MARTIN SCHILLER ORAL HISTORY

MARK GERSTEIN: This is Mark Gerstein, and today is June 13th, 2013.  I'm here at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, with Martin Schiller, and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History project.  Martin, do I have your permission to record this interview?

MARTIN SCHILLER:Yes, you do.

MG:  Thank you.  Let's start out by just talking a little bit about where you were born, and your family background, and so forth.

MS:  I was born in Poland, in a town named Tarnobrzeg.  The Yiddish version is -- was Dzikow, so very often, if you speak to someone that is really Jewish, in 1:00the sense that they speak Yiddish, if you tell them Tarnobrzeg, they won't catch it right away.  They will say, You sure the town is right?  But if you say Dzikow -- ah, Dzikow, vays ikh shoyn -- Dzikow, I know already.  But the Polish name actually is Tarnobrzeg.  I was born there 1933.  By the way, for a number of years, when I was in the United States, I kept putting down 1934, and there is a reason for this, because we used to lie about age-- our ages when we were in the camps.  It was just because you wanted to survive.  So you made yourself older and older.  But once we were freed, we said, Well, now we can go back to our original age -- our real age.  And we were pretty certain -- that 2:00is, my brother thought he was born in '33 -- actually, December '32 -- and I was born, I thought, in March '34.  But it turns out that one of my cousins came to visit us in New York, who had lived in Israel during the war, and he said -- I happened to have mentioned about something 1934.  He says, "Oh, no.  I was in Poland in 1933, where you were just a little baby.  You were just born."  And then I verified it with some other cousins, and it turns out it was 1933.  So now you have the story about my birthdate.  Some of the documents that you'll see have different dates, simply because we kept mixing them up.  And by the 3:00way, this is also true with the spelling of my name.  When the war ended, and the Americans wanted to document things, I didn't know how to spell my name.  And so my brother, who had been in the first grade, thought it was spelled S-I -- I think -- L-E-R.  Or two L's.  I didn't know how to spell.  Well, it turns out that the name actually was misspelled completely.  So, again, documents were misspelled.  But anyway, let's get back to where I was born, in Tarnobrzeg.  I loved being -- living in Tarnobrzeg.  I can only remember the 4:00very good times.  I remember the times when I was in the Purim play, and I played Ahasuerus.  And I felt so proud that they chose me to be the king, because even when we used to play in the garden as soldiers, or whatever, I wanted to be the general.  I always wanted to be the leader, so I guess -- my mother said I used to be pretty precocious.  So I guess that made me happy.  And the same thing with Hanukkah.  I remember we had latkes, and there was always singing in the house, a lot of singing.  As a matter of fact, there was a time when we were baking matzah -- notice I say "we."  Even though I was a 5:00kid, I was very close to my father, very close.  And he chose to take me to the local bakery a week, or two weeks, before Passover, where the bakery had been completely transformed to bake matzah.  And picture, if you will, twenty -- twenty-five, thirty men -- young men, my father's age -- they, too, had children -- were baking matzah and singing.  And the singing was primarily "Hallel [Hebrew: Praise]."  And that is the area of prayer during holidays when you praise God.  So I remember that with tremendous, tremendous affection.  And I 6:00guess that's when I really fell in love with what we say "Klal yisroel," with the Nation of Israel.  I felt so warm.  I felt I was part of something that was so wonderful and so good.

MG:  You had memories of Shabbos?

MS:  Oh, absolutely.  Shabbos was -- it's -- first of all, my father was very busy, all week long.  He --

MG:  What did he do for a living?

MS:  I'm sorry?

MG:  What did he do for a living?

MS:  That's what I'm leading into.

MG:  Yeah.

MS:  He had a partnership with a non-Jew in insulation for walls -- for houses, for walls.  And he used to travel to gather the material, but it was like a -- 7:00not a little shop, but a little factory, where they made this insulation.  And he was very busy, so all week long it was tough to get a hold of him.  At night, he'd come home and work, work.  But once Friday night started, he was all mine.  It was like turning a switch off.  And to him, Shabbos was Shabbos.  And he was a young, modern, Orthodox Jew.  By the way, I hasten to add, the town -- the city that we lived in had a population of roughly six thousand residents -- or, I would say, six thousand families.  More than fifty percent were Jewish.  So we had a pretty large community.  Regretfully, after 8:00the war, there were almost no survivors.  I think one or two percent survived.  But anyway -- so I remember that very much.  And I've never -- I never went to school, but I did go to kindergarten.  And, again, kindergarten was wonderful, always singing.  Now you asked -- I keep diverting -- you asked about, how was Shabbos.  Shabbos to me was a song from Friday night until the end of Shabbat -- we used to call it Shabbos.  We'd start with Sholem Aleichem -- (singing) "Sholem aleichem [Hebrew: Peace be upon you]" et cetera, and then, at home, after davening, during the day, we sang -- what was known as zmires [Shabbos hymns], and then I remember when we used to light the candles, after 9:00Shabbos was out -- after the Havdallah.  My mother would go around, turn on the lights in every single room, and they'd light candles, and we'd dance around a table, with my grandparents, singing "Gut-vokh [Good week]."  Many kids -- many people say "Shavua tov [Hebrew: Good week]," 'cause that's the Hebrew.  But we'd walk around singing, (singing) "Gut-vokh, gut-vokh, gut-vokh, a gute vokh."  It was wonderful.  So I have those very pleasant memories.  During the week, particularly in the summertime, and in the spring -- we lived in a complex which was like a cul-de-sac, removed from the city, but there were 10:00houses in a semicircle, with an entranceway in the front.  And in the center was a big garden.  I remember the sunflowers, especially.  So we children used to play there all the time.  And, of course, one of the things that I liked very much was to ride my father's bicycle.  Now, you understand that a man's bicycle has that bar across the top, and as a child, I couldn't reach over the top.  So I put my feet underneath, and rode the bike that way.  I remember that very fondly -- I kept riding, and riding, and ri-- I never had enough of it.  So, anyway, those are things that I remember very much.  I enjoyed going 11:00to the market.  In Europe, we had what is called a "yarid [fair]," where the market came to town.  In those days, you didn't really have refrigerators or freezers where you could store for the whole month, so, in our town, the market came, I think, on Wednesday.  And I enjoyed going with my mother and my grandmother, and we also had a maid, and she would come along, too.  And they'd buy up all the provisions for the whole week.  And that was a very enjoyable time for me too.  Every time there was a parade in town, it was always on our street, because we lived off the main avenue.  So I enjoyed watching the parades.  One other thing that I enjoyed very much as a child -- there was a 12:00small forest.  When you're a six-year-old, or five-year-old, that forest was huge.  But when I think back now, especially when I went back to Poland in 2004, and I went by that area, I sud-- it suddenly dawned on me -- that really wasn't a big forest.  It was an area with a lot of trees.  But the reason why I used to think it was such a big one, because my mother -- every time she'd tell a story, her aim was always to teach us a lesson.  And, of course, she wanted to make sure we never got lost, that we didn't go off somewhere.  So, if we left the back of our yard, and went towards the forest, you'd be in there, and she was -- I found out subsequently that she would try to make sure that we 13:00never went off on our own there.  And she'd tell us stories about terrible things that happen to children that go off into the forest (laughs).  I laugh about it now, but I listened very attentively, and that attentive listening, I guess, did help, because I never went near it when I was not with my mother.  And of course, in the summertime also, the Vistula river was right near us.  It was wonderful going swimm-- (clears throat) excuse me -- going swimming there.  So those are little snapshots that I can remember of my childhood.

MG:  Do you remember the shul?

MS:  Oh yes, very much.  I remember watching my grandfather, especially, 14:00davening with such kavone, with such respect, with such yirah shemayim, which is fear of God, that sometimes, when I'd look at him, I'd tremble.  I'd feel the presence of God.  He was a very, very pious man, and also a very honorable man.  People looked up to him.  And I remember, also, he had high blood pressure, and in those days -- those years -- the way they relieved the high blood pressure was to put little snail -- not snail --

MG:  Leeches.

MS:  Leeches, thank you.  Leeches behind his neck.  And I used to watch so intently, and hoping that they wouldn't drink too much of the blood.  (laughs) Yeah.  And -- but he was always so gentle.  And, for example, when his brother-in-law would come to visit -- brother-in-law being the brother of my bubbe, his wife.  And he would tease us.  He'd say, "Loz op -- stop, don't tease the children."  He didn't like to see that.  And -- but he wasn't a well man -- he was along in his age.  I didn't get to see my -- well, they lived with us -- my mother's parents lived with us.  My father's parents lived also 16:00in Tarnobrzeg, and they lived almost -- a little bit beyond the shul.  And, of course, everybody davened in the same shul.  I shouldn't say everybody -- there were two shuls.  You know the old story -- I don't go to this one (laughs).  So the shul that my father went to, my fami-- (clears throat) my family -- it was more modern, so to speak.

MG:  It was Orthodox, you said.

MS:  Oh, all the shuls were.

MG:  All the shuls were.

MS:  All the shuls were Orthodox.  I didn't know about Conservatism till I came -- or, for that matter, the temples, until I came to the United States.  I subsequently found out that they existed also in Germany.  And, of course, 17:00living in a small town, I don't know whether they had that in Warsaw, so I can't speak to that.  But going to shul with my father and my zeyde was just wonderful.  And I remember standing there davening with him -- praying with him.  I assume whenever I use a Yiddish word, you want me to --

MG:  It's f--

MS:  -- say it in English.

MG:  You can, you can -- sure.

MS:  So there was a certain awe that was instilled in me, vis-a-vis the prayer, particularly in 1938, '39, when we knew that the sword of Damocles, so to speak, was over our heads.  Because we knew the Germans were coming.  The prayers 18:00used to be very, very moving.  There's a prayer known as "Shema koleinu" -- God hear our voice -- which, to me, literally shook the walls.  It took me right along, and I recognized the pain that the Jews felt in Poland.  Only at that time, when the fear of Hitler was present.

MG:  How did you know about that fear?  Were there newspapers, radios that you listened to?  That your family listened to?

MS:  It was all -- I always liked to listen to the adults, so it somehow got 19:00absorbed, and whenever I heard the word Hitler, I knew this was bad.  I think I described it in the book, where I said that, one night, when they were listening to the radio -- it was very late at night, and Germany had invaded Poland -- that that was to be feared.  I disliked the Polack thug from the very beginning.  Whenever my mother and I would go in the street, the catcalls -- you have to understand that the small-village, the small-town Polish, lower 20:00socioeconomic type was not at all like the one in Warsaw or in Łódz, or in Krakow.  The ed-- the common denominator of the educational level was significantly lower.  Somebody went to gymnasium, you said, Oh, this guy went to gymnasium.  Doctors were gods.

MG:  Did you have much contact with the non-Jewish population?

MS:  I did not.  The only contact I had with non-Jews was the maid.  She was not Jewish, and she had been our maid ever since I can remember.  I was a little child.  And I'll never forget, never -- she had a terrible temper, and 21:00she'd storm out, and always come back.  One day I remember, just before the war, where she mouthed off to my mother, and she said, "When Hitler comes, you're not gonna" -- whatever.  And my mother said to her -- that I remember -- "Get out, I never wanna see you again."  And, you know, I made that connection.  Why am I saying this?  Because that anti-Semitism was hidden, even when they worked -- when they worked for you, you'd think that you might inculcate some degree of tolerance.  I never saw that.

MG:  You say you experienced, when you walked out into the, like, marketplace with your mother --

MS:  Oh, yeah.

