STEVEN LEWKOWICZ

6/25/92 LIVONIA, MICHIGAN

DECEASED MAY 16, 1997

 

            My name is Steven Lewkowicz, and I was born in Poland in a small town called Boleslawiec a very, very, small town in Poland.  It was not to far from the German border, maybe two or three miles from the German border.  I had a mother and father, my father’s name was Moses, my mother’s name Blooma.  I had two sisters, one sister was named Luba, and the other was Geigle.  We had family, uncles, aunts, cousins; it was a very small town.  We were not too rich, very poor; sometimes we did not have enough money to buy a loaf of bread.  That is how we were raised.  My father went to a village, he bought a chicken, or a dozen eggs or a pound of butter, and he brought it back into the city and he sold it that is how we made a living.

          I did not start school until about seven, because in Europe we did not start school until about seven years old.  I went to a Polish school in the morning until about twelve, one o’clock, after I came home and had a piece of bread.  My mother gave me; sometimes we did not have butter, so she put sugar on it.  After that I went to Cheder, I stayed at Cheder until about five six o’clock, like a Hebrew school.  We study higher in school, the Polish school, was very rough, there was not a day that we shouldn’t have a fight, with the Polish kids.  They called us names, like Yid, means Jew, especially the kids that had the peot (Ear locks), the long peot.  They shouted the most; they used to pull them by the hair.  I didn’t have peot, if they fought me, I fought them right back.  So, they knew to stay away from me, but, ya know, everywhere we went it was the Yid, the Jew.  It was rough.  Whenever I got a chance, I used to play soccer.  I used to love soccer to play.  I used to ride bicycles, run races on bicycles.  That’s how we spent the time until the war broke out.

          I was born December 2, 1925.  It was a very small town, mostly like farmers and little businesses; it was very small, nothing to it, small.  Like a village, mostly farmers, brick buildings, wooden buildings where roofs were straw.  There was five of us, we lived in two rooms, there was one kitchen and one bedroom.  I used to sleep with my sisters together and my mother and father sleep in the other room.  In the wintertime, we could not afford to heat the other room.  So, what they did, they heat up the bed.  What my mother used to, take a brick, and put in the stove, and wrap it around with a towel and put it in the bed, that’s how we heated up the bed.  It was so cold, sometimes you could find even snow on the pillow, it was so cold.  There were no utilities, we burned with coal, and wood, that’s what we burned in the stove, just coal and wood.  To school I would walk a mile, even in the wintertime.  My mother and father always said, ‘that I have to go to school.’  I was mostly interested in sports, I wasn’t interested in school, but I had to go to school.  In the wintertime, when I went to go to school, you wake up and the hot meal.  My hot meal was like a, my mother used to go in the bakery and buy stale bread.  It was cheaper to get the stale bread was two three days older and bought the bread and boiled up a pot of hot water, and put it in a bowl, and cut up the bread in slices and put it in the bowl.  Made like a soup, a hot soup, we put salt in it, and if we had butter, put a little butter in it.  That was the hot meal in the wintertime, stale bread in soup.  You went to school and when you came home, it was the same thing.  You came home and had dinner, was potatoes, some soup.  That’s how you lived from day to day.

            The teachers, you might have found one or two that was anti-Semites, but they didn’t call us names or nothing, they treated us the way they treated other.  It was the students, they were, lots of them were farmer’s kids, they don’t know no better.  That’s all they looked, to call you names, to fight.  The teachers were no different in my town; I didn’t see no difference.  The Hebrew school the teacher was a Rabbi, the Rabbi from the city.  He is the one that taught us Hebrew.  You had a holiday you had a holiday, when it was Saturday in our town you knew it was Saturday because all the businesses were closed and you went to synagogue, or other places of worship.  You dressed up, you didn’t have nothing to eat, but you were dressed up clean.  We celebrated the holidays.  On Friday night, there was always a little piece of fish.  The whole week you didn’t have anything to eat but on Friday night there was always a little piece of fish and a piece of meat, a piece of chicken, not much but it was there.  The same thing Saturday, Saturday you used to have a Cholent.  Friday night my mother used to make a pot of potatoes, barley, beans, you add a piece of meat, took it to the bakery and you left it there over night.  Until the next day, Saturday when you come home from the Shul (Synagogue), I went and picked up that pot, brought it home, and that’s how we had a hot meal, its called like a Cholent, a mish mash.  Once in a while, we would get together with family for a dinner, like a Friday night dinner or a Saturday dinner.  All the family I had in my home time was an uncle, aunt, and a couple of cousins in my hometown.

