NATHAN NOTHMAN
4/5/92 WEST BLOOMFIELD, MICHIGAN
My name is Nathan Nothman. I was born in Poland, Krakow. I went to school, my father was a licensed plumber, my mother had a store, and we lived. I was just a young boy then, eleven, twelve, thirteen. I went to school, did my homework, and belonged to an organization. There was anti-Semitism in school. I would say there was fifty percent Jews and fifty percent Gentiles. Later on, in 1938, they separated us; there was a Jewish school and a Gentile school. In Poland, but not in our school, because our school, that time ‘38 was Jews, our teachers were Jews and we were Jews, but outside naturally, ‘don’t buy by Jews, Jews are dirty, don’t go by Jews.’ You know propaganda that is what it is. We had a principle that was Gentile, but the teachers were Jews. But, before ’38, ’37, we went to schools with Gentiles, it was not so pleasant thing. There were lots of fighting there, somebody punch me I punch him back. ’37, ’38 they already made a Jewish school, Jewish teachers and there was no fighting between us. I do remember there were lot of pogroms, anti-Semites came into Krakow, tried to beat us but we were together, fifteen thousand, ten thousand, went out with sticks and brooms and fight, fight back, so they were afraid to come to Krakow, because there were too many of us. One hundred fifty thousand of us, so we could get at least five thousand of us young people, and when they come to attack us in Krakow we fight back and beat them up and they ran away.
In ’39 when Germany came in it was a completely different story. You couldn’t ride a streetcar, you couldn’t go to the movie, we supposed to get rid of the radio, furs, silver, everything that we have you supposed to give to the Germans. They closed the Jewish area with the SS, and they went to each house to see that everyone gave everything, radio, furs, silver. They came right into your home, they went to each building, they had Polish people who would show them who was rich, not rich. There was always collaborators. Polish people were working with the Nazis. Polish people pinpointed who’s the rich, where is there everything, where to go, and they pinpointed exactly, and they have a lot, a lot, a lot of them. They were beautiful, nice, fine, before the Nazis came in, but when the Nazis came in they changed, like a 360 degrees they changed. They lived together with Jews, they worked together with Jews, but when the Nazis came in they give them power, they went into a Jewish family and throw them out, and occupy the house.
Before the war, I had my family with me, I went to synagogue, I belonged to an organization there, I played soccer there. I went to school; it was a beautiful life. But one thing that is the most important thing, if anybody tell you what to do and you cannot say no, it’s the worst thing. Freedom, freedom is the number one thing in the whole life. Without freedom, there is no life. There is only slave. So we had freedom, we could do what we want, okay we have skirmishes sometimes with the anti-Semites there but, that was not everyday. In late ’38, ’39, it was a little harder, but I remember before, ’35, ’36, ’37 was not so bad. I had my Bar Mitzvah, because next to me, maybe a block away was the synagogue. My parents were there, it was May 1939, and a couple of months later the Nazis invaded Poland. My father was not an orthodox person, my mother was not an orthodox person, we were religious, but we were not fanatics, just common religious people.
When Germany came in 1939, September, they told the Jews, they should leave Poland, Krakow and go to Pogusch. Across the bridge, there was a small town and they would build a ghetto. By 1940, in March, everybody must be out; anybody who will not be out will be shot. So, 1940, we went all to the Ghetto, Krakow, Pogusch, I would say, and they put a wall around it, an eight feet wall around it and boxed us in. So we went to work, but a lot of times they came in with trucks surrounded the ghetto there and they caught a lot of Jewish people. They caught me once, it was hard for them to catch me because I knew every building, but they caught me once, they took me to a commercial train to go to Auschwitz. When I knew, I was going to Auschwitz, I not going to Auschwitz. On my left arm I have a special place, my father was a plumber, where I got a special channel locks, to cut the wires. So, when we went into the commercial train, there is a window on it, a large window, and they put wires on it crisscrossed. So, I said to my friends, if this train goes to Germany I am not going, if it goes to Auschwitz I am not going, I am not going no place, I am going back to my parents together. Nighttime when they will stop, they took away maybe three, four thousand people, I cut the wires, I didn’t cut it that it stayed that way. At nighttime I bend the wires all the way up, I couldn’t reach so a friend of mine put me on his shoulder. I bent everything up and said okay who want to go back to ghetto, so three four people did. We jumped out from the train back to ghetto. What happened to the train that train went to Auschwitz? It was only Germany or Auschwitz, and we were not far from Auschwitz.