MG:  -- catcalls.

MS:  Catc--

MG:  What kind -- what kinds of things were said?  Do you remember, or --

MS:  Yes. "Żyd," "yevrey," like "kike."  And they had -- especially the 22:00low-lives -- if a Jewish girl would walk, they'd come by close to her and go (makes a pinching motion), you know -- terrible.  Terrible types of movements, which obviously were sexual suggestions, but I knew that it turned my mother's stomach.  You know, you can pretty much read the body language of your parents, and their reaction.  And then, of course, my mother would make a comment, and she'd say, "prostkayt," which meant a boor, an uneducated, a pig, or whatever.  23:00So that was generally present.  When we walked in the street -- not every time, but you have to understand there are these specific incidences that, once they stick in your mind, they stay there.  And then, when you gather enough of them, it gives you a picture.  Whether it's true or not, false or not, to you they're real.  So maybe I'm the only one that was more sensitized to it.  Of course, once the war broke out, and we tried to hide in various places, then we began seeing the true colors -- those who wanted to give us away, those who would not take us in or hide us.  And there used to be pretty good splits between 24:00families.  You'd have a woman who'd say, "They're human beings.  You gotta save them."  But, within the same family, where there was a son, or a husband, they would say, "Let 'em die.  We'll finally get -- we're gonna get rid of them."  So my experience with the Polish was a very negative one.

MG:  Before we move on to the -- I would say, darker period in your life, obviously -- I'd like to go back to your nicer days, for -- just for a second.  What would you -- do you remember your house?  What was it -- what was it like?  Who lived there, and --

MS:  Yes, and --

MG:  -- and food,

MS:  -- I remember m--

MG:  -- and so f-- yeah.

MS:  I loved going into the cellar.  The cellar was below ground -- and by the way, that was the refrigerator -- and I remember going down there.  I loved 25:00sour milk -- not buttermilk, it's sour milk.  I loved it.  We used to call it "smetene [sour cream]."  And I remember my grandmother making what we call in the United States "p'tcha" -- the Yiddish word in our area, which is a derivative of Polish, is "petsha."  It is a gel made of lamb's or of calf's feet.  Now, it's really a Polish delicacy, but they used to make it out of pig's feet.  Well, obviously, we Jews had it made out of -- and to this very day, by the way, I love to eat that, if and when I find it.  Of course, I have 26:00to do this in a very hidden way, otherwise my wife would kill me.  And now, if she watches this, honey, I did not take any --

MG:  The secret is out.  (laughter)

MS:  The secret is out, yeah.

MG:  Yes.  I was gonna ask you about -- everyone spoke, in your household, Yiddish, I assume.

MS:  Oh, yes, forgive me --

MG:  Yeah.

MS:  -- I also want to add, I remember specifically the rooms.  We had a big kitchen.  I was very, very attached, also, to my mother.  There was a big difference between my brother and I, in that my mother used to call me the "kats," the cat.  The cat always likes a warm spot.  When the stove was turned 27:00off and it was still warm, the cat would sit on there.  Why did she call me the "kats"?  Because every time my mother sat down, I'd run over and lie in -- on her lap, or sit on her lap.  I liked being around her.  So, I got the name "the cat."  And, until she passed away, in New York, to the ninetieth birth-- she celebrated her ninetieth birthday -- every time I had a birthday, she would always send a card that had a picture of a cat.  And I remember that -- you asked -- the kitchen, during the week, was the social hall (laughs).  Everything went on in the kitchen, and Marisz, who was the maid -- she always used to get annoyed.  I remember she'd say, "Get out of the kitchen, I gotta 28:00clean," et cetera.  The dining room was for Shabbos.  The dining room was also when my mother and father had to do paperwork.  And there were three bedrooms.  A bedroom for my mother and father, my brother and I, and a bedroom for my mother's parents.  And, if you asked me, when did they come to live there, I think from the day they were married.  No, no, I believe he became ill, and they moved in.  But I think that was even before I was born.  I can't give you a date on that.  And one of the nice, very nice memories I have -- my 29:00bubbe always made a white borscht, which is known as a "schav," or "shtshav," and, when I'd come home from kindergarten, she'd always have that ready for me, and I used to sit and enjoy it.  And she'd sit with me.  She was also very gentle, very gentle soul.

MG:  The title, I believe, of your memoir, is "Bread, Butter, and Sugar"?

MS:  Yes.

MG:  Can you tell --

MS:  "Bread, Butter, and Sugar."

MG:  -- what's the significance of that title?

MS:  I had -- I must've been about four or five -- I had pneumonia.  In those days, you didn't have penicillin, and it was a very, very dangerous sickness.  Fever was running very high.  So they held a vigil, day and night, over me.  30:00One of the things they used to do was put on cold compresses on your head -- you'd burn up, you know, they'd try to cool you off.  And my mother would have the day shift, and my grandmother had the night shift.  It must've been about three days or four days -- that I don't -- that detail I don't remember -- but the fever finally broke.  I didn't speak.  I didn't take any food or water -- I -- they must've given me water.  And suddenly I opened up my eyes, and my grandmother was dozing.  And I said something to her, and she was startled -- of course she -- thrilled -- the child speaks.  And I said, "I'm very 31:00hungry."  And she said to me, "You can have anything you want."  And I said, "I want bread, buttered, and sprinkle sugar on top of it."  I had never asked for that before, never.  And I guess, within ten, fifteen minutes, everybody in the house came in.  Of course they were thrilled.  She must -- she obviously woke them up, and brought me bread, butter, and sugar -- several slices.  And somehow this became a ritual.  I'd wake up, out of nowhere, at eleven o'clock at night -- anywhere between eleven and midnight, or thereabouts, I'd wake up and ask for bread, butter, and sugar.  Well, it reached a point where they 32:00prepared it before they went to sleep.  It was just a ritual.  After a while, they'd just automatically walk in with it.  Why did I call it that?  Because, when I suffered in the camp, I often remembered that I could only have just the bread, never mind the butter and the sugar.  I was emaciated.

MG:  You, were there other foods that you -- that you remember?

MS:  Were there --

MG:  Other foods, other dishes, from your childhood, that --

MS:  Borscht.

MG:  Borscht.

MS:  Oh, yes.  It us-- my mother used to call it a "shlaymzupe [pearl barley soup, lit. "slime soup"]."  It was like a soup that had something like farina, or fine grain.  I like -- like grits.  I loved it.  I could -- I would liken 33:00that to a mushroom soup, if I had to make comparisons.  I was always a cheesecake lover, and I remember Shavuos, that holiday, it's all dairy, milkhik, and I like cheesec-- I like the buns.  Even to this very day, I enjoy a good cheese danish, but it's gotta be a New York cheese danish.

MG:  You mentioned going to kindergarten.  Was this a kheyder [traditional religious school] that you were going to?  Or regular, secular kindergarten?

MS:  That's interesting that you ask that question, because I remember a kheyder, but I also remember the kindergarten.

MG:  What memories do you have of the kheyder, or if any?

MS:  I think I was learning alef-beys [alphabet] and something like that, but I 34:00do -- I also remember, I couldn't speak Yiddish.  I only started speaking Yiddish after the war broke out.

MG:  What did you speak?

MS:  Polish.

MG:  Polish?

MS:  Oh, yes, Polish only.  I used to be called the "dlaczego" kid.  "Dlaczego" in Polish means "why."  Whenever I walked with my mother, and, or my father, they used to get tired -- I'd say, "Dlaczego this, dlaczego that" -- why this?  Why does the moon shine?  Why does the car have wheels?  I always wanted to know why, and it was all in Polish.

MG:  I just assumed that you were a Yiddish speaker.  What -- did your --

MS:  No.

MG:  -- parents speak Polish in the household?

MS:  No, they spoke Yiddish among -- to me, they spoke Polish always.  I cannot remember speaking Yiddish.  I know I did not speak Yiddish --

MG:  They spoke Yiddish to each other, though.

MS:  Oh absolutely.  Absolutely.  But that I remember, because when I went in the camp -- well, I started understanding a little bit when we had to run away from the city that I was born in, and then when a couple of Jews, three Jews -- too many Jews didn't get together in those days.  You were sort of hiding all the time.  They would say things in Yiddish.  So you -- obviously, you pick up, just like any American boy that lives in a Jewish home, and the parents speak Yiddish, because they don't want the kids to understand.  So, in that 36:00sense, I began picking it up.  During the war years, I started picking it up, but I didn't speak until I was in camp.

MG:  Your frie-- I'm sorry, go ahead.

MS:  And it was like a light went on.  When I went into the first prison camp, I think, within a couple of months, I started speaking Yiddish, because everybody spoke Yiddish.

MG:  Did your friends -- what friends you had, in your town --

MS:  I --

MG:  -- did they speak Polish as well?

MS:  All Polish.

MG:  And they were Jewish, though?

MS:  Yes, yes.  Yes.  We played, and it was all in Polish.  And the reason why I know it so well, is because there used to be a -- sort of a Polish officer, like a colonel, and he was held in high esteem.  Whenever he came into 37:00our yard -- you see, our yard -- our area was also a shortcut from the main street to the back, towards the forest or the river -- and he used to stop and watch us when I -- as a matter of fact, he helped my parents, simply because he used to observe me, where I used to lead the kids around as a soldier, when we played soldier and war.  So he'd watch, and I'd stand there, make speeches.  Piłsudski was known as the best president -- I think he was premier -- for Poland.  He was then the leader for Poland, and he was very good to the Jews.  38:00So I remember standing there, always making the speech -- "It is not true that you are gone, and --" it's funny, I can't remember the words now, but those words I remembered for a long time.  And he was very impressed with that.  And a little incident like that, and my mom came to him for something, and he helped us out.

MG:  You wrote in your -- I think in your memoir -- that you remembered, when you were in the camps, that your mother, I believe, sang some Yiddish song.  Was it --

MS:  Not my mother.

MG:  -- Yiddish songs?  Not your mother?  Some Yiddish songs to you --

MS:  Ah.  I wrote that, in my memory, when I was in camp, I used to dream about her singing, when -- before the war.  My mother used to be very good.  She could harmonize.  She had a beautiful voice.  And what I wrote in the 39:00book, if I remember correctly, was, whenever things got tough, really tough at -- and I'd wanna just shake this prison life, I would try to recall the good days.  When my mother got sick -- I don't remember how old I was then, but it all had to be within a span between '37 and '39 -- it was all in that area -- I don't think I have a memory before that.  And remember I told you I clung to her a lot.

MG:  Um-hm.

MS:  She had gone away for a couple of days, or three, four days, to visit her sister in Germany.  When she came back, and she wanted to hug me and kiss me, I 40:00threw myself on the floor, and I didn't want to go near her -- you left me, I don't want you anymore.  And that hurt her, very much.  Now, why am I telling you this?  Because, subsequently, she had become quite ill -- again, something with breathing, et cetera.  So the doctor said, "You need to go into the mountains to get some -- some of that fresh air.  Get outta the city.  You have to clear your lungs."  And she said, "I can't leave him, not after that episode."  So she took me along.  Again, you talk about -- I -- about my chi-- 41:00you asked about my childhood.  I loved it.  We went to this place in the Carpathian mountains, and it was a beautiful place -- flowers, greenery, and she walked with her friends -- oh, three or four of her girlfriends went along, too.  And they were walking in the mountains -- I wouldn't say mountains, but sort of hills and valleys -- singing.  And the song, it was, "Tsvishn goldene zangen, hob ikh mayn yugnt farbrakht -- amongst the golden --"

MG:  Golden stalks, or --

MS:  "-- stalks," thank you -- "I spent my youth."  And that made such an 42:00impression on me.  Well, I always loved music.  I used to sing a lot, too.  So, I don't remember what the question was, but the --

MG:  It's about the music, the songs that you remembered --

MS:  Music, oh yeah.  We were a musical family.