         Mostly I used to play together with kids.  If you play together usually, I go play soccer, there was never Polish kids and Jewish kids together playing soccer, we never, they played separate, and we played separate.  Otherwise, we would have a fight; I never had Polish friends.  Just Jewish kids, they went on the field, they played separate we played separate.  They went their way, and we went our way.  The Jewish people were in the stores and if a farmer needed a suit he came to town and bought a suit, that was it, there was no friendships, no nothing, just business.  We didn’t have no friends, Polish friends, no neighbors, or what, nothing.  Each one lived their own life.  It was dull, all I do is go to school and go to school and go to school.  Until the war broke out, I was a kid.  We didn’t have no papers, there might be a newspaper from another city, but there were no newspapers in our town.  We didn’t know nothing what’s going on, you live in a little city, go to work, go to Cheder and go to school you come home and that’s it.  Before the war, we didn’t have no television or running water, there was no such a thing, my hometown, we didn’t have electricity, no running water.  I used to go in the back of the house we had a well, you let the thing down, you brought the water up.  You could have sometimes brought up a rat too, you know.  There were rats in the water.  In the back, there was an outhouse, where you used to go to the bathroom.  It was dark in the wintertime you used to burn a little kerosene, a lamp with kerosene.  The only time I went to another city was like a vacation time.  I went to another city to visit an uncle, my father’s brother; they lived in a different city, not to far.  I think it was called Prushka, a different city.  That’s where I used to go, maybe two three weeks.  The reason I had a grandfather or an uncle, otherwise there was no such thing.  If we had a few minutes time, we played soccer.  When I went on vacation, I would visit and play with my cousins.  My uncle here, my uncle Meyer, in this country here in America, when it came a holiday, a Jewish holiday, like Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, or Pesach, he used to send us five dollars in an envelope.  He used to send us five dollars for the holiday, and in Poland five dollars was a lot of money.  If it wouldn’t be for him, plenty times we couldn’t afford to buy a piece of fish or meat.  Thanks to him that we had a nice holiday.  We couldn’t wait to get that letter.  He came before the war, before the First World War he came to this country.  He is the one who brought me down here too.

 

STEVEN LEWKOWICZ

6/25/92 LIVONIA, MICHIGAN

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         Things didn’t change when the Nazis came in, because they were occupied too.  I couldn’t see no change because like I said they were occupied too, there land was taken away from them.  With the Germans we couldn’t walk on the sidewalks, I had to walk in the middle of the street.  We had to wear the stars, which the Polish didn’t wear it.  You worked, in the wintertime we had to clean the snow out of the street with shovels, in the summertime, the streets were made with stones, and we would have to sit with spoons and dig the grass out from between the stones, we had to sweep the streets.  When the Nazis came into our town, they burned it, they burned down the houses, so all the bricks and wood were laying on the roads, so we had to go out and clean it.  I didn’t think that I was any different then anybody else.  As I said, you couldn’t walk at night, you were afraid to walk out, afraid to walk during the day, when you walked you looked around to see if anybody behind you, you shouldn’t get hit or shot.  Wherever you went you heard that word Jew.

          The Nazis they walked in, the German army walked into our town, it was on a Friday morning, September 1, right, there when the war broke out.  I was right by the border and that’s how they came in, we walked on the street I remember it was about 7-8 o’clock in the morning.  All of a sudden, tanks just start coming in I was running out and I want to see a war, I was a kid, only work and school, and I want to see.  My mother grabbed me and pulled me in the house.  Bullets were flying all over the places, were flying.  They just came in with the tanks, just walking in.  They were just marching in marching through the town and going further out, there was no resistance.  Prior to that in the morning, the Polish cavalry tried to approach them, they went to the border, the Polish, they went on horses, and the Germans came in with tanks.  How are you going to fight horses against tanks, so they just run back, and they just run farther?  The Germans just came in and that was it.

        My mother grabbed me and the whole family we went down in a cellar.  We stayed in there for a couple of days.  We could here the Germans walking around up there in our room.  Burning houses, all over the place was burning, but our house wasn’t.  We stayed in the cellar.  If they found us, they probably throw in a grenade and be gone.  Somehow, the entrance was from the other side of the building.  We could here them walking.  We stayed for a couple days, the houses were burning, and in the night, we took the whole family, and we went through fields.  We went to a farm, because we didn’t know what’s happening, what’s going on.  I don’t know to how far down, but we went to a farmer, a farmer, and we went to his house, and the farm it was deserted.  I guess the farmer took off too.  We stayed in that farm in the house.  It was at night.  In the morning we could see to the highway, look out the windows we saw the Germans patrolling the streets.  We didn’t know what to do; here is cows, goats, chickens running around all over the thing, and whatever food we found.  We fed them.  Somehow, the Germans came to the farm, and they got us all out, and they lined us up, and questioned us.  ‘What are you doing here,’ who we are and everything.  They took my father away to questioning him, then he came back and they told us we have to go back into town, so we just went back to our small town, to the city.  Luckily, our house didn’t burn down, so we stayed there.  My uncle’s house burned down, him and his wife and two kids came with us to stay.  We had just two rooms, one room, and one kitchen, there was four of them and five of us, we had nine of us in the same two rooms.  They made us work, the Germans, clean the streets, sweep the streets, dig in the road, I was a kid.  They talked about trying to make a living, to find bread to feed the kids, to get some potatoes, or beets or carrots; we didn’t talk about meat, just to keep us going.  My uncle was a tailor, so he could fix a suit, a pair of pants, the farmer if he brought it, to be fixed.  He had to sew them in our room, not to get any money but brought us butter or potatoes, bread.  The farmers brought the food, that’s how we supported each other.

