at night, we were given
one cup of fowl-tasting potato soup.
That was our diet for a day,
roughly 150, 180 calories.
The average person needs 2,000 calories.
A very active person needs
3,000 calories they need to survive.
It was impossible to survive on 150, 180 calories.
We ate grass, we ate whatever we
could find in the woods there.
Bile mushrooms, animals if we can find and kill.
Rabbits raw.
Most people survived.
Most people did not survive.
Most people died of starvation, disease, malnutrition,
and we never knew
from moment to moment from hour to hour,
whether we will be fell by the bullet,
whether we will be fell by savage beating,
whether we will be fell by
starvation and disease or the gas chamber.
It was an existential nightmare.
We had during the winter when in Auschwitz is in Poland,
temperatures would go down to 20, 25 below zero.
We had no underwear,
we had no socks, a stripe suit,
but I would take a concrete plant,
the paper bags from the concrete that are empty and
put it under my shirt as
a buffer against the wind in cold weather.
It was impossible to survive under those conditions,
without food, without clothing,
working 12 hours a day.
A third of the people in Birkenau
died the first 90 days of starvation and disease.
And those the rest of us
fought for life every moment of the day.
We never knew how we would be fell,
how we would die.
We knew we were going to die we just didn't know how.
>> And did you form any relationships with
other people in the camp or
were you focused only on survival?
>> Well, we had relationships.
I had a cousin with me there.
But on the whole,
we were very animalistic.
They were fighting for cromobread.
But I'll give you an example of
the existential nightmares that we went through.
Every morning we had roll call at 5:00.
Well, they didn't need roll call because there's
no way to escape were surrounded by electric wires.
The purpose of the roll call was to call the
sick and told them they were going to the hospital.
Well, the hospital, there was no hospital.
The hospital was a euphemism for the gas chamber.
My cousin who was there with me,
his name was Sam Green.
He was my age and they yanked me out of the line,
no less than 12 or 13 times to go to the hospital,
and I slip back because I knew what a hospital meant.
But my cousin, Sam Green, he volunteered.
I said to him, Sam,
do you realize where you're going?
You're not going to the hospital.
This is not a hospital,
there's no hospital in Birkenau.
And he said something
memorable to me that still haunts me.
He says, My Hungarian name was Maurice.
He says, Maurice, I know where I'm going.
But I'll only suffer for 10 minutes, maybe less.
You'll suffer from here on and
die as a dehumanized person,
you'll die of starvation, disease,
or a bullet or being
clobbered to death or frozen to death.
He says, who is better off? You or I?
He says, I can't take this anymore.
And this is after six months in a camp.
It was just impossible to survive.
So my cousin volunteered and he got what he wanted.
He's easier death than dying of starvation,
disease, a bullet, or being beaten to death.
>> And what about when the bombing
started from allied planes?
Do you hear that? Was it around you?
Or did you have a sense
that the war was being lost by Germany?
>> We saw the planes over us and we saw
the British flags on a plane.
And we knew that they
were getting this is the beginning of an end,
but we didn't know that we're going to be
able to live long enough to
survive to see the end of this,
but they transported in January of 1945.
Perhaps it was maybe a little
later late in January or early in February.
I think it was January.
The Germans decided they were going to evacuate us from
Auschwitz Birkenau because they
didn't want us to be liberated by the Russians.
The Russians were getting close and
so we were we started first on the trains.
They put us all on freight trains closed trains to
evacuate us and the bridge bombarded the railroads.
They didn't realize it was us. Maybe they did.
And then we started walking to a destination,
they knew where they were taking us.
We didn't know where we were going.
Most of us were too weak to walk and most
of us died or they
were clobbered to death or shot to death.
They were dozens and dozens shot to death every day.
After a while they were running
glowing bullets and they were clobbered to death.
The Germans as said they didn't
want to waste a bullet on them anymore.
And they were left in the fields,
they were left in the gutters,
they were left on the streets to be buried in
an unknown grave by the hundreds and hundreds of people.
We ultimately ended up I don't
remember either in Buchenwald or Dachau.
I don't remember which it was I was ultimately
liberated in May of 2045 and one of those camps,
either Dachau or Buchenwald.
I think that it was Buchenwald,
the reason I say so
because Eli Azel said he was liberated in Buchenwald,
and we were in the same camp so I
presume that I was liberated in Buchenwald.
>> Can you describe liberation?
>> Well, when I was liberated,
I was in semi comatose condition.
I was 14, I was close to 15 at a time.
I was in Auschwitz for almost a year.
Well, a little over a year in fact.
Most of us were skeletons our bodies,
as you sure you saw,
pictures, we were skeletons.
I was semi comatose condition.
I didn't fully realize what was going on.