MG:  Were there any other -- I know this was the early 1930s, were there any other kinds of, like, cultural activities, like radio, theater -- did you ever go to a movie when you were a little kid? 

MS:  No -- (overlapping dialogue; unclear) -- I think there was a -- what we used to call a "kino [movie theater]."  We went there once, I went there.  But there were cultural -- my parents belonged to what was known as a "gezelshaft -- a circle of friends" -- my mother was quite educated, and they used to like to exchange thoughts and ideas about things they've read.  She read Sholem 43:00Aleichem, Sholem Asch, Peretz -- she -- and also she was one of very few of Jews who learned the Talmud, with the approval of her father.  In Europe, if a child was studying a lot, they'd say, "Er lernt tsi fil -- he's learning too much."  Because they didn't -- obviously, like the Haredim right now, they don't want the core subjects taught in -- whether it's in Israel or anywhere else.  Well, in America, they seem to recognize that it's important for a young man to get an education so he can make a living, but the Haredim in Israel, they don't want to teach core subject, because they will learn about the world and what's gonna 44:00happen.  They will leave the fold.

MG:  You said your mother was reading Yiddish literature --

MS:  Oh, yes.

MG:  -- did she ever read stories to you when you were a child?

MS:  Oh, yes.

MG:  And were they in Yiddish, or Polish?

MS:  Oh, yes.  As a matter of fact, the first time I heard her -- the first time I recognized the Yiddish thing was when she talked about Chelm.  But she used to read it in Yiddish, but tell us the stories in Polish, as a child.

MG:  She read it -- I'm sorry -- she read it to herself in Yid-- she read to you in Yiddish?

MS:  Oh yeah -- no, no, no.  She read it for herself --

MG:  Okay.

MS:  -- and I remem-- well --

MG:  But she told she told to you in Yi-- in Polish.

MS:  In -- let me clarify this.  In retrospect, when I hear some of these 45:00stories, I say, "My mother used to tell me these stories" -- Chelm, Sholem Aleichem, the -- "Tevye the Milkman" -- she would tell me some of these stories -- only those that a child could understand, and enjoy.  It was only later on that I -- when I started reading Yiddish, I said, "Oh my God, this is in Yiddish."  You understand?  It -- I only recog-- I only realized, Oh, that's where she got it.

MG:  Do you remember any of those stories -- the Chelm stories at all?  That you -- I mean, it's a long time ago, I know.

MS:  The Chelm, yes -- with the cat, where the Chelm people decided to get a cat 'cause they ha-- should I tell you the story?

MG:  If you'd like to -- you could explain the story behind Chelm --

MS:  This is your game, you can --

MG:  Yeah, the people from Chelm were --

MS:  Yeah, Chelm decided to get a cat, because --

MG:  -- foolish people, right?

MS:  Yes.

MG:  Yes, yes, okay.  (laughs)

MS:  I should've clarified that -- they decide to get a cat, to get rid of some mice that they had.  They had a problem with mice.  And, sure enough, the cat did its job.  And then it became an annoyance, and it got into food that they didn't want it to get into.  So they decide that they're gonna kill the cat.  So -- and by the way, every time they had to make a decision, the committees got together, they had a meeting, and a decision was made.  Of course, you laugh all along.  And they decide they're gonna take the cat and go up to the tallest building that they had, and throw the cat down, and kill it that way.  Well, 47:00the cat, you know, always lands on its feet.  So, they threw the cat down, and she ran away -- came back and started bothering the people again.  So, again, they had another meeting.  And this time, they decided they'll get the rabbi to take the cat up there, hold the cat, and jump with it, and that way -- (laughter) so, and, of course, as a child -- (laughs) you know -- I laughed.  She told that story, and it turns out that this was a story, I think, written by Sholem Aleichem, when I started reading.  Oh, by the way, I started reading the Jewish paper, the "Forverts," when I came to the United States.  I never -- I didn't read the -- and I began putting things together.  And the reason why I 48:00think I -- I learned Hebrew because I was able to identify the words -- the letters -- in Hebrew, so that gives me reason to believe -- but that's so far back -- I remember my zeyde sitting with me once in a while.  But it's funny, now that you asked that question, I can't put my finger on it.  Where did I -- I do recall, somehow, sitting in a kheyder -- but remember now, kheyder you start at four, so there it is.

MG:  Was there any political atmosphere at all in your household?  Were politics ever discussed?

MS:  If it was politics, I wouldn't recognize it.

MG:  Yeah, yeah.

MS:  Keep in mind, when the war broke out, I was six years old.

MG:  Yeah.  Let's move into that, I guess, at this point.  Before we do that, 49:00though, are there -- is there anything else mainly about your early childhood that you'd like to share with us, before we move on to -- we've covered a lot, which is good --

MS:  Yeah, I --

MG:  -- it's great.

MS:  -- you know, I need a trigger, like -- I can't -- frankly, I just don't remember anything.  If, during this discourse, something comes to mind, I'll throw it in --

MG:  Bring it up, okay.  Let's disc-- the German invasion of Poland.  How did your -- what was the reaction of your parents?  The initial reaction to the invasion?  What did they do?

MS:  Fear.  So palpable you could taste it, you could feel it, you could touch it.  And then, of course, within a week, or within a few days, the bombs were falling.  They bombed our city, because it was sort of an industrial town.  So 50:00our city was one of the first targets, and there was an inferno all around me.

MG:  Your home was -- was it untouched though?

MS:  Untouched -- but we ran.  They had bombed further down the road, wherever -- again, a lot of these things I have to sort of re-think and say, "Why did that do -- why did that scare me so?"  If I never heard a bomb fall, if I never experience a big fire, a thunderous explosion, it didn't matter whether it was very close or far away -- far enough away not to hurt you, but nonetheless you could see the flames.  So to answer you, that put a lot of fear into me.  And, 51:00of course, the fear was written all over my parents.  And the -- everyone's screaming and running towards the Vistula river, and they got a hold of my brother and I, and they kept schlepping us to get to the river.  Oh, I trembled.  It was -- that's a kind of a memory you never, never forget.  The intensity may diminish with time -- with a lot of these episodes -- but it never, never disappears.

MG:  Now, your parents made a --

MS:  Excuse me --

MG:  Go ahead.

MS:  -- my brother has erased it all from his memory.

MG:  Hm.

MS:  He does not remember things.  That's very interesting.

MG:  Your parents made a choice to flee the city?

MS:  Oh, yes.  And my grandmother had told them, "You go.  I'll watch -- I'll 52:00stay with the house," so on and so forth.  But, yeah -- when you say they made a choice --

MG:  Well --

MS:  -- again, I don't remember a meeting of the minds.  Bombs are falling -- grab the kids and go.  I also -- I used to think -- I used to be very upset -- my parents didn't do this, they could've avoided that, and so on and so forth.  Because, after all, my mother had brothers and sisters.  The only ones that survived, besides her, were those brothers that ultimately came to the United States before 1938.  And they came to the United States via Germany.  They -- 53:00the Polish army used to draft, so they left Poland to go to Germany, because they didn't want to be drafted.  It wasn't so much -- as I realize now -- it wasn't so much that they didn't want to serve in the military, but they were extremely Orthodox, and very Orthodox people fear treyf, non-kosher food, more than military service.  Why am I saying that?  Because they were relatively modern, but when it came to that kind of life, they left it.  Eventually, one of my uncles threw all of the religion away.  Anyway --

MG:  Did they --

MS:  -- they went to Germany, and, from Germany, they went to the United States.

MG:  Did they try -- were they in communication with your mother to try to convince her to emigrate to the United States?

MS:  This is -- this is what I'm leading up to.  I couldn't remember why I wanted to make this point.  These guys -- these brothers were single.  Take a bag, and you go.  When you've got two children, you got a business you're running -- the business is not so impor-- but what do you do with the children?  And it was for this reason that a lot of the Jews with families were slaughtered by the Nazis.  Young people went into the partisans, and they did end up going to fight.  But the ones that had the responsibilities of children 55:00-- again, I was very upset with my parents during the war.  Why didn't they go to the United States?  Why didn't they run, and so on.  First of all, it takes means, and I don't think they had the means.  But also this very point that I was making: single people can do almo-- anything, but -- do you mind if I take a drink?

MG:  Sure, go ahead.

MS:  You want to stop it?

MG:  No, no.  You can sip, while we're talking.  It's okay.

MS:  I have an itch in my nose.  Anyway, go ahead.

MG:  So --

MS:  Oh, oh, yes --

MG:  Yeah, we were talking about the immigr-- and you -- and your parents making a difficult -- difficulty of trying to immigrate if they -- right, with family, and so forth.

MS:  Right, right.  So there was -- I recall my mother telling me after the war, that they did try to do something to get away, but the doors were pretty 56:00much closed --

MG:  Closed by then -- you've -- going back to the beginning of the war, you said you fled to the Vistula river, and you ended up --

MS:  I crossed the river.

MG:  -- crossed the river, you ended up -- and where did you end up?  What town was that?

MS:  It was called Koprzywnica, a small village, not really a town -- a small backward village.  I went back in 2004, and the same outhouse was still there.  That'll give you some idea.  And the smell was the same.

MG:  Now, this village was considered to be safe, relatively speaking, compared to where you --

MS:  Safe because it was off the main routes, off the main highways.  Poland didn't have highways.  It was off the beaten track, but nonetheless we tried to 57:00hide.  My father paid off a farmer.  They used to make these huge haystacks -- I'm sure you've seen them in the fields -- and he paid off a farmer, because the -- at that time, I think it was, the Einsatzgruppen were coming -- to allow us to hide in there, in one of those haystacks.  So that I remember my father and a farmer made an area -- cleared an area -- of course there was straw there -- and we stayed there, I think it was two nights.  My -- regretfully, my brother used to talk in his sleep.  And that, we recognized, was very dangerous -- if 58:00you're hiding, obviously.  But there was another reason that we had to leave that.  While the farmer could be trusted, apparently it became clear to my father -- I said, while the father -- I'm talking about the father farmer -- could be trusted, my father got the distinct impression that he couldn't trust his son or his wife, that they would give us away.  So we had to end that.  Then we went somewhere else.  You know, I mentioned to you that, in the film, things were foggy.  It was always a hidden type of a life.

MG:  But you -- you were in this town for several years, no?

MS:  Two years.

MG:  Two years.  And did you finally end up in a particular house, or were you moving around?

MS:  Oh, we rented -- we rented a house.  We rented a house.  A house -- it was a one-bedroom -- bedroom.  It was four -- three -- three rooms.  I can remember, like, a kitchen, which was also a dining room.  It was right next to a stream, like a little river, and we rented -- that I remember -- near a church.  Why do I mention the church?  Because my father still tried to do business.  We had to pay these people, and he was able to make enough by going back and forth -- once a German soldier, an SS man, almost -- was gonna shoot 60:00him, but he was distracted, and my father ran, and that's how he saved his life, at that time.  So we lived in that place, and after that episode, my mother said, "You're not traveling anymore."  It's too --

MG:  To your father.

MS:  Yeah.

MG:  Yeah.