I was back in the ghetto and 1943 there was a Judenrein, they want to clean the ghetto out, put the ghetto back concentration camp. Concentration camp was five or six kilometers passed the ghetto. There was a Jewish cemetery. So one day when they clean up the whole ghetto, they took the trucks and drove all the people to Auschwitz, back and forth. But I remembered what my father taught me, he was a German, he was from Berlin. First war he was liberated in Paris, France. He didn’t like to go back to Germany; he married my mother in France and came back to Poland. He told me remember, never volunteer, always be the last, because they are killing, murdering, and they need somebody to clean. I always was the last to go to the trucks; there was about one hundred and twenty of us. A German came in and said that’s enough, and he took us all one hundred and twenty and he gave us red cross, on the arm, on the back, so that nobody would shoot us, there were a lot of dead bodies, killing shooting. He didn’t like about thirty people of the hundred twenty he didn’t like because they wore PAYOT, I don’t know from how. We understand German very good. The lieutenant asked the captain, what should do with the people? The thirty people you don’t like them. Kill them. They heard kill them. The run to the buildings, some were shot but maybe twenty escaped. You know, when you walk through the buildings in Krakow, you can end up a mile away, two miles away because you can jump building, roof, building. When you are running to save your life, nothing will stop a person.
NATHAN NOTHMAN
4/5/92 WEST BLOOMFIELD, MICHIGAN
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So now I was the last one there, and the German said alright, a German came in, maybe about 25 SS, he took three of us. We went into kindergarten. There was a kindergarten, not like in the ghetto, there was few hundred children, babies with pillows, but the pillows were, there was a pillow and there was attached like a string, so when you tied it so the babies like a you know, 190-degree curve. So, we went in and there was screaming and crying, and there was a nurse, he went to the nurse and killed her, shot her in the head with dum-dum bullets, the whole thing exploded. First time I saw it I said, “Oh my god what’s going on”. Looking up to God and looking left, right, but there was no one there. He said, “Come on, take the two babies down and put them by the sidewalk.” Two babies, I can hardly carry one, and the babies were crying, and they were smelly. We cannot do it. He said, “Shut your mouth” and he shot one of us. I do not know why, he put a gun to my temple, but I didn’t cry, I was, I didn’t care no more. He shot him. And I said, “Why not, ya know, wonder why not me I don’t know why.” So, we took the baby on the bottom and the baby on the top, and we grabbed it. We grabbed the baby, and we went down and I, I heard the baby, (quick short gasping sounds) the baby, choking to death. I took my teeth and lift the pillow so the baby could breathe. I see, (more short gasping sounds), the baby is trying to breathe. We put the babies by the building, three, four, five lines the building was maybe a hundred feet, eighty feet, a hundred feet long. It was a beautiful day in March. The German came in with the German Lugar, shot each baby in the head, and he changed the clipper and shot everything. We were standing there, we don’t know what’s going on, I never in my life, I never saw something in my life. We just said, “God, my God you are Father from from from from, from everyone, do something about it” in our mind. Now he kills everything, without cry without nothing he kills, but like he would kill a fly. Then came a horse with a buggy, and a big platform, you know, when you open the side, and you can lock it and the platform must be high like that (he points with his hand), so when they close that platform, he told us to schmiez, to throw the dead children onto that buggy. So, we would like to carry slowly. He said, ‘No, throw it.’ We supposed to take it by the hand or by the feet and throw it. Sometimes the pillow fell out, sometimes with the pillow, but when they shot with the dum-dum bullets, the whole thing exploded. He tells us to clean everything with our hand and put everything on the buggy. The human body, everything with our hand, we were bloody. A lot of times, I throw that baby, the baby hit the, hit that gate and fell down on the floor, on the concrete floor. We supposed to clean up, and that was terrible, we were bloody, I was 15, 16, 17, 16, but we didn’t know what to do.