         You couldn’t go; no practice no religion; first of all, when they walked into our town the first thing they do, they burn down the synagogue and the house of prayers.  We had a beautiful synagogue in our town.  There was no such a thing, you couldn’t pray, if they catch you praying somebody in the house, they shoot you, they kill you, you weren’t allowed to pray.  The Nazis could just come in the house and take you out of the house and shoot you in the head.  Then we had to go out there and bury the dead in the cemetery, we had to take them down there, young guys, just like that.  Some Polish people could tell where a Jew is hiding.  The Poles were helping, there was no such thing as helping a Jew, not in my hometown.  Not in my hometown, not that I know of, there might be some Polish people somewhere they helped the Jews, but I did not see it in my town, my small town, there was not to many Jews, a few Jews in my hometown.  It was a small town, maybe a thousand; I don’t think there was a hundred Jews, less than a hundred.  You tried to survive.  There was an opportunity to emigrate before the war, but my mother didn’t want to leave, she didn’t want to leave her father.  We had a chance to go to America, the United States, but she didn’t want to leave her father.

         Couldn’t hide no place, there was no place where to hide.  During the war, the occupation, I worked at a farm.  The farmer needs somebody to pasture the cows, so I went, a Polish farmer, I worked on a farm.  I worked there six days, I stay the farm, I slept there, I used to sleep on the hay, like where they storage the hay, a hayloft.  That’s where I used to sleep.  Early in the morning, four or five o’clock in the morning, I used to take the cows out on the pasture, and I used to pasture the cows.  Then I used to bring them home, I cleaned up.  Then for that the same thing, for that I got bread, butter, potatoes.  On the weekend I came home, on a Sunday, I came home for a couple hours.  Which it wasn’t too far, it was walking distance, maybe ten, fifteen minutes, twenty minutes and I was home.  I used to get food, and I brought it home, so that’s what I did.  Sometimes my mother got enough butter, so she wants to sell a little, and gets a few cents to buy something else.  I worked there for a while until a German found out, that I work on the farm, because the farmer had a girl, a daughter.  She was a pretty girl, and she was going out with a German, and it was a Polish farmer.  He found out that the farmer had a Jew working here, that I am a Jew, and he said I couldn’t stay there, and I have to leave.  I have to leave, he fired me, and I went back to the town.  The farmer treated me okay, I worked, I did what I had to do, and he paid me.  He treated me like a laborer; I have no quarrel about it.  Then I was in town, came back and I worked in town, in the city.

 

STEVEN LEWKOWICZ

6/25/92 LIVONIA, MICHIGAN

 

          They started taking out the kids.  To take us out, take us out from the city to go to different camps for labor.  There was one transport that took a few kids, older ones and I think I was on the second transport.  About two, three weeks later, they take out some, more, and a month later, they took out some more.  I was going, the Germans, they took us out, I would say maybe ten kids, all about the same age, maybe fourteen years old, fifteen, I don’t know exactly.  I remember I packed up my clothes, anything I had, in a bundle, and a farmer pulled up with a wagon, a horse, and wagon, put about ten kids on the wagon, and went to a different city, not that far.  In that city from all the surroundings they took all the people in that big building, we all gathered there.  I don’t know how long I stayed there, a day or something.  From there they took us out to the camps, to working camps.  Labor camps, then I worked.  I worked; I built roads, expressways, cut down forests, trees you know.  I worked in an ammunition factory; I was helping Germany.  The skin from my fingers was all peeled off from the powder, I put in the machines was so hot.  You worked in a bunker; everything was cement and steel covered with grass, with trees, so you couldn’t see it.  It wasn’t underground, it was in the forest covered, with grass, the buildings, everything.  You could see airplanes go by they couldn’t see it because it was in the forest, all green.  All there was in the room was cement, and over the machine was a big tank of water.  In case the powder should catch on fire, you run outside and pull a lever, the tank tips over, and the water.  It happened to me one time, and they put me in the camp and told me I did sabotage.  They said they were going to hang me; they were going to hang me.  I was a kid, I started crying, I said, ‘no, it was an accident because I didn’t somehow put in too much powder, and it blew up.’  They said, ‘okay, one time more this happens, and they are going to hang me for that.’  But somehow it didn’t, thank God it didn’t happen no more.  I stayed in that camp.  I remember in one camp I worked, in fact I got a mark here, see it, you can see it, it’s a mark, it’s from the lice.  The lice were eating me, that’s from one of the camps.  There was no sanitary, you went outside in outhouse, maybe once in three months you take the clothes, that was in a civilian camp, in a bundle, and they took you to a different city.  They put the clothes like in a steamer, they steamed your clothes, and you take a shower.  You steam the clothes to get the lice, to kill the lice, in fact.

