I was born Pinchas ben Itzchak for legal purposes, I was given Pawel Lichter in Rypin, Poland.

July 5th, 1931.

I was extremely protected by my parents.

By this, the way they protected me, so was to send me to a school that was a Jewish school.

Tarbul was called.

And the reason for it was because the Jews were extremely persecuted in public schools, or sometimes not even accepted, I think.

So the childhood was very, very protected and very, very beautiful for me.

I had all kinds of toys, because my.

And the most modern toy that I had was a bicycle, four-wheel bicycle, and the seat was of wood.

That was the last thing there was.

I lived in with my family who was my father and my mother, my sister, and my grandmother, who was the one that was in her house, which was a three story building.

And we had a movie house.

My father had a movie house and he was a businessman.

And then and also my aunt lived in there.

And also my uncle, I was aware of Hitler because we, we had a radio and I was listening.

Actually, all I was interested in the radio was the little light that it had that would change directions.

And I figured that I could see through that.

But my mother and father were very attentive to the radio, listening to Hitler with his diatribe.

And the that's how it was.

The war came into Poland in 1939, on September 1st by the Germans.

Equipment, tanks, horses, and all kinds of paraphernalia over there went through the town.

Everybody was scared that they gonna gas us, but they did not.

And they went through the town, which was the army and the equipment that was coming through was, I think, maybe mile long.

Was extremely because I was watching it.

And then they passed the town and there was nothing until the next day.

Then the Gestapo came in and things started to change immediately.

That's when they grabbed my uncle.

His name was Israel Lichter.

And they he had a bad ending because when the Nazis came in they picked him among many others took him to took him to a place which not too far from us, a cellar and over there they tortured him.

They for many days.

And finally, finally, there was no answer anymore from them.

So they mudered him, and to that extent, when they were in pain and complaining, they would put cement in their mouth.

So he died horribly.

We had to go out and not walk on the walkways, but just on the streets.

They sent the the Jews that were known all around, you know, in the town, they sent them for collections for to collect money to give them the money, which they were doing.

And uh as they were doing, they were also slapped around and that included my father.

That's was the beginning of the shenanigans that they started to do.

So one of them, my mother, by order, was sewing some yellow patches on my.

Not Star of David but yellow patches on us.

And uh that was one of them.

We weren't let to go out of the house.

We stayed in the house.

Then the Germans came in, the Gestapo came in or Germans.

I don't know which one.

They came in and they told us to move to one bedroom, to one room with everybody.

So we were not allowed to get out from that bedroom, which happened to be a servant's bedroom.

Was very small.

My sister and I and my mother and my father.

And but my father was going out and in because of the collection that he was doing for them.

But one night they came in to the house to that room where we were in, and my sister and myself were in one corner of the bed.

And they, they, they started by telling my father, who was there also, and my mother at the time, to, uh, to bring down a safe that they know that was there, which was little safe, it was about I don't know, this big.

But it was extremely heavy.

My father had a heart condition, and my mother pleaded with them because they told him to take it down to their car outside.

And my mother pleaded with them, telling them that he's he cannot do it because he has a heart condition and he might not even survive from that.

So they made him, they made him take it out anyway.

And The worst thing, well not the worse thing was my father working like that.

But the thing is that left a tremendous impression was that I was in my house and the greatest thing that could tell me anything, my authority was my father and my mother.

And it's impossible to see.

This was the most horrible time that I had with this.

In that room I was we were a very short time after all that happened in that room, because we had a lot of German friends, uh, in prior the war.

My father and my mother.

There was a lot of Germans living in our town because of the proximity to the border.

They called them False Deutsch.

And but they were friends, they were legitimate friends.

And they somehow let us know that uh dont stay there because get out of there as fast as you can.

So my father rented or got a horse and a horse and a wagon with somebody conducting it for a fee of course.

And put whatever was dear to us in.

This silver and stuff like that and valuables and coats and minks and beavers I think they used to wear those then in the wagon and we escaped.

On the way, which was the only way to go, was towards towards east, which was Russia.

Everybody on the cart spoke German and they would say, we're False Deutsch.

And we're not trying, we're going there to occupy the land in the east.

So that's how we went through.

There was maybe one, two, three, four encounters like that.

We had an auschweisz.

Auschweisz is a permit to travel.

You going in a in a wagon is very slow.

You don't make more than maybe ten miles a day or 10 kilometers a day.

So was a long way until we came into the border.

Then a patrol came in and uh stopped us.

And we were giving them the same story as before.

And they says, no, you all Jews.

And you get out of there, and line up over here.

All of us.

The whole bunch of us, one after another against the wall over there.

They were going to shoot us.

Then the commanding officer of the of their group came by us and he saw my father.

And he saw my father and he said, oh my God, you look like my my professor.

So Herr Professor, go over there.