So, he says, now you go with us. We came into an old folk’s home; you know what people couldn’t walk were sitting in the bed. He said go inside there and tell me how many people are alive and tell me. I walk into the room and I see maybe fifty or sixty women and old men. I didn’t say nothing, I didn’t say nothing, I didn’t care for him, I didn’t care what he do to us. He says what is going on here. Nothing. So, he came in, saw the people in the beds, and shot everybody, just killed them. People were covering themselves with blankets because they saw what is going on and they couldn’t walk. Barbaric, they can be barbaric, they have a father, they have a mother, they have a grandparent, how can they do something like this? Then he told us to take a chair, it was on the second floor, and break the frame from the window, break it completely the whole frame from the window with a chair. When the horse and buggy came in with that thing, we should drop the bodies from the second floor to the buggy. We supposed to take that, he said, one-person one body. We were so bloody, so dirty, we couldn’t carry on the back we were to drag. We took by the shoulder, drag to the window, and put on the frame of the window and you know, and dump it out. It took us maybe an hour and a half; it was terrible. He saw an old woman had on a ring, so he went to the woman and said, ‘take the ring off.’ I was supposed to take the ring off and give; it was an engagement ring.
Then, we were through with that and he took us to the hospital. When I came into the hospital there were Jewish doctors, Jewish nurses, he killed, he shot everybody. There was a Gestapo with uniform, without uniform. They were killing left and right, left and right, but they would not kill us because we wear the Red Cross. They want to be sure, because if they were to kill us there would be nobody to work for them. I didn’t care that time, I said, what should I do, should I work or get killed, there is no use to get killed so I do it just to survive. He went to the beds, they shot, kill everybody right and left, they kill, people were screaming, they pray to God, they done everything, didn’t help. We were supposed to break the frame from the window there, there were three four horses with the buggy waiting there. We drop the body down from the second floor to the buggy there. Sometimes we went outside, because the body went fell over the buggy, we supposed to lift the body and put it in, we are supposed to clean not with a rag, we supposed to clean with our hands. All human hate, it’s like a journal, its impossible, and I am talking to you and I’m living through, I am going through that. I cannot understand how a human being can be so hating. There was one person with us, but there were maybe four, five Gestapo in that hospital, and they were shooting too, there were a lot of people in that hospital. They were come in and shooting back and forth, because what I think, is they wanted to show that they are good Germans, to the Gestapo. The Gestapo was the highest from the Nazis. They were shooting left and right, left and right. I was thinking, doesn’t he have a mother or grandparents, doesn’t he have a soul, how can he live through it, how can he do it, children. Doesn’t he have a child of his own? It was going on.
Later we were supposed to go to our room, to houses, they let us go to houses to see if anybody is in the attic, or if anybody is, but we wouldn’t tell them nothing, because we didn’t care what’s going on and what happened to us. We can see nothing, so he would not go into the attic; he would only step on the first floor on the steps and scream, somebody there, no, no. He wouldn’t go because he was afraid for himself. After that, he went in and he found something, I don’t know how it happened there was a door there, so he opened the door and there were two children and a mother, hiding in the room. They put something on the door, like a closet like furniture, and they blocked the door entrance. So, he walked in the room, and it is only big room, but he saw something, he told us to dump this over there, pull this over there and there was this thing and there was a door, and there was two girls and their mother. He shot them; they were young, seventeen, eighteen. They were killing children, it was unbelievable, it was 1943. March, beautiful day, gorgeous, so beautiful day in March, sun was shining, so nice no snow no nothing. I remember it was gorgeous out. Yet I will never forget all that, it will always be in my memory. How in the world they can go kill children, older people, young people?