MS:  It's too dangerous.  So he did some other things, but we began selling off things.  Oh, he had gone back across the river, periodically, to take things from the house, whether it was money, or whatever.  So he did go back a couple of times, cause all you needed to was to cross the river, practically, and you were there.  Finally, the pot became dry, and they had to keep paying.  So my mother began selling off some of the furs she had, some jewelry 61:00she had, and the nuns were happy to buy the furs.  And I -- that was an education for me, you know, because I thought nuns only wore black.  But apparently -- or maybe they got it for family, whatever.  And that's why I remember it so clearly, because I remember my mother came back, and she said, "I sold it to the nuns."  I didn't -- oh, the dlaczego stopped -- "dlaczego" meaning "why."  I stopped with the why's.  It was too hectic a life, too tense.

MG:  You had mentioned, in your memoir at least, about a Jewish council, a Judenrat.  Was there a ghetto in the town that you were in?

MS:  A Juden [German: Jew] -- a -- yeah, I wouldn't say ghetto -- there was not a ghetto.  But there was like a -- a Jewish rep, you know, like we have in JCCs, or someone that runs the -- I was gonna say the ADL, but it's not.  Some sort of an official that the town voted that he be our rep.  So -- and there weren't that many Jews in that little town, maybe two hundred, so I'm not talking about a lot -- and scattered, and you didn't have services.  If you had services, it was in somebody's house, and it was always balachash, quietly, 63:00because you didn't want the goyim to hear.  And, again, "Shema koleinu" -- why?  Why?

MG:  Did you ever see a German presence in that town?

MS:  Oh, yes.  Yes, but always hidden.  There used to be a road, right in front, and the one time, there was a whole convoy that went through there.  And again, I don't want to use the word town -- I prefer to use the word village.  It was just a village.  I was amazed it appears on the map, so maybe they consider it a town.  No -- no sewer service.

MG:  So you were there for two years, and, as a child, what kind of life did you have there?

MS:  We swam in -- the summer, we swam in the brook, in the little river.  64:00There was like a little waterfall, we'd go under it.  But it was always a transient type of activity.  You saw somebody coming, or something was suspicious, you ran into the house.  It was al-- it was a hidden type of life.  In the winter, there was no sledding.  I remember, before that, we used to have a sled that -- et cetera.  And if we played, we played behind the house.  And -- try not to picture a house, a house.  A very small, little building, with three rooms, a chimney with a stove --

MG:  Were you running -- were you running low on food, at this point?  In terms of --

MS:  We were running -- we -- that's what ultimately happened.  We sold off everything, and we were pretty much at the end of our rope.  By the way, by then, I was already nine years old, and I began to think like an old man.  I remember that.  I didn't feel like playing.  Always interested, when somebody came to the house -- often times, my mother would say, "Vart, vil nisht di kinder nisht hern -- wait, I don't want the children to hear."  That, for me, was a signal: hide behind the wall and listen.  Of course, the news was always, 66:00this guy got killed, that one was murdered, et cetera.  So I started listening, and I cannot really remember playing, except in the summer, in that river, swimming.  I remember the -- I had some cousins.  My father's brother came with his wife and children, and they tried to hide out with us, but it didn't work out.  So they went back, and, of course, they were murdered by the Einsatzgruppen.

MG:  Did you have other family members during this time period who were also murdered?

MS:  Oh, yes, my grandmothers -- oh, yes.  Other family members?  If I want 67:00to count the cousins, et cetera -- my brother once sat down with me, and we made a tally.  It was sixty-six people.

MG:  And were these all in the same town?  Or -- no.

MS:  No, no.  In the family.  Absolutely no one -- no one survived on my father's side.  Nothing.  And on my mother's side, the only survivors were, of course, her brothers that were in the United States.

MG:  In 1942, you -- the Jewish council, the Judenrat announced that --

MS:  Judenrat --

MG:  Judenrat --

MS:  -- council, yes --

MG:  -- announced that they were looking for -- the Germans were looking for able-bodied men and women to work in a factory, or whatever --

MS:  Right --

MG:  -- can you tell us about --

MS:  -- they didn't say camp.

MG:  Could you tell us about your parents' response to all this?

MS:  I just said, they were at the end of the rope, you know.  They ran out of 68:00money, and things looked pretty desperate.  Food was already scarce.  So the Judenrat said, "Some of you have a chance.  If you're willing to go to work, the Germans have promised they'll put you to work -- they didn't say what the work was -- and they'll feed you, and you can save your lives this way."  By then, we knew it was either the Einsatzgruppen or the gas chambers.  We already knew.

MG:  You knew about the gas chambers?

MS:  Oh, by then, yes.

MG:  Yeah.

MS:  Yeah.  So my -- because my father had a little pull with the man that was 69:00running the council, he said, "I'll make my children older," and -- because they couldn't take kids unless they were twelve years or more.

MG:  And you were nine.

MS:  I was nine.

MG:  And your brother was ten.

MS:  Yeah.

MG:  Yeah.  So what'd they do?  They faked -- they forged papers, or --

MS:  They forged papers, but it wasn't -- when the trucks came to take these families, it wasn't like the Germans were standing, and counting, and examining -- just get in, get in.  Because they knew what they were gonna do, I guess.  And we -- I remember, at the time, we were a bit surprised they didn't check to see how old we were.

MG:  So you are transported --

MS:  Transported --

MG:  -- to this -- where?

MS:  -- to this labor camp, a camp that made ammunition.

MG:  The name of it was?

MS:  Skarżysko.

MG:  Um-hm.

MS:  And that camp had three sections to it, three divisions.  One of the divisions was an absolute horror.  You couldn't survive there more than about eight, ten months, because they were working with picric acid, without masks and without any protection.  Picric acid is used for mines.

MG:  Like land mines?  Yeah, yeah.

MS:  Underwater mines.

MG:  Undersea mines.

MS:  And so, if you were assigned there -- which you didn't know that until you were in the camp.  Luckily, we were not.  There were two other divisions that 71:00you could survive, you could.  Case in point, I survived.  But it was horrible.  It's like a -- night and day change.  Suddenly, the beatings and -- indescribable, the brutality.

MG:  And you're there -- your brother, yourself, your father and mother.

MS:  Yeah.  She -- my mother was shipped off to another division, which was only about eight, ten kilometers away -- not even that, I think four, five.  Again, I -- but there was a definite division.  And my father and my brother and I, we went into this A division.  And we were there about -- well, we went 72:00in in November and, by January, they killed my father.

MG:  What were the circumstances of that?

MS:  Because the living conditions in the barracks -- remember, barracks had hundreds of people squeezed together on straw.  It was dirty, filthy.  So typhus was rampant, and a very small percentage of people under those conditions, without medical help, could not survive typhus.  If you asked me what the percentage was -- I'm guessing -- but likely not more than twenty percent survived.  Because I used to see them falling by the wayside.  You 73:00could look at someone, say, I give this guy another day, I give this one two days.  When they stopped eating, you know that was it -- stopped eating, stopped going for that slice of bread.  And my father contracted typhus, and he laid in the bed, and no one could get him to go to work.  And he figured he'd -- he'll survive, but everyone warned him -- if they make an inspection during the day, and they find you, they're gonna kill you.  They didn't want sick people.  Remember, the turnover was pretty good for them.  They had plenty of resources.  It was later on that they began saving some of the younger people, 74:00because they thought that, once they win the war, they're going to need these younger people to come along and carry the load of the work that needed to be done.  That's the German rationale.  A lot of this I saw later on.

MG:  I believe that you yourself contracted typhus -- am I correct?

MS:  Oh, yes.  Oh, yes.  I contracted typhus, but I fought it.  I was also a small kid, and there were some people who were very, very good.  As I walked by the guards, they held me up, 'cause I -- I was dizzy, I couldn't see what I was doing.  I was burning up with fever, and I survived it.

MG:  You ended up, I believe, working at a -- making shells?

MS:  Yeah.

MG:  Can you tell us about how that happened, and --

MS:  Yeah, well, I saw they were killing off young people, old people, and -- the reason why I hesitate, because I'm thinking of why did I become an engineer.  Remember to ask that question.

MG:  Okay.

MS:  Intellectuals, murdered -- as well as children and old people.  Those that had good trades, they were important to Germans.  Oftentimes, they'd say, Show me your hands.  Because the Germans considered the Jews as lazy people, and they could tell by the hands.  So anyway, when I saw all that was 76:00happening, I decided -- I was assigned to a maintenance group -- I decided I had to learn how to operate a machine, because I saw machine operators were important to them.  Also, I was nine years old, but I was able to grab that very quickly.  It -- you learn very quickly how to survive.  It's an instinct.  So I got someone -- I called him an angel -- by the way, in Yiddish, I said, "This is my malekh -- this is my angel" -- I asked him if I could -- he could show me what he does.  And he did.  Slowly but surely, I learned to 77:00operate the machine.  I think I was always mechanically inclined.  In my house -- in the United States, ever since we were married, there was never a handyman that we needed to call.  I could do anything -- plumbing, mechanical, I even worked on my car, et cetera.  So I can't give myself credit -- I think some people have that innate ability to be able to work with their hands.  As a history teacher, you wouldn't know --

MG:  I would have no idea -- (laughter)

MS:  Anyway, so I said, I gotta learn this, because I need to be valuable to them.  And I learned to operate a machine.  And, sure enough -- not only did I 78:00wanna learn to operate a machine, but show them that I can be more efficient than anyone else.  And, as I pointed out in the book, I eventually became a showpiece, where --

MG:  You were so good at this, that they were -- an example.

MS:  And he took pride -- the commandant took pride -- "I trained this little Jew, look."

MG:  But the reality was, I believe, you were conflicted about making bullets for the Germans.

MS:  Oh, yes.  (laughs)

MG:  So what -- what'd you do there?

MS:  Thank you.  (laughter)  I felt guilty that I was helping the German war machine, even though it helped me to survive.  So I began to engage in sabotage.  I made the bullets defective, but to the extent that they could also 79:00hurt the Germans.  Now, by the way, the Germans were well aware of sabotage --

MG:  Were there other -- I'm sorry, I'm going to interrupt you for a second -- were other machine operators doing the same thing?

MS:  Periodically, yes, because if someone was suspected of sabotage, there was no such thing as a hearing.  You took him outside and you shot him -- you killed him.  You see, there were always enough people, and if they needed more people, they'd let out the word, "Send me another hundred -- send me another thousand."

MG:  Weren't you taking a terrible risk, that they'd discover you?

MS:  Oh, of course.  Of course you were, but frustration can do a lot of things, and the feeling that you are fighting is so elevating, so liberating, 80:00that you can taste it.  When I made a few -- sometimes as much as hundreds -- when I made those, and I pictured the German soldier, his rifle stuck and he can't fire, or the thing blows in his face.  That's tremendously liberating feeling.

MG:  So you were actually engaged in real resistance --

MS:  Oh yes, oh yes.

MG:  -- yeah, against the Nazis, yeah.

MS:  No question about it, yeah.

MG:  They would inspect these bullets, I assume, from time to time.

MS:  Yes, they insp-- oh, all the time.  That's how people got shot for sabotage.  They -- you're probably leading up to that incident where I made almost a whole box, and then he -- the inspector reached in and I knew for sure, 81:00that's it -- I'm gonna get shot now.  And I began visualizing what death was going to be like, and interesting you -- that this subject just came up now.  I recall, at that moment, hoping that it would be fast, because sometimes people, when they got shot, they rolled, and -- I don't want to go into details.  But anyway, so yes, it was very chancey, and in this one instant, I made so many I was sure I was gonna get shot.  And my luck -- I have to remind you that my mother was a very religious woman, and when I used to protest about God, she'd say, "Di zeyst?  Der reboyne shel-oylem hot dir geratevet -- do you see?  The Almighty saved your life."  She could always turn that to prove -- and I would 82:00say to her, "Avray di andere milyone -- the other millions -- vos zenen geharget gevorn -- that were murdered.  Where was God?"