All I remember is we were liberated by the Americans
and they took me to a hospital and I
was fed intravenously for two weeks.
I was too weak to be fed by food.
My body would not absorb the food.
Those who ate food
Americans what the Americans provided them.
Many of them died because their bodies could
not absorb in the hundreds, they died.
I was taken in makeshift hospital I was fed
intravenously for two weeks
after two weeks they released me.
And that is when I decided to go back
home to see if there are any remnants left of my family.
>> And what did you find?
>> First, let me just say the train
right home was also
something to remember I can write a book.
I had no idea.
I was 15 years old,
I was a naive young guy.
I had no idea which
way my home was and where the train was going.
Didn't provide any organized transportation force.
So I just hopped
on the train and hoping
the train was going in the right direction.
It took me two or three weeks finally to get home.
I finally found the right train that was going
in the direction where my family ancestors,
where my family was taken from.
I'll always remember the night
when I finally got home on a freight train.
It was eight or 9:00 at night
under high moon and darkness.
And here, I'm walking home alone.
I had some clothes on me that was
provided by a Jewish organization.
And after we were liberated,
we had secondhand clothes that we were provided.
Here I'm walking home alone in the darkness,
it was we were roughly 2-3 miles
from from the train station, our home was.
And here, I remember
15 months earlier or 14 months earlier,
walking to the train station to Auschwitz,
and all those neighbors shouting and cursing us.
Here, 15 months later, 14 months later.
I'm walking home alone without knowing who survived,
without knowing what to expect had nothing
but my clothes on me.
Nothing else. Bare shirt
and jacket and trousers and pair of shoes.
And I was walking a little
closer as I got little closer to our home.
I saw a light in our house.
And for a moment, I said to myself, well,
maybe someone survived, an uncle or aunt or somebody.
As I got to our home,
I knocked on the door and
and and a hostile person
opens the door and takes a look at me.
And he knew who I was, I didn't know him.
He said, shouted at me.
He says, ''I told you folks are all dead.''
And I was, again,
also shocked by this reception,
and I don't know what possessed me to say this,
and I said to him, I'm the ghost.
And he slammed the door in my face
and kept on watching me through the door to
see if the ghost is going to disappear.
And it was at night,
maybe 9:00 at night in a dark summer evening.
Finally he opened the door and he saw me standing there.
The ghost didn't disappear.
And he invited me in.
And the Nazis gave him,
he was a Nazi sympathizer,
and they gave all the Jewish homes to Nazi sympathizers.
He was afraid of me,
and I was afraid of him.
I was afraid that he might kill me,
murder me at night.
No one would know, no one would care.
He was also afraid of me because
I that I would report him as a Nazi sympathizer.
So for two weeks,
they fed me and reluctantly so.
But after two weeks, he decided he was
going to move out because he
was very uncomfortable with
my presence and I was uncomfortable with his.
And that became a new problem
for me because at that point I had no one to feed me.
I had no money, no resources, no food.
And I had no one to care for me.
So I had to depend on Christian neighbors.
I went begging for food.
And that's how I lived for
a couple of months until I decided to leave.
>> And when did you immigrate to the United States?
>> Well, what happened
was I came to the United States in '49,
but it was a very,
what I call a eventful journey.
I decided on my own.
I was going to leave. Just for the record.
When I was still at home,
and this was the trigger mechanism
that motivated me to leave to leave,
I decided one day after a few days at home
after my neighbors moved out to go to
the Synagogue for spiritual renewal.
I was depressed.
I was scared.
I was bewildered,
all alone, lost everybody.
So I decided I'm going to walk to
the synagogue for some spiritual renewal.
When I walked into the synagogue,
there was only one synagogue in our community,
all the doors and windows were ripped out.
All the Torah or
the Bibles were strewn all over the floor.
The epithets all over the door,
all over the walls about the Jews.
I saw goats and chickens
running in and out because it was
a small community running in and out of the synagogues
and it just became like a stable.
I said to myself,
these are people that we lived with for centuries when
my parent's ancestors lived
in that community for hundreds of years.
I said, these are the people that we lived with
that hatred was so deeply embedded
in their psyche and their hearts to take
a house of worship and desecrate it the way they did.
That was my turning point.
I said, I'm going to leave.
I had no idea of geography.
All I knew is that that part of
Hungary at that time was already taken over by Russia.
It was no longer Hungary.
And the iron curtain was already down.
They already closed off
the borders to Hungary and all over.
A Jewish organization gave us each $100 in Romania.
Before I came home,
I went to Romania,
Highest Hebrew Immigrant Association,
gave each one of us a $100.
I decided I'm going to use
the money to get somebody to take me across the border.
And so I did some inquiring,
and they told me there was a guy
25-30 miles away who will take me through
the Hungarian border to Romania.