          In one of the camps, where they storaged the foods, like the beets, the potatoes, or the carrots, in the basement, with a little window, I crawled into that window.  The guards were walking around with guns, at night, and I watched them and timed it where he going to be and everything and I crawled in that basement, that little basement and I tied my pants around my ankles with ropes, with ropes.  I filled my pants with beets and potatoes, everything, and I crawled out and went into my barracks.  In the middle of barracks was a stove to keep us warm and I throw in the potatoes the carrots and heat it up.  I risked my life, if they catch me, I get hanged, I’m dead, I risked my life, I was hungry.  We shared; I gave them.  In the camps, you could get sometimes a little loaf of bread; three guys split it.  So how do you know which when guy cut it which one get a bigger piece.  What we did is, guy who cut it put the pieces behind him and said, ‘which one do you want, the piece of bread.’  That’s how we got it, and the other guy the same thing.  So, there wouldn’t be no argument, your looks bigger yours looks smaller, that’s how we shared it.  In one of the camps, you get a loaf of bread at one time, a small piece of bread, so you a loaf of bread and ate it up at one time, the next two days you didn’t eat nothing.  You just ate a bowl of soup.  You couldn’t save the bread, hide it because otherwise they could steal it from you, or take it away, so that’s what we did.  The soup, you might find a couple pieces of potato if you are lucky, or carrots.  In one camp I was a dishwasher, I wash the dishes after the prisoners got through with their dishes, with their food, I wash it, for that I got an extra bowl of soup.  I had another extra bowl of soup; so that bread I got I could save the bread for the next day, to go to work, so I hid it on me.  The next day I go to work nobody had anything, I had a piece of bread I could eat, I had an extra piece because I was washing dishes, that’s why I got an extra bowl of soup.  I survived.  Our barracks were kept clean; you had a bunk, a blanket, and a pillow.  You had to kept it clean, before you go to work you had to make your bed.  You went to work during the day then you came home, and you got your bowl of soup.  I was in about two or three different labor camps, and after that I was taken to Auschwitz.

          We came into Auschwitz, and someone was standing there saying right, left, right, left.  I guess I was a lucky one, I went to the right, and I went into the camp, went into Auschwitz.  From that camp, I went to Auschwitz by truck.  We were just going to a different camp; I didn’t know where.  When we were in the truck we talked about when we were going to get the food, we were hungry we didn’t think about nothing else, but thinking about food and to survive, when is it going to end.  We walked in the camp, and they tell you which building you go into, I was assigned to some building.  I stayed in Auschwitz, I don’t remember how long and then from there I was taken to a different camp.  I was taken to Yavoshna that was a coalmine; I think it was a branch of Auschwitz because it wasn’t too far.  The same thing, I was taken by a truck to Yavoshna, then I stayed there, and I worked in the coalmine.  In Auschwitz, I got that number, 124171, I got that in Auschwitz, and the triangle indicated that I am Jewish.  I stayed outside in a line with a German standing in front of me, and I just walked up when we get in the camp, and he punched it in with ink and everything.  I didn’t know what was going on; I was going from one camp to another.  They took my civilian clothes and gave me the concentration camp suit on.  I don’t know how long I was there, they took me to Auschwitz, and then I worked in the coalmine.  All I did was spit up black.  When I worked in the coalmine and you went out of camp, they put chains on you.  I was chained up, go to work, from Yavoshna, to the coalmines it was a walking distance, I don’t know how far but you walked.  They used to put chain on and a big rod and you slid on the chain on the rod.  There was maybe ten or twenty guys on one of the rods.  At the end of the rod was a lock.  The Kapo, you know the Kapo was like the foreman, he locked on the end, and he had the key.  The Germans walking behind you with the guns and that is how you walked to the coalmines.  Before you went down into the coalmine, the Kapo unlocked the key in the back, you slid out the chain, and you walked down to work.

