I was born in a a big town called in Poland called Lodz, L-O-D-Z.

But we lived in the town of Piotrokow, which is like 30 miles south of Lodz.

But my father wanted to make sure that I got the best medical attention.

So we went to a bigger city and that's where I was born.

There was five children, including me.

There was my oldest one was my sister Ronia, who was at least 20 years older than I was.

And then there was my brother, Isaac, and he was 17 years older than I.

And there was my sister Lola, was about 16 years older than I.

And then there was another sister, Frania, who was only five years older than I and she was the closest to me in age.

The reason for the disparity in the ages was that my my father's first wife died and he married a sister of his former wife.

So we were like three-quarters.

So that was I was my father's youngest one and I was a boy and I knew I was my father's favorite because he just would spoil me so much.

He got me presents and things and I would go with him.

He was a businessman.

He would meet other business people in restaurants and there was just wonderful cakes that were served.

And I was the only little kid and I loved that.

I was really spoiled by my father.

Summers we would go to the lake and we had a cottage and we had fun over over there.

Other times we went further away in Poland.

And my dad owned a flour mill and a sawmill and we had a house on the grounds and I had a lot of fun.

Also a lot of anti-Semitism too, because the workers out there just say that us Jews .

I got into trouble.

I got into trouble like there was machinery, opened up the wheels and things.

And afterwards we my father came and took me away and I cried and cried and I just didn't want to leave.

But he did.

He stopped by in the village and bought a big candy bar for me, which pacified me.

So my life was was good.

I was going to school, a Jewish school first, first or second grade, I think.

And I learned of anti-Semitism real early because as I was going to school, there would be Polish kids across the street and they would throw stones at me and I just didn't understand what was going on why they were doing that.

Then I figured out that it's because I looked Jewish.

So after that I would go to school with my hands covering my face so they wouldn't see me that I was Jewish.

It was like my first instance of anti-Semitism and hatred of Jews.

Although not all.

We had Polish friends that were wonderful people, and my dad did business with them.

And they helped us during the war We were one of the few people that had a car.

But we had somebody else's garage, and they would drive us.

Oh, we also we were the first ones to have a telephone.

After the girls left the school, my sisters, they would all come to my house and want to play with the telephone.

We were rich at one time and poor another time.

It depended on the economy.

You know, my brother said, one day you're a millionaire and the next day you're a pauper.

So things were tough.

It was the thirties.

There was the depression.

Well, my mother was one of six sisters.

She was she was I don't know.

I think I was too much trouble for her.

I was such a rebel.

I think that she said to my dad, take him and take care of him I can't handle him.

But in other ways, she gave her love for me.

She was a wonderful mother.

We were not Orthodox.

So we observed the holidays.

I used to go with my dad to the to the synagogue, and I had a real nice time being with him.

I wouldn't stay inside for too long.

If I could, I could go outside and play with the kids.

And we observed all the holidays, but we were not we were not observing 100 percent kosher.

My mother once gave me money and told me to go get a ham sandwich, which is unheard of.

But it happened.

My older sister, Ronia, she was almost my mother's age.

And uh she was she was wonderful towards me, she was just very loving and and caring and she would encourage me and things.

And I missed her when she was gone.

Lola, I didn't care for very much.

She was, was always the same.

She was always into criticism I used to try to be like the all the other poor kids.

Like, they wouldn't have no shoes.

They would go barfooter.

So I wore barefooter.

And she would complain about me.

But she was also engaged to a soldier, Jewish soldier.

That never happened.

But she was engaged.

She survived the war.

Isaac, my brother.

Yeah, well, he he kind of he was so much so much different in age between us.

But he kind of approached me very with a very stern hand.

You know, he told me what to do and what not to do and he was he was good.

He was very he didn't show any love or anything.

He was kind of rough.

But I knew he cared for me and I cared for him a lot.

He was my big big brother.

Especially when he would come home with his Polish soldier uniform, that really impressed me.