NATHAN NOTHMAN
4/5/92 WEST BLOOMFIELD, MICHIGAN
I have a friend of mine that was hanged. International law is if the rope crack or give, you are supposed to go free. They told to the chief of police that if the rope should crack again, we kill you and him together. They tied the rope together and the Gestapo came in and shot him right in the head where he was standing. They were brutal killing. I remember once they brought in, about fifty, close to fifty, underground, Polish underground, and they chain them, chain them on their feet, they couldn’t walk. We supposed to drag them from the truck, and put a pile of wood, plank of wood, three on the top, three of them on the top, wood, three on the top, wood, three on the top, and there were three, four, five, six, you know, and he took the gasoline, pour in, and shot, ignited. They were burning to ashes alive. They were alive.
I was working in a Kommando; they caught a lot of people from outside, and they told them to undress themselves, everybody was supposed to undress themselves completely naked, children, woman, old men, young men, and they was to lay down in a big hole, it was a big hole. There were thousands of them, I remember it was a deep hole, lay down and get, Ukrainian, it was Ukrainian soldiers, took a machine gun and killed everybody. We were supposed to come in and cover them with that white, it was burning us, cover that and cover with the dirt, a foot of dirt, walk on it and when I step in I was stepping like in a cushion, human flesh there and cover that, spray that with that thing for next day. I was working there for three, four months, and so many people got killed. People undressed themselves, lay down, they didn’t say nothing, and got killed. The smell, the smell, the smell was so terrible with the sun shining that you could see that is flesh there. That thing what they put on top was burning, burn a hole there, lime, something, I was supposed to throw it in slowly, slowly, and then went out. It didn’t bother me nothing.
In the camp, there was a Captain, Goetz, he was from Vienna, Gestapo, it was a Krakow, Plaszow concentration camp. There was a cemetery, a Jewish cemetery; I was there last year to see what is going on there, to see what happened, what and how. He took a machine gun on a horse and he told about thirty-five thousand people to stand in front of him, and he shoot and kill with the machine gun. He was a maniac; he was sick; he was a murderer. That is what I went through, and this is with me so long as I live. I keep telling myself, is that possible is that true, what I went through. Yes, it is true; I went through it. It is very, very hard for me to understand, how can, that cannot be true, yes, it is true, and yes, I was there. They killed so many people. They killed left and right, and after they took, the people to Auschwitz with trucks there were so many dead bodies on the place there. We were supposed to drag them to the horse and buggy; put them on the horse and buggy from the ground, there was a big place there, about a quarter of a mile square. They killed a lot of them there; they didn’t want to send them with the trucks, so now we are supposed to put them on the horse and buggy. Then send them to the concentration camp, maybe four or five kilometers from there. I was in the ghetto, Auschwitz was maybe thirty, or forty kilometers towards Germany, we were a little more north. I was in the concentration camp Krakow, Plaszow.