 

STEVEN LEWKOWICZ

6/25/92 LIVONIA, MICHIGAN

 

          Then you work and then came up and it was the same thing, you put the chain on and back to the camp.  You come into the camp, same thing, before the gate open up.  One time I smuggled in for the Kapo a pack of tobacco, you are not allowed to, somehow, he made some deals.  We were working in the coalmine we had civilians, Polish people they were the foremen, dig the coal out, dig the coal to the dynamite and everything, and I smuggled in for him in the camp a pack of tobacco.  If they catch you, the same thing, they hang you.  I put it between here, you came to the camp, the guard search you all over, and somehow, he missed me here.  I was standing with my arms up and said no more, and for that, I got an extra bowl of soup, for smuggling in the bag of tobacco.  I said no more.  Then at the same camp, I would say a few weeks later, I saw sixteen people hung at the same time.  Sixteen Polish people, there were some Polish in the camps too, hanged, it might have been more, because they tried to dig a tunnel from underneath our barracks was standing on pillars.  You see underneath was hollow, and they tried to dig a tunnel, through out the camp to the wires to the forest, because it wasn’t too far to escape.  The dirt that they dig out they put it beneath the barracks because it was hollow.  Somehow on the last day they found out, I don’t know what happened, somebody squealed on them or not, but they hung sixteen guys.  I came home from that camp; they let us come home early that day to see it, what it was. They had the gallows, tables hanging down they put the guys up there they doubled the guards they were all over the barracks standing with machine guns, they were afraid something might do it after that.  Came home early, and we watched, we had to watch it to see it was a warning that if this was to happen again it will happen, they hung sixteen guys all at the same time.  I worked in the coalmines, and I could see guys going down in the coalmines and bring them up, they brought them up on stretchers.  I used to work with guys and the foreman used to walk up to them and say, ‘shoot them,’ or ‘hit them,’ just like that.  I was lucky, I just worked, I worked, and I thought it was the only way that was going to save me, maybe.  I worked in that camp and from there I went to Buchenwald.  The Russians were coming in, a matter of fact I think they bombed the camp where the Germans stayed there, their barracks, they bombed their barracks.  The Russians start coming in then from there they took us out, from there I went to Buchenwald.

          I was marching on the way, from Auschwitz, part and then part on the trains.  They put us in those cattle trains, I was packed in that train, and you couldn’t even breathe in there.  They pushed us in like sardines, standing room only.  Somehow, the guy in front of me he died, he fell down.  I stood on top of his body to get up enough to get some air.  You just stayed there choking, locked up, sealed in, no heat.  I stayed on top of the body, so it gave me more air to breathe.  I don’t know how long we were in the train and then we walked, lots of days I couldn’t, I was already.  If you walk in the march and somebody fell down the German, the last one they give you the bullet in the head and they throw you off the road.  That’s it, you are marching; I already got so weak I couldn’t march.  At night you didn’t march, they lock you up on a farm, the farmer.  A couple guys were next to me marching, I grabbed a hold and he said, ‘Steve, Steve keep up, because it’s getting dark, we come to our rest.’  I had said, ‘that’s it,’ because I couldn’t walk already, I don’t care, kill me or not.  I grabbed hold of them, I walked, and they dragged me, we came to the farm, and I lay down on the ground and the farmer boiled up a potato.  Everybody got a potato.  I couldn’t even get up to get a potato.  They went down there, and they got me the potato, I had the potato.  We went in at night, went into barn, to sleep on the straw, in the hay.  We found the seeds from the wheat, wheat, like corn, then we get the seeds, and we ate the seeds.  We thought already to hide because I couldn’t make it no more.  But, after you left the barn, the Germans went and took those forks, pitchforks and they jab, to make sure nobody is hiding.  So, I said I better get take off here, and I keep walking again.  Somehow, you come to Buchenwald, and they let us out.  I remember too, when I let us out from the train, the trains, the locomotives get their water from those big things, I passed by it and I grabbed a little water and sipped. Went inside into Buchenwald, it was so hot, they give you a shower and I fainted, and a guy was walking around with a big bowl of water, and I was sprinkled on me, and I came to again and I made it back into the camp.  I stayed in Buchenwald, and I remember I worked, I didn’t go out to work, but there was a ditch with rocks, a big ditch with rocks you know.  They put us in that ditch, and I moved the rocks from this side to this side.  When I moved all those rocks from this side, then I moved it back from here to here, put it back here, that is how it went.  The last days I couldn’t, in Buchenwald the same thing.

          Later on, they tried to take you out without transportation to go out farther from Buchenwald and I couldn’t walk no more.  Outside by the barracks they were laying dead bodies; if people died, they took you outside and put you in the front by the barracks.  Then a little wagon goes by with a couple guys, they throw the body in, and they take you into the furnace, the crematorium.  One time I fell down, I lay on top of those bodies, because they want to take me out to work and I couldn’t work no more.  I figured I walk a little while and one of them is going to shoot me.  They throw me on the side on the road and then what happens, the dogs come by and, I was thinking of them chewing me up, here I die they put me in the furnace and that’s it.  I don’t care.  When the Germans walked out from the barracks, from checking the barracks, I laid there a few minutes and I went back in the barracks.  I stayed there.  In the barracks one of the Kapos, he was a Polish guy but, oh he was rough, and he saw me, and he knows that I am supposed to be out, says to me, ‘Hey, what are you doing here?’  I said, ‘Man, I can’t walk no more and everything.  I don’t care if its here, I give my ration, my piece of bread I will give you the bread let me die here, I don’t want to walk, I can’t walk no more.  If I get my, they give you a ration, a piece of bread, keep the bread, you can do anything you want with it,’ I just said, ‘leave me stay here, let me die here.’  Then he let me, a couple days later again the same thing, I couldn’t walk no more at that time.  A German came in again and tried to get me out to walk to different camps to Lauffen, and I couldn’t walk.  I just lay down in the middle of the floor, he pulled out the gun, and he said, ‘He is going to shoot me.’  He put it to my head, and I said, ‘Shoot,’ and somehow, he said, ‘No, I am not going to waste a bullet, you are doing anyway.’  He left me there, and he went and got somebody else and after he left, I crawled in back to my bunk, I crawled back into my bunk and I lay there a couple days and all of a sudden I hear that we were liberated.