MG:  Maybe this would be a good point to just talk a bit about that, since I know you've doubted God in this camp, and then later on -- and more say when you went to -- sent to Buchenwald -- can you tell us more about that?  Your feelings and --

MS:  Yes.  I have to remind you once again, that at that time you were no longer looking at a youngster.  At that time, you were ground into being an old man.  There was no such thing as play at this -- it was just a daily plan of 83:00survival.  And that can age you very fast.  And you recall, at the very beginning, I was -- and to this day, by the way, when I need to know something, thank God for the internet -- I turn to the internet.  I need to know why.  So I used to ask why?  Why?  Why would God do this?  I remember seeing an old man, very pious, and he died a very bad death.  And the question was why.  And then finally, I said, "There is no God."

MG:  Did fellow prisoners debate at all the existence of God --

MS:  Yes.

MG:  -- and talk about this?

MS:  They were -- there were those that peeled away.  There were those that, 84:00once they decided, they didn't even wanna get involved in a discussion.  And I remember one particular discussion, in the barrack, where a couple of the men knew about my family, and they felt terrible that I acted the way I did, because I came from an Orthodox family.  Excuse me.

MG:  Sure, go ahead.  Maybe I'll sip, as well.

MS:  So, I pretty much said, nah, there is no God.  When I was released from camp, and I still acted in a manner showing that I really didn't believe there 85:00was -- that God was there -- and miraculously, we found our mother, who was very religious, even in camp, she was convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that there is a God, because she got her children back.  So she -- she was a new believer, so to speak.  In the DP camps -- remember, mom, and my brother, and I, we were separated, and, as I mentioned in the book, we didn't know whether she was alive -- she didn't know whether we were alive -- so finding each other was quite something, especially when you put this in the context that you've lost everyone in the family.  And my mother saw that I was rejecting the 86:00religion, so she -- when it was time to go to shul, or whatever, and I didn't want to do it, she'd say, "Gay tsulib mir -- go because of me."  Now, having been away from her, and she was also new-found to me, I went along with the program.  I didn't want to hurt her anymore.  She'd lost all her sisters.  She had lost her mother and father.  Well, her father died two weeks before this all happened.  So, anyway, I reconnected with the religion, but it was 87:00pretty much robotic.  And now it's coming out in the tape, it's a revelation, whoever's gonna see this, I played the game most of the times.  I believed that there was an omnipotent power, for a long time.  As a scientist, I tried to reason it out, that there must be a prime mover, et cetera, et cetera.  But in the last few years, I've pretty much come to the conclusion that God did not create man -- man created God.  Now having God is good, because we need something to hold on to.  Regretfully -- and my wife always corrects me, 88:00because we do have discussions -- she says religion is not bad.  Religion teaches good things.  It's man that makes it bad.  So, in that sense, she's right.  Of course, when I see some of the Muslims now, the fundamentalists, killing because God said kill the infidel, that sort of reinforces to me how religion can become corrupt.  And I belie-- and I truly see that they are believers, but, my God (laughs), how misguided.  Where a man is willing to put on a vest, destroy his whole future, and himself, and blow himself to kingdom 89:00come, because he's going up to a better world.  It's frightening.  It's upsetting.  But it's also enlightening for me.

MG:  I want to go back to two more instances in your experience in the labor camp.  One has to do with the German tactic of collective responsibility, where they would --

MS:  Oh yes.

MG:  -- yeah, and you experienced that, I think, first-hand.

MS:  Very much so.  One -- if you tried to escape, and if you did, the Germans would always take ten people -- in some places, I understand, they took a hundred -- for every man that escaped.  So if you had some sense of responsibility for your fellow prisoner, and you wanted to escape, your 90:00conscience would bother you.  Do I want one hundred or ten people to die because -- it's -- they were very, very clever.  And of course, one of the terrible things is that when -- if they did catch people that escaped, and most of the times they did, they'd have a hanging and you had better stand there and watch.  You were forced to watch.  So -- I don't sleep much at night.  Remember I told you before, the intensity does diminish, but the flashbacks keep coming.

MG:  You actually, I believe, literally saved your mother and brother?

MS:  Yes.

MG:  Can you tell us about that?

MS:  Yes.  They were assigned to a cleaning detail -- I believe it was a cleaning details -- in the barracks, and it was a group of people, and I guess one or two of whatever number got tired and they wanted to sit down.  They took a break.  And this is what the Germans did -- collective punishment.  And because they took a break, everybody had to die, including them.  My brother and my mother happened to have been assigned to that group, and you recall earlier I told you that I was a showpiece, and the commandant was proud whenever 92:00he brought around the SS dignitaries, to show what he created.  Of course, he didn't create -- I want that for the record.  I learned to operate these machines to survive.  But he took the credit, that's fine.  And by the way, I always felt safer in the factory than I did in the barracks, because you didn't have the same man that was in charge in the barracks.  In the barracks, you had the kapos, and they were the instrument of the guards and, regretfully, we had -- there were a lot of Ukrainian soldiers, vicious.  And they took their lead from the SS.  So -- but you notice I keep digressing.  My mind goes 93:00everywhere.  Chalk it up to an octogenarian.

MG:  So you arrest --

MS:  Anyway --

MG:  -- yeah, go --

MS:  -- so they took all these people into the woods to shoot them.  By the way, again the meticulousness of the German mind.  First, you all dig a big hole, so that we don't have to worry later, when you're laying dead, to bury you.  So they did that.  So obviously that took some time.  But anyway, they took my mother and my brother, along with all the others, and they were gonna shoot them.  I got word of it, and I ran to this commandant.  You could not talk to a commandant unless he spoke to you first.  If you did, he'd either 94:00shoot you on the spot, most of the time, or beat you to death, practically.  He wouldn't do a beating -- tell somebody else to do it.  But by then I became pretty much numb, and I said, "I don't care if I die."  I've got to save them.  So I ran to him and begged him to save them.  And he somehow responded to my pleas and jumped in the car with his guard.  And I remember, he told me to stand on the running board.

MG:  So you -- oh, okay.

MS:  Yeah, because I had to show him -- but he warned me where to hold on.  I 95:00shouldn't, God forbid, touch the furnishings inside the car.  It was one of those, you know, that has the top down.  And we raced over there, and they had already shot some people, and my mother and brother were standing there, and I pointed them out.  He said, "Schau mir dein -- show me your mother and brother," and I did.  Took them out of the line.  He spoke to the underling there, another officer, but of sufficiently lower rank -- remember, you didn't have a colonel or general, or high-rank officer guarding a detail.  So he 96:00pulled them out of the line and he told them -- he told the guard, or the officer, or whoever it was, "You leave those alone," and he did.  And then, as we were going away, he resumed killing the others.  That's the Germans.

MG:  Hm.

MS:  Now, you often say to yourself, What makes people such animals?

MG:  So, in 1944, sometime in that -- you -- your fam-- your brother, and your mother, and yourself, are transferred out of this camp?

MS:  Right.  She's sent to one camp, and we are -- by the way, the camp she was in was called Leipzig, which was sort of a satellite of Buchenwald, but it 97:00was 150 miles away.  You see, Buchenwald was considered sort of like a complex.  It had many satellite camps, but the camp -- the others had some other names, like hers was known as Leipzig, which was right next to the city of Leipzig.

MG:  And they -- you go on a train to Buchenwald?

MS:  We went on a train, yeah.  On a train.  You're leading up to the three-day ride --

MG:  Well --

MS:  -- is that it?

MG:  -- sure, tell us about -- you want to?  Yeah, yeah --

MS:  (laughs)  I was under the impression this was gonna be about the Yiddish --

MG:  We are, eventually, but -- you know, I mean, it's up to you.

MS:  No, no, no, no, no problem -- no problem.  Anyway, we -- we were separated, right then and there.  Again, the separation and the selection -- and I put that in quotation marks.  They were -- the selection meant only the 98:00able-bodied people could survive, and the ones that were sickly or did not represent a potential for work were taken to the gas chamber.  Everything had to be cost-effective for them.  "Alles muss klappen -- everything has to be in according to order."  And I guess some people decided that it was not worth keeping the -- a good many of them, and they also figured out the cost of the transport -- they didn't have to figure out the cost of food, because they didn't feed us.  A lot of people died on the transport.  She was taken to Leipzig, we were taken to Buchenwald.  Now, they eventually, as the war was 99:00closing, the women were taken on a death march, and there were very few survivors.  I heard tell -- this is only hearsay, but out of several thousand, I think -- my mother said -- twenty-seven survived.  They marched day and night, and she and a cousin threw themselves into a ditch, played dead.  And by the way, that's another thing the Germans did.  Knowing that sometimes people played dead, they would riddle -- so anyway, she survived, but we were told, at the end of the war, that nobody survived -- don't bother looking for your 100:00mother.  Now why'd they say, Don't bother looking for your mother?  Because at that time, there was a Rabbi Schacter, who came to the camp, and said, "I wanna get some of these young people.  I wanna ship them -- a convoy of children" -- children meaning anybody under sixteen -- "to Switzerland and to France, for rehabilitation."  In 1945, I weighed forty-five pounds.  I was twelve years old.  Twenty-two kilo, to be exact.  Twenty-eight -- I mean forty-eight.  So, 101:00when we wanted to go and look for our mother, they said, Don't be silly.  First of all, it's a war-torn Europe.  Everything is destroyed.  Railroads are down.  How are you gonna get there?  And we -- we meaning my brother and I -- we were not gonna give up.  We were gonna stay behind and find out what happened to our mother.  So we declined to go on the transports to either -- now, I should point out to you -- excuse me -- this Rabbi Schacter wanted to work on papers to get us to go to America -- us meaning my brother and I -- because we sang.  In camp, there was a man by the name of Motl Strigler, who 102:00became the redactor, by the way, for the "Forward," until about seven, eight years ago, he passed away.  He used -- he was a writer -- obviously, if he worked for the "Forverts" -- and he wrote songs.

MG:  This is in Buchenwald?

MS:  This is in Buchenwald.  On Sundays, we didn't go to work.  Not because they wanted to give us a rest.  They wanted to give the guards a rest.  So we were in our barracks, and I could sneak out of my barrack -- I was in a Russian barrack -- and I was able to periodically go to see my brother, check on him, and we'd see each other.  And in the barrack that my brother was in, this Motl Strigler was there, and he'd write the little vignettes and songs.  And my 103:00brother and I started to sing those songs.  I sang it.

MG:  And these were Yiddish songs?

MS:  Yiddish songs, Yiddish songs.

MG:  Do you remember any of it?