1944 in May they said, anybody want to go to Germany to work. I figured I would go. I am afraid. I was sure that Auschwitz, they could still take people to Auschwitz, because the Russians were not far from Russia. I figured I have a chance to go to Germany, maybe I will survive. They took us with a train to Germany, to work. They took us to the cattle car and they gave us bread. They told us anybody wants to go they get a whole loaf of bread. I went eagerly because I was hungry, very hungry all the time. I took the bread; this bread is supposed to last us for two days. I went to Gross-Rosen, they took us right to the concentration camp. We were about four hundred people, our train, yes four or five hundred people, and about seventy-five or eighty were killed right there in concentration camp Gross-Rosen. They took us with a truck to Vista Getzstuff, this is by the Czech-Polish border. We were there and we worked for the organization Topf. After we were there for five months, November 1944, we were supposed to evacuate because the Russian soldiers were already coming close to Poland and they are going from both sides. They took us to Trowtenow; they walk with us. I feel to myself, that this is November-December 1944, I am afraid, I don’t want to go deep to Germany, so I escaped. Death march, we walked about fifty kilometers, sixty kilometers walk, they give us nothing to eat, and it was the winter and it was cold, I said that’s the chance, there were five of us and we say we escape. They were afraid to go in the daytime because the planes, a lot of planes, English planes you know, November-December, bombing already. At night we walked and when we came to our quarters, we said we will escape, this night we are going. What they done, every night they took six or seven out of line from the back and shot them, killed them. Everybody wanted to be the first, nobody wanted to be the last, but somebody must be the last. There were four in a line, they took seven, eight, ten of them and killed them in the forest. We were going to Trowtenow, so we escaped, that’s all. How long can I be lucky to be in the middle not the last? People were sleeping on the road to be first, snow. If they don’t kill you, the winter will kill you, we were sleeping in a farm, a farm there were horses, there were cows there, we were sleeping in it, in a barn. So, we escaped. We run for miles in the forest, we didn’t know from where we got our strength, but freedom, when you smell freedom, you run so quick, you don’t care if you hungry, or you don’t have nothing, just be free. Let anybody tell anybody what to do, God gave me brain, you understand, I want to make the choice, if a bad choice a good choice I like to make it. But nobody ever tells me do it this or else, so we run. We came into a forest we don’t even know where, it was not far from Austria border. Austrian border, Austria I would say not far from Lauffen, thirty forty kilometers.
NATHAN NOTHMAN
4/5/92 WEST BLOOMFIELD, MICHIGAN
We went to a farmer, we ask him in German, we are hungry would like to eat something; we had the uniforms, stripes. He said you killers, you murderers, you gangsters, you don’t go off I will send the German Shepherds and I will call the Gestapo. We were afraid, but the hunger; we went the day and got something to eat, from one farmer a little bit, we went back to forest. Somehow, we found some farmer who let us eat. We walked to a farm, an old lady about seventy-five years old, nobody in the house, we walked into the living room we saw a picture from the son, his SS unit. But she is not like this, she is an old woman, she let us in and one friend of us died, because she told us go to the barn, let the cows out, and give them straw to eat, hay to eat, and we are supposed to milk the cows. My friend milked the cow, put his whole face in the milk, and drink the milk. That milk is too fat, he had diarrhea he couldn’t stop, we tried to work, I mean nothing. He was so skinny he died from the shock of it, so now we understand it, so now we take potato and bread. We eat a little bread and potato and a little milk, you know, we cooked the milk you know, and this way we survived. That is how we survived, we were by the lady there, and we were there for three and a half, four months. We worked, she baked bread, twenty-five, thirty kilo of bread, good bread, and we ate. We have wounds, at that time I weighed maybe seventy-five pounds. After we ate, I saw that all the sores on my body healed, and to feel free is so good. So good to know that nobody can tell you, but the fear was very strong, because we were afraid, somebody would come here with guns and would kill us. Always somebody was watching. That is the story; it is unbelievable. She didn’t have nothing too. You see we supposed to help her, because she was a very old lady, she must be grandmother looked to me like they took the father to the army too, and she was alone. We were supposed to make the fire, to chop the wood, for her, for us too. We supposed to bring the flour from the, she had a special place; we bring the flour so she could bake for us and her. Then in March or April the Wehrmacht came in, occupied the whole barn, occupied about four or five barns. They brought salami, pastrami, briquettes, everything. They have a kitchen with them there were maybe hundred fifty, two hundred of them. They were drunk on their whisky, so you know they eat I eat. They didn’t care about the uniform, they didn’t want to bother, because I helped them, I washed them I ate so good, you know I think to myself that I could live that they cooked and I washed, and I helped them to do everything. In 1945, in May, we heard a tank roll in, so we took what we had, a blanket with us that is all, and went to the road, maybe about two kilometers, and we saw US army. We asked them, somebody asked them Polish, there was a Polish Lieutenant was from the Third Army, Patton’s army was there, we talked to him and explained. He took us on a jeep, and they put us on the tank there, and gave us chocolate and this and this and drove us all the way to Lauffen.