 

STEVEN LEWKOWICZ

6/25/92 LIVONIA, MICHIGAN

 

          The first thing, I hear somebody holler, ‘We are free.’  The Germans left, watching on top the watchtowers left, the watchtowers.  We couldn’t believe it four, five years; you can’t believe it.  I crawled out and I hold on, and I came to the door, and the first thing I saw is a German, watched on the towers.  Stand in the middle of the camp the one who watch the towers had his hands-on top of his head and one of the refugees had his gun and he was in front of him hold his gun and everybody hollers to kill him and everything.  He said, ‘No, no, no,’ and that was the first thing I saw was this here.  That Kapo that was in the camp, he was the first one to get killed, they killed him first, and throw outside him.  In the barracks, they killed him and threw him outside.  He hollered, he prayed, he said no don’t and everything, and whatever I did, I had to save my own life and everything.  He started to beg for mercy, they killed him.  When I was in the camps, my wish was to sit down at the table, a loaf of bread, eat as much as I want, then died; I know I died with a full stomach and see the end of Germany, that was my wish.  Then when the Americans came in, I stayed there a couple days later, I couldn’t walk no more, when they pulled up with the ambulance I couldn’t even step, they had to carry me into the ambulance, and they took me to the hospital.  I stayed I don’t know how long, and they start giving me and, in the camps, I had typhus too, in Buchenwald.  I got sick; I got typhus.  I must have weighed ninety pounds I was very thin.  The hospital the beds were full already, so they put us on the floors.  They give us blankets, army blankets, made a pillow from the blankets.  Little by little, they started feeding me and I start getting stronger, that was my wish to sit down a loaf of bread, eat as much as I want, then I can die, I know I died with a full stomach.

          I am proud of the liberators, if it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be here.  Thanks to the United States army, the soldiers, I am here.  Lots of people died, I was lucky because I was taken into a hospital, if I had been walking around, I would have died from the same thing, lots of people died because they ate too much.  I told the Americans, the doctors, ‘Hey, I’m hungry, I want to eat,’ they said, ‘No, no, we know what we are doing here, little by little.’  They gave us soft foods.  I stayed there, I don’t know maybe three months and they said, ‘That the Russians are taking over this part and they were going to another part, and if I want to stay there in the hospitals I’ll stay by the Russians.  If I want to leave, they will take me out and I can go with them.’  I have an uncle in the United States, I don’t know where the rest of the family where was, but I figured I can always get in touch with them, so I said, ‘No, I go with them.’  I could walk already better and everything, they took me to the DP camp, Landsberg, that was a DP camp, and I stayed over there about four years until I found out about my family.  The last time I saw my family was when they took me away in the truck.  I am the only survivor in my family; I am the only one.  There was only one, I had uncles, aunts, cousins; I was the only one to live.  Some of my family from Denmark survived because the Danes saved them.

         Every morning before you went to work you went outside and they called your number, when they said, ‘124171,’ I said yes.

          Musselman, that’s what they called me, I was skinny.  I was a musselman, I couldn’t sit on a toilet because I was all bones, I was all bones.

          One time I used to unload cement, bags of cement from the train, because they were building buildings, two bags at a time, one bag on this side and one bag on this side, cement I used to carry.  The German stayed on top of the building, and I was downstairs, and I throw the bricks up to the building, two bricks at one time.  I had to throw them up, and if these bricks would separate and they didn’t go in his hand; he throw the bricks down at you he hit you in the head with the bricks.  The bricks had to go up and throw them up; they used to go right up into his hands.

          In Auschwitz I was there for three months, maybe six months, I don’t know.  All you see is people in uniforms and you see smoke coming up from a chimney, and you see people dieing.  After we knew that they were crematoriums, one tells the other one.  You lived from day to day; you tried to survive, whatever will be will be, there is nothing you can do, you have electric fence all around, Germans with machine guns, surrounded, and if you make the wrong step, kill you, we couldn’t say anything.

          I was liberated April 11, 1945.  The next day the president died, it was Roosevelt, he died the 12th.  We said maybe back again another war or something.  We were sad that the president died.