Izzy ran the business, but he had to get the approval of my father and he would do things, more modern things.

My father would get very mad at that.

But they were fine.

They loved each other.

Frania was the youngest one.

And she was she was a wonderful teenager.

You know, full lots of energy.

And she had lots of friends around her.

And the boys liked her a lot.

And so I would spend time with her because she was she had to take me to the circus.

She had to take me here and there.

What she wanted to do, she had to take me as well.

So she was wonderful.

She was a lovable kid.

There was a lot of fear and they were all afraid.

We knew Germany was much more powerful than Poland although the Poles used to boast about their army and things like that.

They they had one machine gun for 20 soldiers.

So that, wasn't going to be good.

And they were anti-Semitic, the Nationalist Party in Poland was anti-Semitic.

Though there was lots of lots of Jewish soldiers in the Polish army.

Not too many in the officer rank.

When the war started, my city was bombed and we were down in the cellar.

And this is the first time I knew what it was to to feel real fear.

And they destroyed a part of the town.

We went out of the cellar and my dad said, we got to escape from this town.

Its they're going to come back and bomb it again.

So there was seems like most of the Jewish population of Piotrokow was on its way to a village called Sulejów.

It's about ten miles away.

So it was kind of a happy time.

I was walking with my father.

My father was telling me some of the history of my family.

I never knew that I had a sister who had died, at age 13.

Heart, heart problems.

And we went into this little village and it was crowded.

Was lots of people from my hometown there.

And it was like a festive time.

Started playing football or something like that.

And then all of a sudden I heard these airplane noises coming from the sky.

And as I looked up, these planes came flying down and they were so low that I swear I could reach out my hands and touch them.

And they were shooting their machine guns.

And I was frozen to the spot.

I couldn't move.

Then I felt mother grab me by my shoulders and she knocked me down to the ground.

And then she did something really fantastic.

She lay on top of me.

She covered me completely with her body so as to protect me.

But after a while I heard my sister Frania crying and my mother got off of me and she ran to her.

And I remained laying there on the ground, hugging the ground.

And after a while I stood up and I saw a lot of people was limbs missing, you know, they were burned.

And I heard my name, Sevek, being called.

And my father and I met each other and we ran into a nearby forest.

In that forest ther were lots of people in the forest, including some Polish army units.

So I'm curious.

I'm always interested in the soldiers.

I walked up to the them and I ask them if they know my brother and they say, get away you Jew.

So it really felt bad.

Here I was and they treated me that way.

We went back into the after three days, slept on the ground, we came back into the village and the village was completely destroyed.

And there was like I was later learned there was something like a thousand people had been killed that day.

There was no sign of my mother.

My dad took me and we went we had a horse-drawn carriage.

A friend of his and and I got up on her, I took the reins and that was my consolation to quiet me down.

So I could drive the horses.

And we went back into into my hometown and my building was was bombed.

So we went to my to my Aunt Rachel.

For someone who I really loved was my was my mother's sister.

She was she was just wonderful.

She just loved me.

She protected me in every way.

I mean when my sister Ronia got married they didn't they brought me to my aunt.

They didn't want me to stay because I would be too much trouble.

And she was so mad.

She had her son take me back to the house.

My you know, I tried to my aunt put me down on a soft bed to go to sleep.

I couldn't sleep.

I got used to sleeping on the ground.

So I went and I slept on the ground.

This is when the ghetto was almost immediately established, the first one in Poland.

And we were pushed into there.

We got a room and a half.

A lot of people didn't have any room at all and they slept on the streets.

And typhus broke out, you know.

We fought it but I think I got sick.

I got sick with typhus.

One day I am better.

And I just get up out of bed, and I walk on the street and uh a calmness comes over me.

A real calmness.

And like, I feel really good.

And I just am kind of told that I'm going to be okay no matter what.

That I will survive.

In the ghetto there was they didn't have walls in the ghetto.

They just had signs that say and you couldn't leave after 5:00.