We should appreciate the United States what it is, the only country who can hold their freedom. People don’t understand what it means to be free, people take it for granted what freedom is, but that’s all right. I asked somebody a friend of ours, what is the most important about life, he said my wife, my children, food. I said that’s all, what about freedom. Oh, I have freedom. Freedom is the most important thing.
Appell, we supposed to wake up in the morning, and get the piece of bread and stay there and then go to work, you stay there forty-five minutes, half hour, sometimes an hour, and then we are supposed to walk to work, I would say maybe five or six kilometers. We got up at six o’clock and by the time we got the piece of bread and the black coffee, coffee it was nothing and got to work it was maybe seven thirty. Six o’clock we quit and by the time we got back, it was seven thirty at night. Appell was the worst thing, to just stay there in the winter for forty-five minutes or an hour it was cold. No clothes, no shoes, nothing, you wore the same thing you work in for a whole year. My suit was the same thing for me for Sundays, for holidays, for Bar Mitzvahs, for everything. My pants, my shoes, and my blanket, always a blanket with me.
There was a resistance, but I was too young, I would like to resist, but I was not in the proper organizations there. I was not approached, because I would be good in that, because what I saw in 1943, in March, I said it doesn’t matter anymore, I would, I would let people. I remember in 1944, in October or November, a young boy he wasn’t guarded, run away from one camp to our camp because his father was in our camp. He wanted to be with his father, so when he went to the gate, he was asked what is the matter here. He said my father is here and I want to go with my father. That time he wore civilian clothes there was not the stripes. So, they took him, and said yes and arrest him, and one day we stood on appell, and they brought in his father and him, he was about seventeen. They said to his father, hang him, there was a post, I would say about six feet post, but it was too short for him, when they put the rope his feet was on the ground. They kept on saying to the father, I want you to lift his feet, hang your son. He said he wouldn’t do it. We were standing there may be about fifteen hundred, two thousand of us, and machine guns, Germans with machine guns all the way. We have Germans from all over the world, Yugoslavia, Czech, Rumanian, German, because some couldn’t speak German, Polish, that joined them. He put a gun to his head; if you don’t lift your feet from your son, I will kill you. The son said to his father in Jewish, hang me but take revenge. We were standing there, we were afraid, it doesn’t matter to shoot fifteen hundred of us, doesn’t matter. The father, it took him fifteen minutes to die, took his feet out from under his son. His father committed suicide; he couldn’t take it.
There was nothing, there was no soap, no water, there was nothing. People died from Typhus, from dirt, from lice. I can remember a story that, true story that, when I came to the camp 1943, in March, there was a Jewish boy, older from me, about nineteen, twenty. He was orthodox, when we went to get the soup, he did not want to eat the soup, I told him I give you bread you give me soup. He said I don’t want it I want to die; this is not will for him to live, he wants to die, he doesn’t want anything. I sleep next to him. I said come on; you don’t want to do this. He said no, no, I don’t want to live; I don’t want nothing. I sleep with him for almost a month; I don’t know how he died. I woke up in the morning, I forgot his name, I touched him, he’s dead, young boy. There was not a place for him to live. This is in my memory how a young boy, I was different, I wanted to live, I wanted to see the end, I wanted to take revenge. I wouldn’t know, I would probably kill, if I would find a Nazi, even now. I would kill a guard, they are vicious, they are not human, they are barbaric, and the most important thing, is it should never happen again. People should stay together, stand together, and work together. Democratic countries should not allow, not dictatorships, not communists, every person should be free, and every person should express themselves.