         Now it is forty-seven years later, and I am still dreaming about those things.  I wake up at night and seeing dogs chasing after me.  My wife wakes me up and says, ‘What’s the matter Steve, what’s the matter?’  I say, ‘The Germans are after me again.’  After all these years, it will never go away, I still think about those things.  I think the world knew all the time and they just didn’t do nothing about it or didn’t care.  They should have got in there sooner than they did.  They could have saved a few more million people, if they got in, they waited too long, I think.  I think the world knew what is happening, the leaders knew, what was going on, that the people, innocent people, children were getting killed.  They knew about it, they could have done something before.  They waited to long.

          If I ran into a guard or a Kapo from my camp experience, I don’t know, I would hang him.  I don’t know what I would do to him.  They should continue as long as they can find them, they should go after them.  It doesn’t matter if he is sixty or eighty years old, what ever it is, they should go after him.  In Buchenwald after the liberation, when bodies were still laying outside, they brought in, Americans brought in the town’s people lined them up marching in to see, to show them what they did, and all they said is, ‘We didn’t know, we didn’t know.’  They saw the smoke coming out of the camp and they knew there was a camp there; a camp surrounded with electric wires, and they saw the uniforms, and they keep on saying, ‘They don’t know,’ that they didn’t know what was happening.  It is hard to believe that they didn’t know what was going on in the camp.  Some of the guards probably lived in the same town, that were watching us.  The non-German guards are just as guilty as anybody else, all the rest of them, just as guilty.  They were not forced to do that.

          Right wing hate groups should be eliminated as soon as possible, they should not let them get too big, cut them down while they are small, don’t let them get too big, get rid of them.  Hate, to stir up a lot of people, they should not be allowed to do that.

 

STEVEN LEWKOWICZ

6/25/92 LIVONIA, MICHIGAN

 

         They should not take in Nazi scientists to work on the space program, that’s not right, they should get rid of them, that’s not right.  The same people killed maybe hundreds of people, now they get good jobs and the United States government tries to protect them, no, that’s not right.  They should eliminate them, get rid of them.

          You just think about it all the time, you can’t forget.  When you lose a whole family, mother, father, sister, it stays with you until you go to the grave.

          Do you have one final statement that sums up how you feel about the Holocaust?  It should never have happened, innocent people dead, because of religion.  Why did it happen to us? 

          My uniform, I saved it, the one I had a little while at Buchenwald, and I kept it all these years.  Everybody asks me, ‘Why do you do this, why, what do you need this uniform?’  I say, ‘I don’t know,’ I just did it, I thought maybe showed it to my family, my kids, my grandchildren.  I don’t know why I saved it, all these years, and now when they opened up the Holocaust Center here in West Bloomfield, in Michigan, I figured I would donate it, so I donated it and now it is in the museum.  Once or twice, I showed it to my wife, the kids never see it, I never showed it to the kids.  I just took it out to see what condition it was in, that’s all the time I took it out in all these years.  It stayed there in the suitcase in the basement.

          I worked in the coalmine, the Polish they were the foremen; I was their helper.  I worked for one of them; I mean he was bad; he was bad to me.  When I used to dig the coal and put it on the conveyors and dig it out.  The machines the motors were running, he said, ‘Steve, this is your oil from your father and mother, like from Auschwitz, this is what he told me, that Polish guy.  That’s how bad it was.  I worked for him for a while and then I got another one, that I worked, and he was to me like a father.  Another Polish farmer, he brought his lunch, he wanted to share with me, or give me a little slice of bread from his lunch, because I didn’t have anything to eat, when he ate, I just walked around the corner, I didn’t want to be, and he wanted to share, would give me a slice of bread.  The one time, he was to me like a father, but the other one oh he was bad.  As I said before, he said to me, ‘this is your oil from your mother and father.  Then when he ate his lunch I walked away on the side, he wanted to give me a slice of bread, I said, ‘No, I don’t want your bread.’  I wouldn’t accept his piece of bread, I was starving, and it made him angry that I would not accept his bread, he knew I was dying, I am hungry, and I didn’t want to accept his piece of bread, because he said this.