You couldn't, you weren't allowed to go out.

I don't think anybody really survived unless they had some connections with the outside world.

That's why the real religious Jews, the Orthodox ones, they were into their own community, they had no outside connections with Gentile Poles and they were the first ones to go because they had no connections and no help.

But we managed in the ghetto, we managed.

My dad had connections and the people that were, most help were German Poles, you know.

Poles of German descent.

That my dad did business with them and I think he might have signed off his properties to them.

And they came in and they helped us.

They got food.

We were not others like other people we were not hungry.

We had enough to eat.

We still observed all Jewish traditions.

And there was a Jewish police that enforced the rule in the ghetto.

But people would be taken off the street.

And they would be put to work or they would you would never, never see them again including my cousin.

I lost my cousin then.

But we still lived as a family unit and it was cohesive, you know.

I didn't have any school no, it could be because of me.

But there was school available.

I mean, there was Jewish schools.

Women teachers held classes, but it was dangerous.

But there was still education going on.

I didn't learn nothing.

I don't know why, but I just never.

So I didn't go to school or or anything.

It would take a significant hurt later on that I didn't.

I didn't have the fundamentals.

So I only had like one year of school.

Also, my sister, the one I loved so much, she was pregnant and she was in a--- lovely Polish family came to us and says, we're going to put her into a Catholic hospital and save her.

And and that's what we did.

I later learned that somebody in the hospital informed the Germans that there was a Jew there pretending to be a Pole.

They came in.

And she had delivered a boy.

They took him and they threw him out the window, and then they took her to the Polish to the Piotrkow cemetery and shot her.

I didn't know about it, but her husband I met her husband, and he told me and that really took me to the worst.

I just cried and cried.

I just I had I had lost my sister.

Isaac was he was in the war.

He was wounded and he was in Germany.

It's a real big contrast between the Germans later and then.

He was severely wounded on his leg and they put him into a German hospital in Poland and they gave him real good attention.

And um if he after a year or so he came back into the ghetto.

It comes '42 '42 October or something.

The Germans have the Wannsee Conference where they decide that they are gonna eliminate murder all the Jews.

So now it begins.

They they invade Russia.

And now begins the elimination of Jews.

That's the policy policy now.

And they have these these places like Auschwitz and others for murdering the Jews.

So what happens is that the policy is almost based on the railroad.

So we, uh, we watched a train come to a town south of us.

And the Jews are emptied out and put onto these trains.

And they say, your turn is going to come.

But they also tell us that about 1,500 of us would be able to stay behind.

And we were about 30,000 at that point.

So everybody wanted to have the job, right?

I worked in a glass factory.

The day came the day came when the trains were there for us.

And basically religious people, and it's you have no other hope.

So what you do?

You pray.

I mean this but you know it will always stay in my mind, it's not the prayer like we do now, we go in, sing a song and do like that.

People would fall on the floor and they would bang their head against the wall.

And they would cry out.

And that's when I lost my faith in God.

There was no help.

There was no help.

The day comes when the trains are there for us.

And they go house to house.

They shoot people, old people, they shoot them right then and there.

And people are covered was the white--- what you call a Jewish.

Tallis?

Tallis?

Tallis, yeah.

Some of them are dressed like like you're dead.

But nothing helped.

You know, they were all killed.

And so this is a pivotal moment.

The trains are going to take us to Treblinka.

Where we would be all.

So I stood there with my dad and Izzy, and a German officer came and Izzy talked to him in German and put something in his hand and he smiled and he told us to go to our work.

In the meantime, I understood later from Lola that my mother and Frania and Ronia were all in line to get onto the train.

But Lola knew some German official and she begged him to come and take them out of the line.

And he says he would, but he wouldn't take my mother because he says he was too she was too old.

Frania she was so attached to her mother that she she tore herself away from Lola.

I just never knew what happened to her.

I never knew.

Kind of she kind of thought for a long time that maybe she found refuge in some Polish home or something.