And from there, I can get easier
to Hungary and from there to whatever I want
to go because that part of
Hungary where I was living was
already totally closed off.
So I paid a guy $20 to take me across the border,
and I was supposed to meet him there at
a certain hour at night at 2:00 in the morning,
30 miles away at a stable on a farm.
Instead of him being there,
I was met by a secret police.
He turned me in and they locked
me up in a makeshift prison.
And this is after a few months after Auschwitz.
And I said, there's no way that I'm going
to be incarcerated again
a few months after surviving Auschwitz.
And they had a metal cut in that room.
And the ceiling were about as high as this one,
and I erected a metal cart so I can reach the ceiling.
I broke through the ceiling,
climbed up into the room,
broke through the roof and
fled the prison at the age of 15.
And so went back
home and then two months later or two weeks later,
excuse me, two, three weeks later,
I made another attempt.
They arrested a guy who turned me in.
I say they arrested
the Partisans helped me get across the border.
And the Partisans got a hold of him
and beat the heck out of him for turning me in.
And they found me
another person to take me across Romania.
From there I went to Hungary.
And from Hungary, I lived in a Kibbutz.
You know where the Kibbutz is?
I lived in a Kibbutz there for a few months
and it was difficult to get out there
to the west from Hungary because
the iron curtain was there too coming down very quickly.
So I went to the Czech Republic,
and this is again all on my own at the age of 15.
I finally ended up in Bratislava,
which is the capital of Slovakia and I
enlisted at a a Jewish Yeshiva,
which is a seminary,
Jewish seminary, where I lived
for about a year in Bratislava roughly a year.
And a gentleman by the name of Dr. Schoenfeld,
who is a humanitarian in Great Britain,
he heard that there were roughly 100 to 120 children in
the Czech Republic who came there
from Hungary because it was easier
to get out of the Czech Republic,
who was scattered all over.
He came to the Czech Republic to
rescue us from yet another tyrant, which was Stalin.
And it took him
about six months to get us passports and visas.
He took roughly 120 of us.
Many of them were children hidden by Christian families.
We're too young to know what was going on.
Roughly half of us were survivors of different camps.
Took us to England.
And from there,
they couldn't take care of us in
England and didn't have a place big enough.
And a Jewish philanthropist by the name
of Mr. Levy bought us a castle in
Ireland where we were relocated outside Dublin,
which is roughly 25-30 miles outside Dublin,
called the Kilronan Castle,
where we lived for
a year and then relocated after a year,
Irish government was very unsematic in those days.
That was '48. Was three years after liberation.
They wouldn't let a single one of us remain in Ireland.
Three people offered to adopt me.
I was at that time 18.
I was a good looking kid.
There were three people offered to adopt me.
They wouldn't let a single one of us remain there.
And so three of us got scholarships to the United States,
and the rest of them were
relocated to different parts of the world.
They were relocated to some England,
half of them went to Israel,
and the other 25-30 to Canada,
Australia, New Zealand, scattered all over the world.
And by the way, I went back to Dublin Ireland.
I was invited this past May on
a speaking engagement by the government and by
Jewish community and the historical society to
speak about our experiences in the 40s.
>> And Mr. Lynn,
where did you arrive in the United States?
>> New York.
>> And how long before you made your way south?
>> I went to school in New York for six years.
I got scholarship to the Shiv University.
Ultimately, I transferred to business school.
And when I finished school,
I lived in New York until '56.
And I didn't like New York.
New York was harsh life.
I wanted an easier life,
and I got a job in Atlanta
in 1956 as a management trainee.
And I ultimately became
president and chairman of the board of that company.
>> And how did you adjust to living
in the South, the American South?
>> It was after living in New York for six years,
New York, I was very harsh life.
It's expensive and lonely.
But it was a huge adjustment because the lifestyle
was very different in the south.
It's more subtle life.
It was an easier life.
I still had difficulties adjusting for a brief period,
but it was probably one of
the best moves I ever made moving down South.
>> And when did you begin to tell people
about your experience during the holocaust?
>> I did not speak very much
about my background until I retired from corporate life.
In fact, when my children were young,
when they were 5, 6, 7 years old,
I remember and this should be set for
the record for the document you're filming.
My kids used to ask me,
"Dad why is it that we don't have aunts and
uncles and grandparents like all our other friends."
And it was a very painful response
for me to tell them well,
honey, your grandparents, your aunts,
and uncles died during the war in Europe,
but why did they die?
It's very difficult for me to explain this to them.
But I want to mention this for the record
also that my children
were also victims of the holocaust.
Even though they were born in the South,
my wife is from Tennessee.
Because they were raised
without the love and care of grandparents,
without the love of cousins,
and aunts and uncles,
but our family connections,
which is so important for
all of us for emotional development.