          In my town when it comes before a holiday, the people used to buy a goose or a chicken; they used to make them fat, lots of schmaltz (fat), for the holiday.  Before the holiday, they had them in cages, in the backyards in the cages and they fed them.  Before the holidays, couple of kids used to wake up in the morning, early in the morning, opened up the cages, and let all the chickens and the gooses out. In the city they were running around all over the place, and then the people wake up and they didn’t have any they were looking for their chickens, and everybody wanted to grab the fattest one because you know, the chickens.  So, they had a war, they were fighting, grabbing, but it was fun.  One thing, I was no angel when I was a kid; I was in plenty of trouble, even when I wasn’t there someplace trouble, they accused me of being there.  That was life in a small town; you looked for trouble.  You had nothing to eat, but you had fun.  When I was a kid, I got sick, in a small town we didn’t have no doctors.  We had one doctor, he was a doctor, he was a dentist, he was everything.  I got sick, I thought I had appendicitis, I had to have appendix, I was laying for days and had a stomachache, my mother said, ‘go to the toilet if you have a stomachache,’ but I didn’t I was in pain.  Finally, they took me to a different city, they took me in a taxi, and they said, ‘I have appendicitis.’  It was already late, too late, it had busted, and they couldn’t do nothing to it, they gave me medicine and I stayed I don’t know for how long and it got a little bit better, and they send me back home.  I stayed home again and still the same thing and they took me back again.  They even said already in the home, that was before the war, they said a prayer.  If somebody is in bad shape, you say a prayer and maybe it will help.  They said for me that in the synagogue and everything.  Somehow, I stayed there a second time in the hospital, and it went away, I came home, and everything was okay, that was before the war.  The doctor prescribed me a piece of orange to eat, an orange, where do you see an orange.  I remember that once in a while I would get a little slice of oranges.

 

STEVEN LEWKOWICZ

6/25/92 LIVONIA, MICHIGAN

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          When I left my hometown and was going to the camp, my mother wrote me a couple notes with the addresses from my uncle and aunt from the United States and gave me a note from my uncle and aunt in Denmark.  I had family in Denmark too that left too before the First World War, they gave me the addresses the names and everything when I left for the camps.  When I was in civilian camps, I could have kept the addresses but when I went into Auschwitz, everything was taken away, and I didn’t have nothing.  When I was liberated, I went from Buchenwald to a DP camp, Landsberg, when I came into Landsberg, I had nobody, I didn’t know who was alive, or where or what, I didn’t know nothing about it.  I remembered my aunt and uncle’s address from Denmark and my uncle here in the United States, I just remember his name, in fact, he changed his name, when he used to be at home, he was to be Kohl and when he got in this country, he changed it to Isaac, but I remembered that.  I remembered his name, I remember he was a baker, and I remember the city, that’s all I remembered here.  When he came in the camp in Landsberg, you could write letters through the Red Cross, they took the letters to see if they could find anybody in the family.  The information we got, if anything happened, it was on a billboard in the camp, you know on the billboard.  Everyday I went to see if I have any information on the billboard, I find somebody.  One day after weeks I take a look, I see my name on the billboard, I said, ‘oh boy.’  I went into the office, and they handed me that letter that my uncle, they had found my uncle, and how it happened; they take to the city of Detroit, and they know my uncle is a baker, so he had to belong to a union.  They went down to the union they gave the letter, to the union.  The guy who was in charge of the union calls up and says, my uncle, ‘hey I got a letter here for you, from Germany, somebody is looking for you.’  When he got the letter, in the letter I explained who I am, and who my family is, and everything.  That’s how I got to get to my uncle’s.  In the meantime, I wrote from Denmark too, and they got in Denmark and from Denmark, already got information too.   From Denmark, they already told my uncle here in the United States.  That is how I got in touch with my uncle here.  Then we started getting letters, it took me about, ’45-’49, it took me about 4 years.  I was in the camp, to get to the States here.  When I came to the States I landed in New York, I came by boat, there was some people greeted you, I think it was from the HIAS, a Jewish organization, at the boat.  When she met me at the boat, because the time from the boat and then to the train to Detroit, it took about six hours wait.  She asked me if I was hungry, the woman.  I said, ‘Yes I could eat something.’  She said, ‘Would you like a hotdog?’  I said, ‘A hot dog,’ I thought it was a dog; I didn’t even eat dogs in the camp.  I come to New York, and she said dog I couldn’t believe it, and it was a hotdog.  A friend of mine, he came into this country earlier, then I did, we were together in the same DP camp over there.  I wrote him a letter that I am coming to the States; he was waiting too for me at the boat.  Then I went for him for a walk, that was a Sunday when the boat arrived.  We walked down to the street in New York on Sunday, and I see on the doors, you know is doors, they had a sign says closed, it was Sunday; the store was closed.  In Jewish closed means like a closet, a closet means like a toilet.  I said what is this, every place has closed, so many toilets here.  I didn’t know what it meant.  That was funny you know.  Then when I went there on the train, I take a cab, yes, she gave me ten dollars this woman.  At night we caught the train, it was a whole night ride from New York to Detroit.  We didn’t know how to use the money or what to do, I was sitting with another guy that was coming too, to Detroit, he had an uncle there too, and he came with.  Sitting I couldn’t tell the difference with the money, and the porter walks by with candy, a sandwich you want to eat.  I said, ‘Yeah,’ and I gave him the whole ten-dollar bill, I didn’t know how much change or what fifty cents, or a quarter, he gave me the change and that is how I got here to the States.  My uncle and aunt picked me up from the train.  I stayed with my uncle for a while until I got married.  I worked at Dodge, Dodge factory.