MS:  Well, it's interesting.  I remember the one, "D'vest lakhn -- you will laugh" -- where the song talks of a -- where two young people talk, one is called Avremele and the other one is called Motele.  That's an affectionate for Avroham and Mordechai.  Mordechai says, "I can't laugh when I think about everybody I've lost, and think of the family."  And the other one says, in a 104:00very happy voice, "You will laugh.  The time will come.  Di zin [The sun] vet varfn shtraln -- it will throw rays.  M'hert shoyn di signal -- we hear the signals already.  M'et zey kimen ale mit frayd -- they will all come with happiness."  And then he says, "Well, when I remember now my mother, and she's no long--" blah, blah, blah, blah.  Back and forth, "Vest lakhn" -- one says, "You will laugh," the other one says, "How can I laugh because" -- so we used to sing that song.  I was sad when I called this Motl Strigler at the "Forward," that he didn't remember me.  But then I realized he wrote a lot of things for a lot of other people, and that was just a very short time.  So anyway, he wrote 105:00that, and I cannot remember the others.  It's amazing I cannot.  Oh yes, "Mir kumen on, mir kumen on -- we're coming, we're coming" -- oh, there were some Jews in camp who were communists, so Motl Strigler was somewhat influenced by them, and, in this song, he says, "Mir kumen on -- we're coming, we're coming -- mit a royte fun -- with a red flag."  (laughs) At the time, I was singing and, you know, I was happy.  And then, one day, my mother says, "Mit royte fun" -- the red flag, that's Stalin.  That's when I stopped singing it.  (laughter)

MG:  Liberation day -- American soldiers came in there, is that what it --

MS:  Actually, it was a small contingent that came in.  I remember -- it was not really a jeep.  It was one of the bigger-looking, flat car -- flat vehicles, where you could seat -- I think three in the front, three in the middle, and three in the back.  Was that an enlarged jeep -- I remember them coming into camp.  Wow, what a feeling.

MG:  You knew they were Americans?

MS:  Yes, of course.  Well, we already knew something was happening.  We already knew we're pretty much free.  That, I need to point out.  The prisoners in Buchenwald were pretty much organized.  Buchenwald was built, I believe, in '35 or in '37.  Hitler built it to incarcerate communists and 107:00undesirables, whatever they were.  And they were all Germans.  So those Germans began setting up a network, where ultimately the SS in charge, in order not to get their hands dirty, so to speak, and come into the camp and have to deal with the prisoners, would have these reps for each barrack come to them, and they would get the instructions.  Well the reps, they had their own agenda, and they very slowly began trickling into the camp some ammunition and arms, 108:00hidden.  Now let me flash back to your question about what -- how did you know about the Americans, et cetera.  When we heard in the distance the heavy artillery, and the heavy bombardment, we knew they were getting close.  And then we began noticing that some of the towers were deserted.  By the time all were deserted, including those that walked along the fence -- that's when that organization began pulling out its arms, and got themselves ready to liberate 109:00the camp.  So, in essence, they pretty much liberat-- they didn't liberate it.  I was given to understand that a white flag was hung to indicate to the Americans, when they come in, that they would be at the ready to receive them.  So that's how it -- liberation came.  But you know, something interesting happened.  There was no real jumping up and down.  I said there was jump-- you're certainly faced with the realization, What do I do now?  I'm no longer afraid of the instant death.  Remember I said -- the sword was suddenly removed.  I'm no longer afraid of hunger.  I'm twelve years old.  I can't 110:00read, I can't write -- oh I can speak Russian, Polish, German, Yiddish fluently now.  But I can't read and write in any of those languages.  What do I do now?  Where do I go?  How do I start?  So going back to Rabbi Schacter, who said, "I'm gonna try and get you to America."  Oh, why did we -- why did he fall in love with us?  'Cause we began singing some of the songs, and he said they were gonna see if he could arrange during the -- with the HIAS -- to get us in.  And we said no, we're going to look for our mother.  And then the realization -- how do we get there?  Where do we go?  What do we do?  On top 111:00of it all, some of the other prisoners said, You can't go.  The railways are down, and there's no transportation.  And we decided we're gonna hoof it.  And we did, a good part of it, but we had to wait until ID papers were issued.  That's one thing you learn.  You need that ID paper.  So yes, we were sort of happy, but terrified -- what now?

MG:  So amazingly, you do find your mother. 

MS:  Yeah.

MG:  And then you make the decision, I believe, to go back to Poland.

MS:  Well, we wanted to go back to our home for several reasons.  One, to see if we could find any remnants of the family.  My mother, and my cousin -- her 112:00father had owned a grocery store -- and they wanted to get some of the things, but -- even though it was already four years later, you know, there's that hope, Is something left in the house?  I wanna see if I can get something.  And so the decision was made, we have to go back to Poland and see if we can find family, and then go to the house.  And the gathering place was in Kraków.  Now, how did we determine that?  Because right after the war, there was this chain that start -- that was created, where if you left a certain town, or if you came to a certain town, you registered in a central area -- who you are, who your parents were.  You give your lineage, and where you're headed.  And 113:00that's how we started to travel, to go from Germany back to Poland.  Of course, when we came to Kraków, with the pogroms, and we found out that Polacks were killing Jews again, we said, That's it.

MG:  You actually experienced that, or you heard that?

MS:  I experienced a pogrom.  I was walking the street, and I saw they were chasing one man and hitting him with a club, and all I heard was "Żyd -- go back to Palestine."  Oh, oh that was the best one.  Wherever we went, we heard "Go back to Palestine."  Now picture this, we're in a DP camp, we wanna go to Palestine, and England says, "You can't go to Palestine."

MG:  You're in a DP camp in Germany now.

MS:  Yes.

MG:  Yes, right.

MS:  And now England doesn't (laughs) -- do you -- have you any idea what a -- I guess the feeling is indescribable unless you experience.  And that's why that song, "Vi ahin zol ikh geyn [Tell me where shall I go]," had such a tremendous impact on me.  I used to cry singing it.

MG:  And what is that song?  Can you tell us about it?

MS:  "Vi ahin zol ikh geyn -- where shall I go?  Tell me, where shall I go?  Every door is closed for me, to the left, to the right."  It was such an unsettling song, and, again, I kept saying why.

MG:  And you m-- you were gonna go to Israel, but you ended up, of course --

MS:  Oh yeah --

MG:  -- coming to the United States.

MS:  -- oh yeah -- oh, we started learning Hebrew in the DP camp, and the UNRRA also was very instrumental in helping us set these schools up --

MG:  This was --

MS:  -- UNRRA: United Nations Rehabilitation and Relief Authority.

MG:  Okay.

MS:  That's -- the acronym is UNRRA --

MG:  Thank you, yeah.

MS:  Forgive me, because -- and they helped set up the schools, and we were learning Hebrew, and I suddenly became a Zionist -- I am going to -- then, it was Palestine.  And you had to do it clandestinely, because the doors were closed.  And there were these -- both Israeli and Jewish leaders, who set up 116:00these little trips, where you could trickle in people into Palestine.  And I learned to become a chalutz, a -- how would you say in English "chalutz"?

MG:  A pioneer?

MS:  A pioneer, thank you.  And I learned how to work the land.  I was learning about agriculture, et cetera.  And suddenly we receive a letter from one of the uncles -- stay where you are, we're sending papers, you're coming to (laughs) -- you're coming to America.  Well I felt like a traitor, because here I said anybody that goes to any other land except Palestine is a traitor.  And my mother said, "I have no one left in the family, just my brothers."  Of course.

MG:  So this was 1947 by now?

MS:  This was '46.

MG:  Forty-six.  And so you come to the United States, you're --

MS:  And as soon as we arrive in the United States, in order to give us fresh air, we arrive on the June -- I think it was 14 -- and they had already registered us a week later to go to a camp, at that time known as Camp [Dil?], a summer camp.  And we arrive, and, can you imagine, my uncle saying, "Next week, we're setting you to a --"

MG:  To a camp.  (laughter)  Now, you arrived in New York City, I assume.

MS:  New York City, yes.  At that time, they didn't have Ellis Island --

MG:  Yeah, it was --

MS:  -- you just rolled right in on Forty-eighth Street, I think it was.  Forty-fourth Street --

MG:  What was -- what was your reaction to coming into New York at this point?

MS:  It was a very funny reactions, because my (laughs) -- my mother used to 118:00say, "Di hayzer kratsn di volkn -- the houses scratch the --"

MG:  The heavens?  The sky?

MS:  Well, not the "-- clouds."

MG:  Clouds.

MS:  So I arrive, and I'm looking up -- I don't see any kratsing [scratching].  (laughter) So just to give you an idea.  But it was a very, very interesting feeling.  I'll tell you this, that when we arrived, the first four or five months, we lived on Forty-eighth Street, between Third Avenue and Lexington Avenue -- that I remember very well -- we lived with an uncle, just for about two, three months, until we could find a little apartment.  But my 119:00brother and I -- oh, and they sent us to yeshiva.  Now, you might say, "Wait a minute -- how come you went to a yeshiva?"  I couldn't speak English, and I was very sensitive to anti-Semitism, so my uncle reasoned with me, said, "You can throw away the Torah, you can throw away all that" -- he was religious, by the way.  He was very clever.  He said, "Throw the Talmud away.  Just learn English."  When you learn English, then you can go whatever school you want to.  Little did he realize that I would take him up on his word.

MG:  So how long were you at the yeshiva?

MS:  Fourteen by then.

MG:  No, but how long -- how many --

MS:  Oh, oh --

MG:  -- a year, or two, or three, or --

MS:  Not quite two years.

MG:  Two years.

MS:  Yeah.  And right away I went to a trade school.  Again, remember I told 120:00you to remind me why I'm a --

MG:  Why you became an engineer, right.

MS:  Trade, to me, was very important.

MG:  Yeah.

MS:  'Cause you couldn't convince me that there wasn't gonna be another war.  How do I stay useful?  So I had to have a trade.

MG:  Now how did your mother survive here?  Was she working?

MS:  Oh, my mother got -- the people that brought us here.  I don't know if you've ever heard of Barton's candy -- that's like Loft's, in New York -- Godiva, et cetera.  The owner was a brother-in-law of one of my uncles, one of my mother's brothers.  Can you get the connection?

MG:  Um-hm.

MS:  And he vouched for us, because, in order not to become a burden of the state, you had to have someone that would say, "Yes, I will get them a job, I'll take care of them."  And she became a sales lady in one of the stores 121:00immediately.  So she was put to work -- or, she went to work -- and did well, and she stayed with Barton's until she retired.

MG:  You're a teenager now, and you're a Holocaust survivor.  How did that affect, if it did at all, your relationship with --

MS:  Dynamics --

MG:  -- with the American Jewish community?  I'm just curious how they -- other Jews in the United States, who didn't -- obviously did not experience the Holocaust, how they might've reacted to you.

MS:  You may recall, in the book, that I felt so duty-bound to tell the story, because I remember the admonition of this fellow, Jacob: whoever survives must tell the world.  He'd stand like this -- tell the world what happened here.  122:00So when I got to the yeshiva, I started talking about it.  And then some of the rabbis there would put me in front of the groups, to talk about it.  Oh, I'd say about five, six months went by -- seven months, I can't remember how long.  We were out in the yard -- this is already after the summer camp -- I can speak English now, not perfect but, you know, haltingly.  Also, you have to realize, if you can speak more than two or three languages, others come very quickly, cause a lot of words -- the basics are from Latin, so there are -- also Greek -- so you can learn these words pretty fast.  So I began talking about it.  So, 123:00during recess, months afterwards, we're out playing, and one of the "bulvans [blockheads]" I call then, from the yeshiva, comes into the yard, and says, "Schiller, why don't you tell us one of your bullshit stories?"  I clammed up, and, for about twenty years, I didn't talk.  It had such a shocking effect on me.  Now, he was stupid.  He didn't realize what he was saying.  Nonetheless, remember I told you that I didn't want to go to the Polish -- to the secular school, because I didn't want to suffer any anti-Semitism.  To me, that remark --

MG:  Do you think that this belief was wider spread, or it was this one 124:00individual?  Were other stu-- yeah.