They didn't have that, and neither did I.
As they got older,
I told them a little more,
but I never told them the complete story
until I retired from corporate life in 2000.
My middle daughter who is an attorney
in Atlanta said to me,
"Dad, I know you speak at Breman very often,
do you mind if I come and hear your story?"
And I said to her,
I hesitated for a while.
I said, Sure. She came and her name is Anita.
She is a Trial lawyer,
and I'm mentioning this for a reason because
trial lawyers are supposed to be tough people.
After about 15 minutes after she
heard me talking about my life,
she broke down crying and walked out.
She ultimately came back.
And so I decided to gently introduce it,
to introduce my story to my other children.
They knew that I lost my parents in war in Auschwitz,
but didn't know my horror stories.
They didn't know
the existential nightmares that I went through.
And Auschwitz before Auschwitz,
during Auschwitz and even
after the war what I went through.
They knew very little.
In fact, my next door neighbor was a Presbyterian
and I was invited to speak at
their church one day by the preacher.
He found out about me through newspapers.
He invited me to speak.
I asked my next door neighbor,
we lived in the Riverside area in Atlanta,
I asked him if he would like to come.
I says, "I'm speaking at you at church."
He says, "You are?" He says, "About what?"
I says about the war.
We lived next to each other for 35 years.
They knew nothing about me.
All they knew is I talked a little funny but
they didn't know why I talked
funny and where I came from.
But he was an executive of Southern Railway
and he was flabbergasted when
he found out about my next door neighbor.
I spoke very little about
my background for several reasons.
First of all, it was too painful.
When I was going through building my career,
I didn't want to relive the past.
I wanted to forget the past and speak at
the appropriate time when I no
longer have to focus on raising a family,
when I no longer have to focus
on building a corporate career.
I didn't want to talk about that for that reason.
And secondly, it was too painful for me to
open the wounds and talk about this again.
The wounds have never healed.
As I often tell people,
the body recovers much quicker than the mind.
The body I never thought I was going to live this long.
But the body has
amazing healing power. But the mind doesn't.
The mind doesn't forget,
just as a point of information.
My wife still wakes me up on the average of
every month or two screaming at night.
I have nightmares.
So many years later.
This tragedy, this horror story, this narrative,
this nightmare is so deeply embedded
in your psyche and
my psyche that just cannot flush it out,
cannot erase it, cannot eliminate it.
I will take this with me into my grave.
So for that reason,
I never spoke much but my nightmares became increasingly
frequent in the last 10 years since I've been speaking
because the past has been awakened in me.
I relived the past,
whereas before it was internalized.
Now, I have unleashed my experiences
for the purpose of
educating you folks, future generations.
But it has been a very painful process
for me to talk about still
today because the wounds
have never healed and never will heal.
I left indelible experiences.
Let me just mention this again for the record.
One additional thing.
The impact this had
on me when I came to New York as a student.
I had to take a train to go to college.
I lived in Brooklyn with a poor aunt of mine,
who has been here since the '20s.
I would not take a train.
I was afraid to take the subway
because it reminded me of the cattle cars.
I took the subway once or twice and I
broke up in a cold sweat.
I had to stop taking the train.
I took a bus. I was afraid of soldiers.
I was afraid of police.
I would not wear anything with yellow on a yellow tie or
yellow sweather because it reminded
me of the yellow band, yellow stars.
I was terribly insecure.
I was afraid of authority.
It left indelible marks
on my psyche which have never healed.
And in spite of that
because of I'm a highly disciplined guy,
I've done very well in corporate life.
I've been very successful,
but it has been a painful climb.
And I think this is something people should know,
you should know that you cannot erase the past.
The body heals, but the mind never does.
>> And would you share your closing statement with us?
>> Yes. My oldest daughter,
her name is Roberta.
And I took my oldest daughter to
Auschwitz to give her a feel where I've been,
what we went through,
a feel about our history.
She was deeply moved.
And she said to me,
"Dad, how would you like to be remembered?
How would your generation like to be remembered?"
And I said to her, I said, "Honey,
let's wait until we get home and I'll drop you an note."
I said, "Let me give this some thought.
It's a very profound question."
And so when we got home,
I sent her an email.
And this is what I said to her,
"Remember is not with lavish and brave words.
Mourn is not with sorrowful tears,
but rather with positive and engaging deeds.
Strive for social justice.
Work ceaselessly to safeguard
our revered precepts of
religious pluralism and diversity.
And not least pay any price to
protect the ideals of our nation so it would never
belong to a racist ideology that stripped
our people of all hope and humanity over the centuries.
May this message be enshrined in your hearts ennobled
in your memories as
an enduring legacy to future generations."