My sister Lola was telling me, I held on to her hand.

I held on.

I asked her, I begged her not to run away, but she couldn't be separated from her mother.

So they were all, we presume, were all put on the train.

Went to Treblinka.

That's no question.

That's a historical fact.

So that's where they were murdered.

My brother was able to get some work permits, so we went to our workplace.

And I was the only kid.

There was like 20, 30 Jewish workers.

I was the only kid, and they gave me some dirty eyes like it was how come I'm so privileged.

And they took me and put me on the loft.

And that's so because the fear was that somebody, a worker, would inform on me.

So they took me down at nighttime and I was with the rest of the I was with the rest of the Jewish workers.

They took me, and that took influence, to a woodworking woodworking factory called Bugaj.

So there was there was my father was there, my brother and I and some cousins.

We were all there.

And this was a relatively there's an argument going on whether it was really a slave labor camp or not because it was relatively okay.

The owners of the factory, the Germans, they just wanted to stay out of the war, you know, they didn't want to be sent to the east front.

And I had some adventures there.

You know, I, I helped my brother smuggle food into the camp.

And one day I had a sack of potatoes on my shoulder and I this owner of the factory, he gets me.

There's a dog and um like rifle and this dog is really at me but he didn't bite me.

And he the soldier took out his revolver and took the bullet out of it and says see this is going to go into into your head.

And I cried of course and he was bluffing.

Actually, he was not a bad guy, but he turned me over to the local police, and they were Poles.

And so this guy is going to hit me.

And I figured, oh no, I'm okay.

I know he knows my family.

He's not going to.

But he did.

He whipped me really bad.

But you know I got to the point where I was begging him not to hurt me, and I said in Polish, I said, my ass is not made out of glass.

Go ahead.

And I became a hero in the camp because I had to fight it.

So that was a minor thing really compared to what was going on.

We were relatively benign in that woodworking factory.

You know, we didn't go hungry.

We we had food.

Again, it's all a matter of influence even under those circumstances.

Who you are, where you are, what money you had made a critical difference.

Now comes 1944, the war almost over and the German army is retreating through Russia and Poland.

And we figured that the war was going to come to an end and and we're going to be liberated in our hometown so we can start we can start it in our home town.

But they have different ideas.

They take the last there's 2,000 of us left.

And now for the very first time, I'm marched into a station where there's a train like cattle cars waiting for me.

And I just don't want to go in and they throw me in and I'm separated from my father and my brother.

Inside is, you can't sit, you can't it's nothing to to drink, and no washroom facilities.

And the thing takes off and I, I don't remember what happens.

It was a three-day journey.

I asked my friends after the war and they asked me, don't you remember this and that and so on?

I said, no, I have no memory.

My memory was blank.

Finally, the train pulls up in Buchenwald.

That's a concentration camp.

And we were quickly unloaded and beaten out.

Went to the area where they stripped us and gave us some -- oh, we went to the showers.

And the showers, we were afraid that that was that was it, you know, but someone said there was no gas in Buchenwald.

And believe it or not, warm water came down.

It was incredible.

So we got, Henry and I, he was my best friend and we were all together throughout this whole ordeal.

We got clothes that was striped pajama-type of stuff.

Oh, they shaved my hair, all my hair off my body, off everybody's body.

And they put us into a Jewish section of of of Buchewald that was absolutely the rest of the camp was was like orderly but this was this was impossibly terrible, if that's a word.

It you went to the washroom it was just covered with.

It was totally it's it makes me sick even to think about it.

I love washrooms.

We had to be on [foreign word] we had to be on a place like we had to stand on a meeting place what did they call it roll roll call.

Yeah, roll call twice a day And it was winter.

I got there in December.

It was cold.

They would have fun with us.

Make us sing songs and it was pretty bad.

But there was some good stuff going on in Buchenwald.

There was a organization.