MS:  Well, I know that my uncles said, Let's not talk about it.  Leave it.  It's gone by, leave it alone.  In many instances -- I'm talking about the first few months -- you'd mention it, Eh, leave it behind you.  So you got the feeling -- and also I remember -- and, by the way, those that were survivors, that were in the camps, we got together and we felt very much more comfortable with each other.

MG:  So you got together.  Can you explain that?  I mean, was it special organizations, or --

MS:  No, no organization, but you'd be in certain places, and there'd be a few survivors, and you'd talk about it.  Especially in the -- some of the cousins 125:00that'd -- talk about day and night.  But when an American came in, we stopped talking.

MG:  Hm.

MS:  There are certain things that both my brother and I have said to each other, that you can't talk about this, because it will be so unbelievable that it will discredit what you already said.  So there are things that I wouldn't talk about, but they come back.  And --

MG:  Were you ever bar mitzvahed?

MS:  No.

MG:  Did you --

MS:  No.  There was -- remember I told you, '34, so that would've made me --

MG:  Right.

MS:  -- bar mitzvahed in the States -- so I went to daven, to pray, in a shtibl 126:00-- a shtibl is a -- sort of a semi, little Orthodox synagogue, run by a rabbi -- by the old, old rebbe type.  He was called the Boyaner Rebbe, and we went to daven there, because it was right next door to our house.  And it was in his house, and he had his followers, Hasidim.

MG:  Hm.

MS:  Yeah.  And we used to daven there, and somebody had mentioned that I got bar mitzvahed.  So I remember, he called me in -- and I will never forget this -- and this is what he did.  (reaches into back pocket and takes out wallet) "Ikh her a' d'bist bar-mitsve -- I hear that you're bar mitzvah.  Ikh vil dir 127:00epes geybn [I want to give you something]" -- he took out a five-dollar bill.  And I had to laugh at that time, why -- turning around -- to me, that was very comical.  That was the extent of my bar mitzvah.  There was five dollars, and that was it.  And I made myself a promise that when I reach eighty-three, which -- that's bar mitzvah times eighteen -- I'm gonna have a bar mitzvah.

MG:  Good for you.

MS:  Right now, my greatest wish is to make it to eighty-one.

MG:  (laughs)  So that's -- let's -- we'll fast-forward just a little bit --

MS:  You don't mind these little barbs, do you?

MG:  This is wonderful.  Okay, it's fine.  Let's talk a little bit, that you -- your adult life, your career, your profession, briefly.  Your family, and so forth.  Then we can just sort of put that together a little bit.

MS:  Yes.  I can wrap it up --

MG:  Okay.

MS:  -- and how did I get to where I am now.

MG:  Sure.

MS:  Only because of my wife.  She made me what I am -- I'm just fooling around.

MG:  You were in the navy for a while, right?

MS:  Yes I was.  Now let me -- let me tell you, really.  Now, in all seriousness, the drive to get a trade was unbelievably strong.  So that, when I was in the yeshiva, and I was learning the Talmud, I said, "This is not going to do anything for me.  I need to get a trade for survive."  So I decided, once I was proficient enough in English -- also in reading a little bit -- that I would go to a secular high school.  But I didn't go to a regular high school.  I 129:00enrolled in a trade high school.

MG:  This was in New York City?

MS:  In New York City.  At that time, it was called Straubenmuller Textile High School.  Textile was the strong point.  They had a program in electrician -- in making you an electrician.  And that's how I started to learn to become an electrician.  And there's a big difference between an electrician and an electronic technician -- big difference.  An electrician deals with wiring of houses, and ca-- power cables.  An electronic technician is one that worries about communications, sonar, radar, TV, radio, et cetera.  That's a few notches 130:00up, so to speak.  Again, the drive for trades.  So now I'm in the regular high school -- not regular, trade high school.  And I get my diploma.  I get a diploma at the age of nineteen, so I was able to catch up, even though I started my education at fourteen.  I come out of high school, and I say, "This is not enough.  I need more.  I've gotta be more valuable."  So what do I do?  I enroll in RCA Institutes, which is a very prestigious electronics technical school.  And the program is such that it teaches you not only to operate TV 131:00stations, et cetera, but it teaches you how to go behind the equipment and make repairs.  So you could be also a TV repairman, et cetera.  By that time, the draft is on.  And, remember, I graduated at nineteen.  Now I'm approaching -- and it's a two-year program -- I am approaching now my twenty-first birthday, so to speak, and I was lucky that I wasn't called to service before then.  So when I finished, Uncle Sam knocked on my door, and I ended up in the military.  I ended up in the Navy, simply because at the time that I was called -- this is also funny -- I remember a big sergeant standing up there at the draft board and 132:00saying, "Listen, guys, we want you all to be happy, so I'm gonna give you a piece of paper, and on it is written, 'Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard'" -- no, Coast Guard was excluded -- "and you put down the number, what's your first choice, your second choice" -- so I make my first choice Air Force, my second choice Army, my third choice Marines, and the last choice is Navy.  The next day I come back, there's a stamp: Navy.  (laughter)  And that's how I ended up in the navy.  It was one of the best things that happened to me, actually.  I don't know how -- if I wouldn't have fared just as good or better in the other branches, because as soon as I got into boot camp, I began lobbying 133:00to become an electronic technician.  I'm sorry, did I say as soon as I got into boot camp?  No, when we were finishing boot camp, and we were getting these assignments, I was talking to the C.O. at the time, and saying to him, "How can I get into this?"  He said, "When you get assigned to a ship or a station, tell them that you already know electronics," because if you wanted to be an electronic technician, first of all, you had to pass certain tests to become a technician, and if you made these grades, then you'd be sent what they called Class A school, where they would teach you.  Because if they're gonna invest a year and a half to two years in you, then they want you to serve four years as a 134:00technician.  I got assigned to the Intrepid, an aircraft carrier which is now a museum in New York City, and as soon as I got aboard ship, I started lobbying to get into the E.T. division.  I was put into the radio man division -- E.T. meant electronic technician.  And there's a totally separate story, which would probably take another hour, how I ended up becoming an E.T., but I made it in the electronic technician, and I finished even as a petty officer.  And that's how I got into the navy.  When I got out of the navy, I was already twenty-three years old.  I had already been dating my wife, but again, the war 135:00-- the influence of the war -- I would not get married until I was out, because too many people either died or got crippled, and they came home to a wife that had to take care of them.  And she was very upset.  She wanted to get married sooner.  I said no, and I prevailed.  And we got married three months after I got out of the navy.  Now, I knew I wanted to go to college, again because, now I had been an electronic technician, now I wanted to become an electrical engineer.  So we moved to New Haven -- oh, one other criteria was that I didn't want to live in New York anymore.  I wanted to live in the country, so I said, 136:00"Let's move outside -- but we will be within a fifty-mile radius of New York City," because she had family, I had family in New York, and obviously we didn't wanna cut off that kind of connection.  And I said, "But I also have another requirement, I wanna find a school that gives night classes.  We're married, I gotta make a living, but now I can work as an electronic technician, for a reasonable salary."  And so I found a jo-- oh, I sent out many resumes.  I was sending those resumes while I was still on the ship.  And I had a number of interviews, and the one that seemed like the best for me was in New Haven, 137:00because it was -- it had a night school.  I could go at night and work in the daytime.  So I went for six years, studying to become an electrical engineer, and worked during the days.  I didn't want to have any children until I had a job that I felt I could bring up children.  So we were married for six years, but no children, and in my senior year, my wife -- Elaine is her name -- Elaine kept saying to me -- she knew I worked very hard -- you know, night school can be pretty tough.  I was taking eighteen credits.  So she said, "When you graduate, I gotta get you something special."  And she kept saying this a number of times.  And I -- one day, I said to her, "The only thing you can give 138:00me -- not the only -- the one thing you can give me that would really be something special, would be a son." -- I wanted a name for my father.  And he was born two weeks before graduation.  So now, let me continue with my life, so I can bring you to today.  I got a job to work for General Dynamics, electric boat division, where we make nuclear submarines.  I was able to get that -- no, no, I'm fine.  I was able to get that job pretty -- very fast, because I 139:00already had naval experience.  And I started taking graduate courses.  I was forever studying.  Now you're probably too young for this -- I studied to design amplifiers, oscillators, electronic equipment, with tubes -- remember those old days of tubes?  But when I started taking graduate courses, the solid-state industry -- i.e., transistors, diodes, et cetera -- became -- well 140:00they became to blossom, so to speak.  Well, I took to that like a duck to water, and while -- oh, I was doing this while I was working for General Dynamics.  So that made me a hero with General Dynamics, because visualize, if you will, nuclear submarines.  Space is precious, A.  B, heating and cooling is very important, because tubes generate a lot of heat, so you need good air conditioning.  Now I come along, and I start making some suggestions, because I'd taken some of these graduate courses in solid-state physics, that -- where 141:00you can take these huge consoles with tubes and create what I call high-density packaging.  Not only do you have room, but now you don't have to worry about a lot of cooling, big air-conditioning systems.  So that gave me a pretty good in, to the extent that within a short period, they already made me a supervisor, and I had a group of engineers.  One of the people that was high up -- oh, we --

MG:  Careful of the microphone, okay.

MS:  Oh, sorry.

MG:  Yeah, it's all right.

MS:  We at General Dynamics and electric boat division, we were sort of a 142:00separate entity.  We were called the research and development division.  We were given projects -- i.e., what I just said -- always to improve equipment, but because we had a certain know-how in these areas, we were given the license by General Dynamics -- so to speak, license -- to try and get projects from other corporations, like Sperry, Boeing, et cetera, especially when NASA was already beginning to look at environments -- enclosed environments -- for astronauts.  So I began working with a company that made these changes from the 143:00huge consoles to this high-density packaging.  One of the vice presidents of that division took a position as president of a company that started in Norwalk, Connecticut.  One day he called me, and he said, "I'd like to take you to dinner.  I'd like to talk to you."  So I said okay.  When this man called -- he was pretty high up.  And he made me an offer.  He said, "I'll give you a car, I'll do this" -- you're talking to a thirty-six-year-old man now -- I'm ready to go.  Also because I wanted my children to go to a Hebrew day school.  144:00I wanted to get -- I wanted to be sure they got that education.  I needed to be closer to New York, and in Fairfield, Connecticut, where we live now, they had a wonderful day school.  So that job that he offered me, plus the fact that my son by then was already six years old -- five years old -- I went there, took the job, held the job for two years, the company went kaput.  For reasons I don't want to go into now -- I certainly can't, because lest I say why, I might be sued.  But the company dissolved and I found myself without a job.  Now, think of my background.  I'm suddenly without a job?  And this happened at a 145:00time when a lot of engineers were laid off.  I couldn't believe this would happen to me.  So I said, at the time, "I'm making my own destiny.  No way will I go to work for anyone that can tell me, 'You have no job.'"  And I formed my own company.

MG:  That's great, that's great.  I want to segue, talking about Jewish life for you, here in the United States.

MS:  Yes.

MG:  What aspects of Jewish language, religion, culture, have been part of your life here in the United States?  Whether it's classes, or teaching, or radio, language -- whatever.