Which is another miracle for us.

And so we went and they directed us to go to the border.

We came into the border and then we arrived at the border and we stayed, we stopped at the at one of the peasant's house over there, that lived there.

And now our job was to cross the border.

So how do you do that?

So we asked them to cross the border and they said they'll do it, but it'll be only if we leave all our possessions over here.

So we did.

And they took us out with their, with, they took us out.

It was miserable.

This happened in more or less in December or November.

So everything was muggy and muddy and cold, and penetrating.

But we got through that and we went to the border.

Then the Russians stopped us.

And they they stopped us and they took us to a place either Baragovicha or Baragovicha, or Bialystok.

I don't remember which town they took us.

And they put us into Jewish houses who let us in voluntarily over there.

I still remember this, and they gave us food, beds, and I still remember the big pillows that they had over there which stank.

The pillows stank because they gave us our beds their beds.

They were to that extent helpful.

And they fed us and then the Russians knew where we were then a request came in to you either convert to you either convert to Russian citizenship or we send you back to Poland.

My mother, for some reason didn't want to become a Russian citizen.

She hated them.

And that was that.

And they said, all you get in.

We have wagons for you waiting out there.

So they took us to the wagons and they put us in the wagons [trains] they sent us to Siberia or Siberia or upper Urals, which borders with Siberia.

And that trip took a long time.

We were on the cattle [car].

We were permitted during the trip to stop and get hot water, which the Russians always had hot water at their stations.

And that was it.

And no food or anything like that.

But we survived with the hot water.

So we stopped at Bukhara in Bukhara was a time.

We passed a terrible, terrible time over there.

Because it was time of they had famine over there and we arrived in the middle of the famine.

And uh, they still took us in.

And I don't know how we survived that famine that people were dying on the streets like in the plague days of before.

And they were just dropping on the streets and those carts picking them up.

We survived that.

I don't know.

Like I said, I don't know how.

Because we had no food.

We had nothing.

And of course, we all had lice and we had all the possible bugs that you could think of.

It was horrible.

I was attacked by when I was searching for food outside by a bunch of Uzbeks or Tajiks.

I don't know which one they were, and they put a knife in my back.

And so I was bleeding.

And I finally went as far as I could, and I and I fell down.

So at that time they called they called the the ambulance.

They did.

And they came in.

It wasn't an ambulance.

It was just two nurses.

And they dragged me to their station and they they sewed up the the wound in my full consciousness.

That was very bad.

And then after that, when they sewed it up, and there was no med-- they didn't put anything over.

There was no penicillin, there was nothing.

And that thing got infected.

And I lost consciousness.

My father somehow took me to hospital.

They had a hospital there and after being there for months without any consciousness, I don't know how they feed me or how they anything, but they put I think they put some sulfa on it or because they I don't think it was penicillin because they didn't have it.

It must have been sulfa.

Somehow I survived.

But at that time too my uncle they were in Mexico City was permitted to send us packages.

And the packages contained C rations.

They arrived they had C rations and I think that's how we survived.

My mother I don't know how, she had some diamonds.

So we for some food we got the they wanted to give us food, the people that were well-off, they wanted diamonds.

So she gave her diamonds and they gave us some kind of a soup.

Like maybe like cream of wheat or something like this.

And we survived on this for a while.

To the point we came in, it was we were given preference always by my father and mother.

But, uh, finally, I don't know even if they had any.

I don't know how they survived.

They, they would give it to my sister and myself.

And between that we ended up with this in a long time.

And then it came in , who's going to scrape the scrape the bowl first and who second.

And that ended.

That's how we I like I said I don't know how my father and mother survived.

They permitted us to go back and they gave us the same wagons again.

And there was very long journey because everything we had to stop to let pass all the loot that they were bringing from Germany and to Russia.

And finally we arrived in Poland.

And we went directly to our house.

Our house was the house was completely occupied.

By they made apartments out of it.

And there were like ten apartments and they were occupied.

There was no room for for us.

We had an uncle who who emigrated to Mexico many, many years ago and he was very influential.

So we called him up and he told us, come on to Mexico.

The only way out was to go to Sweden, which we went to Sweden.

And then the Jews from Sweden rented us a hotel, place which was [street name] 37, I remember that.

So that was my first our first time out of out of Poland.

And then we had to go wait for transportation for Mexico.

We finally found a way to go to, to, to Mexico on a ship called Gripsholm.

And we boarded that ship.

The German Jews, the Swedish Jews were paying for all this.

We went to the we went to the Gripsholm which was a wonderful experience because there was food and there was everything over there on that ship.

I didn't tell this to anybody, to my children, to anybody.

I didn't want anybody to know.

Up to this day, up to any day, when I think about those things, I really suffer again, you know, because I remember everything that happened when they ask me.

That's about all I will add.