The prisoners usually the German political prisoners were in charge of the camp and they they took us they took us away from the Jewish section and put us in camp 23, I think.

Barrack 23, and that was relatively, relatively okay.

You know.

My father, whom I loved very much, I saw him in Buchenwald.

And he was glad to see me, but I could not I didn't feel any affection for him.

I was on my own.

I didn't have his protection anymore.

And he he was, when I met him, and I didn't show any caring for him, he was on his way to a place underground where they made made missiles.

Everyone knows the name I can't remember names.

That's the last time I saw him.

They makes us all go out on the plaza.

And the commandant of the of the camp, the prisoner commandant was a German.

And we had these what do you call them red triangles for political prisoners, yellow and so on.

And for Jews it was yellow, I believe.

So he told us, tear tear off this thing and he told the Germans, there are no Jews here.

He was really a great guy.

Why did he do that?

Was he protecting you from something?

Yeah.

He was protecting us.

Yeah.

You know, it was days before the end of the war.

So the some of the German guards told us to drop our pants.

And if we were circumcised, they would they took us and put us into a warehouse.

And in that warehouse, I see my beloved uncle and two beloved cousins.

But I know there's something not right here.

I hear machine gun fire.

And a person from the underground came to me and Henry, and says, I'm gonna talk to the guards and let you get out of here.

But, you know, pick up the garbage pail and go out.

So I said, come on, Henry, let's go.

We went out.

Picked up a thing.

Went by the post where the German soldiers were.

One was an officer and he took out his gun.

One said, one of the soldiers said nothing.

He let us go.

But the officer, he took out his revolver and he was shooting after us.

And but we ran like heck left and right and and he didn't hit us.

We couldn't stay in the camp.

We're told to go out on the march.

And about 3,000 prisoners, including half of them Russian soldiers.

The gates of Buchenwald opened up and it was a beautiful day.

And we begin to march towards Wiemar.

That's the next big town where the railroad stations was.

We went on this march and in front of me was a father and a son.

I think they were Hungarians.

You see, the Hungarians came into the, they came into the war in 1944.

They were only in the war less than a year.

That's why many of them are better educated and everything because they were able to go to school and things.

Anyway, in front of me was a father, Hungarian father and son.

This was an eight-mile trip and the father pushed himself away from his son and he says, and fell into the ditch.

And his son was shrieking for him to stand up.

And there was the guard with the rifle.

And we heard a shot and that was the end.

So we came to Weimar.

Beautiful town.

And another train awaits us.

See a lot of that very next day that we left Buchenwald, the American army arrived.

One day.

I mean I I meet with these guys that in Buchenwald and they were so lucky.

Elie Wiesel was there, but he was able to go back to his barrack because there was a bombing and he got liberated by the Americans.

We went on a train ride of three or four weeks.

Open cars, and except for the first day, when we had a loaf of bread we had nothing.

That's when we ate grass.

And we saw people eat human flesh.

And it was just that was the worst part of my experience.

The Germans were losing the war, of course, and they didn't know where to go because if they wanted to go one place it was already too late.

It was already occupied by the allies, you see.

So they just moved back and forth.

Finally we arrived in Theresienstadt.

You know, Theresienstadt.

You know, and to us it seemed like we just had come to the Conrad Hilton.

You know, because people were living as families they were in homes.

Although there was unseen they were still sent to Auschwitz.

But it was totally different for us.

I got typhus, very sick.

And I thought I was going to die, but I had the image of my father and mother coming to me and saying I must survive.

I opened my eyes and there was some wonderful young people from England that came as volunteers.

And they took me to a home.

And they fed me slowly.

That was important because people gorged themselves and the stomach couldn't handle it and, you know, and they died.

So one day while I'm in that house, I hear my name 'Sevek' being called from the street.

So I run to the window and lo and behold, there's my brother walking in the street, shouting my name because he has heard that there was kids from from Buchenwald that has come.

So once I met my brother, I was delighted.

I was so happy and like, I didn't have to make any more decisions on my own.