MS:  Oddly enough, when I was on the treadmill, I didn't do much of Jewish life, other than going to a synagogue, and belonging to the synagogue, because you needed to set an example.  If I sent the kids to Hebrew day school, you gotta play the game.  So that was it.  Now, in the synagogue, I would find a 146:00khevre -- a group -- that had the same interest that I did, and as a matter of fact, some survivors.  So we began hanging out and talking.  But my circle of friends, I would say the greatest majority are American-born.  So when you ask me what Jewish connections did I make, or did I maintain -- only via synagogue and the JCC, but there was no inculcation, so to speak, of Jewish -- Jewish reading, Jewish learning.  Now, when I lived in New Haven, we were renting.  The landlady that rented to us, who lived downstairs, used to get the 147:00"Forverts," and -- in Yiddish -- and when she heard me speak Yiddish, she liked to talk Yiddish with me.  So she would give me the "Forverts," so I had that connection.

MG:  You could read Yiddish now -- the actual Hebr--

MS:  I can read, but very poorly now, very poorly now.  I seem to be one of those that focuses on things.  When I need to learn something, when I need to do something, everything else goes by the wayside.  And my wife says, "I guess that's the reason why you had some modicum of success."  Because I can train myself that -- things that have nothing to do with what I do -- what I'm shooting for -- and to this day I'm that way.  So, to answer your question, now, when I get together -- oh, now, in the last couple of years, I have 148:00belonged to a Yiddish club.

MG:  Here in Connecticut?

MS:  In Florida.

MG:  In Florida, your other home.

MS:  In Florida, in Delray Beach.  And there we get together and one week we schmooze in Yiddish, one week we read a little bit in Yiddish, and the other week it's run by a fellow who's quite good at it, who also shows the old Yiddish films.  So that's my connection there.  But -- and I love to get together with yidn [Jews].  I love to sit and talk with them.  Even though I have many colleagues that are not Yiddish, but there's sort of a separation -- I don't know if you watch "Seinfeld" ever.  Remember that episode -- there's George 149:00here, and there's George there.  He has the g-- and the two can never get together.  Well that's -- that's sometimes, when I think of it, yeah.

MG:  Yeah.  You made a trip back to --

MS:  Poland.

MG:  -- Poland and Germany, in -- was it 2004, was it?

MS:  Yes.

MG:  Yeah, can you tell us about that?

MS:  Well, I didn't wanna go.  Mark, my son, had been bugging me for a long time.  He kept haking [insisting, lit. "banging"] and haking, "Daddy, I wanna make this heritage trip, I wanna do" -- kept saying no.  Finally, once, I -- I just relented.  He'd weakened me, and also because I love the kid so much.  I still call him a kid -- he's gonna be fifty.  But anyway, finally I said okay, 150:00but not because I wanted to -- out of sheer love for him.  I said, "Okay, Marek, we'll do it."  Once I decided to do that, I was already almost retired.  I certainly sold my practice by then.  I said, "Okay, we'll do it," but there was something else I needed to do.  I wanted to write.  This fella Jacob -- if you read my book, Jacob was a tremendous influence in camp.  And because I was always on the treadmill, so to speak, trying to make a living, I had to push things aside.  But I always remembered he saying, "You've gotta tell the stories of what happened in camp."  And, by the way, that's why I gave 151:00testimony to Spielberg at the Yale archives.  I've done that, and also one of those interviews where the Holocaust survivors get together.  So I agreed to go, but I said to myself, I'm taking my family with me.  Let me write of what they are going to see, as I saw it, in my eyes, then.  Let them know before they get to Tarnobrzeg, to Skarżysko, to Buchenwald, what my life was like.  So that when they walk, they will have read this, and it will give them a totally different picture.  A, it'll be a lot less questions, and, B, I think 152:00the visit would be more absolving.  What I didn't realize -- I wrote the first three chapters of the book, when I started writing.  And suddenly, I said, "Oh my God, I've got the -- I've got the answer to finally writing a memoir that tells my story."  Remember before, when we were coming down here, I said that book would've been much thicker, and then I began thinking -- oh yes, I remember the editor asking me, "What is your focus?  Who do you wanna get?"  And that triggered a thought in my mind, and I said, "You know, older people are already 153:00too jaded.  They read things -- they come with their own agenda to things.  And therefore, I'd like to write a book that will address young people."  So, if you read the book, you'll see that I don't use any mellifluous words -- I got rid of those -- I got fancy expressions -- but I wanted to give them the core without the gore.  That, to me, was very important.  So I wrote the book, and often I would tell something metaphorically, indirectly, in order for them to get a picture that I thought would be better than just mere words.  So I agreed 154:00I would go with Mark.  I'm happy to tell you, that trip was a catharsis.  I didn't eliminate everything that comes back to me, but it helped a great deal.  So, in that sense, I think it was okay, seeing that -- being in the same places.  I did get rid of a load that was -- I call it an albatross -- on my shoulder.

MG:  What did it mean for your son, and for your family?

MS:  Oh, tremendous effect, tremendous.  In the movie, you know, I said -- my daughter said, "He didn't want to talk about it, but he did."  I didn't realize 155:00it.  But once she saw, and had a chance to reflect, she never finished the book.  She said it hurts too much to read.

MG:  Let me ask you about Jewish identity.  What is -- what's been most important for you to transmit to future generations about Jewish identity?  Is there anything specific or particular about -- you'd like to pass on to younger generations?

MS:  Well, my doing all of this is primarily to pass on a certain identity, recognizing that it's only Martin Schiller -- me -- for my family.  You touched 156:00a sensitive nerve, however, because I fear for Jewish identity.  This facility, the students that you have here, is a wonderful, wonderful effort.  I just wonder, is it enough?  Will this Jewish identity, in a thousand years, still be here?  I'm afraid not.  Now that's a pessimistic view, unless Aaron can suddenly get an enrollment of twenty, thirty thousand young people.  So it's -- 157:00I think it's shoveling against the tide, because I see the people today -- let me make it a bit more clearer.  As a result of my book, I've been asked to speak in many schools and many places.  And, particularly on Yom HaShoah -- I don't speak anymore now.  I've been asked to be keynote speaker, so I never want to repeat the same thing.  That is absolutely a no-no for me.  So therefore, before I speak, I do some research.  What I found very, very upsetting, was about four, five years ago, I wanted to see Jewish identity, so I 158:00did some research, and I saw a publication by ADL -- I believe it was ADL, where they polled Jewish youngsters in colleges and also -- not -- when I say youngsters, people under thirty-five.  And, much to my shock, when the question was asked, "Do you care if Israel existed?"  Would you venture a guess what the percentage said they didn't care?  Over sixty percent.  It scared the hell out of me.  Now, can I bundle together Jewish identity and Israel?  They're inseparable.  To me, it's totally inseparable.  Unless you've gone through the 159:00Holocaust, if you're a youngster, you -- yes, when you get to be maybe sixty, seventy, you suddenly realize, Oh my God, how important this -- before then -- and yet, look what's happening now.  The tremendous propaganda that goes on in the various colleges, where colleges are now taking on professors whose primary goal is to influence these young minds -- innocent minds -- to influence them not only against Israel, but against Jews.  So I see this onslaught of hatred.  Case in point: Denmark, Norway -- they used to be a haven -- no, we 160:00never had more than a few hundred, maybe a thousand Jews -- look at them now.  And it scares the heck out of me.  So Jewish identity is very important, but it's gotta be coupled with Israel.  Now, thank God a lot of Israelis are now taking on -- I don't want to say the burden, but right now it's a burden to them -- to learn Jewish.  It used to be rejected.

MG:  What do you mean by, to learn Jewish?  You mean Yiddish, or --

MS:  Yiddish, Yiddish, Yiddish.  It is such a rich language.  As we say in Yiddish, "Aza vareme shprakhe -- such a warm language."  And it saddens me that 161:00this is happening.  Now, that's in my world.  You may get an Aaron Lansky, who's gonna sit me down and say, "Wait a minute, this is not happening," and --

MG:  Do you have any specific advice that you would like to impart to future ge-- to younger generations?

MS:  Yes, give the world a lobotomy.  (laughter)  I think anti-Semitism -- the core is a jealousy.  Look at this, they represent less than one percent of the world population, but they get twenty percent of the Nobel prizes.  Look at the startup nation -- amongst all these nations, suddenly they have more patents 162:00than anyone else.  I think it is jealousy, but it is also a -- sometimes innocent, sometimes deliberate -- inculcation by the older generations.  So, when you say Jewish identity, a lot of Jews choose not to fight it.  Look, I know a lot of Holocaust survivors, who have said to me directly, If I could, I -- if I could go to a place where I could say, "My name is John Jones," and I was born in Alaska, or in Nebraska, I would do it.  I don't want to inflict and 163:00infect my kids with all this baggage that we as Jews carry.  Now, if you've had the inculcation, however, and you suddenly start loving it -- I love Jews.  I love the Jewish kinderlekh [children].  It breaks my heart when I see some of these young people not grabbing onto it.  Never mind grabbing onto it -- accepting it.  Some don't even tolerate it.  It's -- so you're talking to a pessimistic man here.

MG:  We're -- believe it or not, we're nearing the end of our interview.  Is there any topic that -- we've covered a lot of ground, I know -- is there any topic that you might want to touch upon that we haven't addressed?

MS:  Yes.  Not any topic, but if you're asking me for some advice --

MG:  Okay.

MS:  -- in spite of what I've said, for God's sakes, don't stop doing what you've started.

MG:  I want to end, what might be a lighter note, okay.  We always ask people, what is your -- if you have a favorite Yiddish word, or phrase, or song, or whatever it might be, that you might want to share with us, and maybe explain why you (laughs) picked that out.  I know that's a difficult thing to do, but is there something that, you know -- proverb, or expression, or anything?  (laughs)  You know so much Yiddish, it's so hard.

MS:  Yeah, you know, I can't give you a kitsch word, or whatever, it's -- to 165:00me, it's all Jewish, and I -- there's nothing that really stands out.

MG:  Favorite thing that you might often say in your -- you know, you remember you would say, in your own life now, expression or -- well, it's not, you know --

MS:  I really can't think of it, and I --

MG:  That's fine.

MS:  -- the least I want to do is to make something up.

MG:  Yeah.  Do your children or your grandchildren show any interest at all in Yiddish?

MS:  Mark -- my son Mark -- oh, yes.  I got a Yiddish-English, English-Yiddish -- Enreich?

MG:  Your old Weinreich -- Weinreich, yeah.

MS:  Weinreich -- I happened to have order that one -- and a lot of words I can't relate to, by the way.  And the first thing Mark said is, "Give me this."  I said, "This is a used copy" -- "I want it.  Give it to me.  You 166:00order another one."  So, yes, he is -- I have a son and two daughters.  One is married, the other one is single.  The married one is try-- is inculcating Hebrew, Israel -- Yiddish is not on her radar screen.  And the same thing with my daughter Susan, wonderful, wonderful -- my kids are great, but maybe because I'm too much of a load, and -- I've often thought about that, you know -- so anyway, maybe they don't want to walk around oy vey-ing me.

MG:  There you go, oy vey -- you got your favorite Yiddish expression, oy vey (laughs).

MS:  Well, you know about the three ladies, right?

MG:  No, tell us.

MS:  One says, "So, how's your -- so how are you feeling?  How are the kids?"  "Oy vey."  The next one, "How is your husband?"  "Oy vey.  I thought we weren't gonna talk about the children."

MG:  There you go.

MS:  Something like that.

MG:  A good place to end, okay.  I wanna thank you Martin, very much.  This was extremely enlightening, and thanks so much for sharing your experiences --

MS:  I hope so --

MG:  -- with us.

MS:  -- I hope it was enlightening.

[END OF INTERVIEW]