My brother would take care of me.

We desperately tried hard to find and we couldn't find anybody.

We found a cousin, two cousins.

Don't forget, we had a huge family.

Six sisters.

And they all had large families.

And we couldn't find anybody else.

The British government allowed 1,000 young people to come to England, ones that were under the age of 16, or 13, something like that.

And most of the kids were were adults like young adults.

So they changed our certificate.

We didn't have a certificate, we didn't have a birth certificate.

So everybody became younger.

And the British government sent Lancaster planes to Prague and we were that's the picture of my book.

It was very difficult.

It was very difficult because I didn't know the language.

I picked it up quickly, though.

It was terrible in the sense that, you know, in the boarding school came Parent's Day all the parents would come in and so on.

You wouldn't have anyone.

Come the holidays, they don't know what to do with you.

So they look for some families that will take you to.

It was bad.

But the school was so loving, so loving and caring and the teachers were just fabulous and that helped a lot.

Yeah, I'm still suffering a little bit from that.

I don't have the empathy that normal people have.

Even under the worst of circumstances.

Your wife dies, you find another one.

We never grieved.

And we were told to forget about it.

I've heard that from other survivors.

That's right.

That's what we were told.

Famous people like Freud's daughter, Anna, she came to see us and she told us to forget about it.

This interview kind of reminds me that how much unhappiness I worked through.

I didn't get much loving and caring from my brother or my sister, for that matter.

They were, they were themselves very traumatized.

My brother came to England with us and he's he went into business.

He has a son and a daughter and he's got many, many grandchildren.

He's gone, of course.

But he's got many, many grandchildren, many of them living in Israel.

Lola, she married.

She was lived in a displaced person camp.

But he's still around.

We take care of him.

You know.

They lived their life.

They lived here.

This was their home.

Yeah, they lived here.

They died, you know, like we all do.

But she was traumatized, my sister was terribly traumatized.

She was she always thought I was taking advantage of her I was going to steal from her.

Just just just the way she needed help so badly and she never got it.

Well, this was years later.

And she wants they want to know the history, They are determined to know.

So I decided that I was going to tell her and I drive down to Champagne [Illinois] and we talk.

And I tell her the whole story.

She's she's very moved.

The the museum in Washington was opening then and we decide we were going to go as a family.

So my wife and I and Ruth and Leon [his son] and we and as I go into the museum and I see the historical things and I just kind of explain it to them and everything.

But then I see the other room, the train.

The train really sets me off, you know.

And they come around me and they hug me and they make it possible for me to go on.

And it becomes the beginning of my career as a storyteller.

I've been in Germany, with the German audiences, I spoke in Canada.

When I lived in Chicago I would do like 40 talks a year.

I sold 30,000 books and I sold them all myself, you know.

I'm just surprised completely by the reaction to my book.

Kids that read read like circles they read different books, you know?

They like mine the best.

That's not me saying it.

It's them saying it.

So the book has become a powerful.

I did it.

It it's good enough.

And if I can succeed in giving it away like I plan to, and I've done my my job.

It's okay.

It's alright for me to die.

It doesn't upset me very much, but I do want to leave behind.

And I have, I mean I got, I have so much for my son and my daughters, the two daughters that I have that are not biological daughters, but they love me very much.

They just were here.

My other daughter and my son, they they will definitely carry on this.

But the most important thing I think and I didn't think so at first but it's the book.

The book will and they will promote it.

So I'm satisfied with my life.

No, I never found my faith.

I wanted to.

I wanted to.

I think people who are religious have a benefit.

They are better off.

But I could never.

Thinking of these people when the train came, crying their eyes out and hittting themselves.

My God, you don't know what that means.

You ever seen people pray like that?

So what do I say?

Evil people will always.

But it frightens us a little bit what's going on in America today.

But there's so many good people.

I mean, wearing my hat you see people in the airport they stop me and they make me talk to them.

Not everybody, but enough.