My WWII Childhood: Iron Curtain Memoirs (World War 2 Child to YA Survivor) Book 1

The Dentist of Auschwitz. We Don't Talk About That: The House of Blood and Tears. A Thousand Shall Fall. Wolfhilde's Hitler Youth Diary My Life in the Third Reich. Into the Night and Fog. A Duty of Remembrance. A Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising. Innocence Lost - A Childhood Stolen. A Stone for Benjamin. When We Were Shadows. Through the Eye of a Needle. In the Sewers of Lvov. The Women of Janowka. Christmas Trees Lit the Sky.

Hidden Beneath the Thorns. The Lapp King's Daughter. Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death. Hitler Made Me a Jew. Shrapnel in the Piano. Oskar Schindler and His List. Fighting for Road Apples. As the Lilacs Bloomed. The Blood of His Servants. The Melody of the Soul. An Infinity of Mirrors. The War of Our Childhood. Memoirs of a Girl from Berlin. The New York Times. Escape from East Berlin. The Rise and Fall of Comradeship. Child Survivors in the Shadows. After two or three months, I returned to rejoin my mother.

Due to the extremely crowded conditions at the Hotel Bompart, the authorities decided to move us to a camp at Les Milles near the city of Aix en Provence, where we were finally reunited with my father. Conditions there were not much better than in the previous camp. Les Milles was located in an abandoned brick factory that had been requisitioned by the Vichy government for the assembly of foreigners. The humidity was atrocious, and we were constantly sick.

The first two floors of the factory were covered with straw and transformed into a dormitory that was vermin infested. Toilet facilities were very limited, and the only source of potable water, was a single faucet outside the front gate. We were however well treated by the camp commander as well as by the guards. After all, we were about to leave for America, or at least so we thought. Among the prisoners at Les Milles, were large numbers of intellectuals, mostly from Germany and Austria.

There was also a sizable art colony of sorts, and as a means of escaping the constant boredom, there were always musical or theatrical performances at the camp. Also, some graphic artists established a studio of sorts, and quite a few paintings and drawings emanated from that studio. To this day, even though the camp reverted to its original status as a brick factory, some of the murals painted on exterior walls still remain as a vivid reminder of its tragic past.

While waiting at Les Milles, disaster struck once again. December 7, , and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. This event erased all our hopes of ever being able to get out of Europe. With the United States at war with Japan, and its entry into the war with Germany, on 11 December , we were shipped to another camp, Rivesaltes, on the Mediterranean, near the Spanish border. The situation there was even worse than the other camps, with the arrival of warmer weather.

Sanitary facilities were totally lacking, and flies as well as mosquitoes spread diseases such as malaria and typhus throughout the camp. The lack of proper medications made this problem even worse. We were constantly sick with one disease after another. Everyone was under the impression that we would be resettled in a labor camp until the end of the war. I was then twelve years old, and the O. Oevre de secours aux enfants a children welfare society, managed to convince the Vichy government to remove the children from the camp in order to prevent their deportation. They also organized groups of children who they led across the border into Switzerland.

Failing that, the O. The last mental picture that I have of my parents, was their tearful eyes as we said our good-byes. I firmly believe that they had a premonition of the horrors that awaited them, and that this would be our final farewell. At this point, nothing was known about the death camps and the systematic mass murders being perpetrated against millions of people in those camps. Not only were Jews marked for extermination, but also political prisoners, gypsies, the mentally retarded, and Russian prisoners of war.

After I and the other children in the camp were rescued by the O. Before being separated from my parents, my father, with tears in his eyes handed me his precious violin, which he miraculously held on to through several camps. I carried that violin with me until I arrived at the orphanage at Montintin. I never saw that instrument again. Although life at the orphanage was strictly regimented, we were well taken care of. The food was satisfactory, and we were getting some medical attention.

Also, we were getting some sort of education from an instructor. The administrators at Montintin did their best to keep us occupied throughout the day so as to take our minds off the terrible ordeal we had undergone in the camps, as well as the separation from our parents. The Chateau Montintin had been unoccupied for some time when the O. During the day, the boys would venture into the nearby woods to collect chestnuts, which were plentiful in the area.

We would then bring huge bagfulls of chestnuts back to our dormitory After we had eaten enough of them, usually resulting in terrible diarrhea, we stored the remaining ones under our beds, which only served to attract more rats In order to prevent the rats from climbing unto our beds, we put the legs of our beds into large tin cans filled with water. When the rats tried to climb up the tubular metal legs of our beds, they would fall into the water and drown.

Sometimes we hastened their demise by applying grease to the legs of the beds. As a few of the boys including me were nearing age thirteen, a Rabbi was brought in from Limoges to prepare us for our Bar Mitzvah. The coming of age of Jewish boys. It seems ironic that, in spite of all the hardships we had endured, we never abandoned our Jewish heritage. Of course, the absence of my parents was uppermost in my mind, and not a day went by that I did not cry myself to sleep. The Bar Mitzvah ceremony was held in a makeshift sanctuary at the orphanage of Montintin, with six of us boys as the celebrants.

Sometime, around the middle of , the orphanage director was notified by the mayor of the nearby town, of an impending raid against boys aged sixteen or over. Since I was already quite tall, and had no papers verifying my age, I did no take a chance in remaining at the orphanage. The next morning, as I heard trucks approaching, one of my friends and I jumped out of a second floor window in order to make our escape. Just then, a truck hauling garbage passed by, and we jumped on the back of that truck to make our get-away.

Here I was, thirteen years old, alone and without a penny, scared to death in unfamiliar territory, not being able to trust anyone lest they be German collaborators. I remember my parents and other adults in the camps saying that if only they could get to Switzerland, a neutral country, we would be safe.

After I had wandered all the way across France to the Alps and the Swiss border, which took me a good five months, I found it impossible to get into Switzerland. The German army had machine gun nests set up at every mountain pass. After numerous attempts during the next few days, nearly frozen to death, and near starvation, I gave up any hope of getting to my destination. My trek across France in order to cross into Switzerland is now but a blur. It is as though it was all a dream, the memory of which evaporated upon awakening.

So many towns and villages whose names I have long ago forgotten. One event however is still vivid in my mind. It happened in a small town near the city of Clermond Ferrant. Near the Town Square, I noticed a young boy about my age, leaning against a stone wall, playing some French folk tunes beautifully on a recorder-like instrument.

I was immediately drawn to him, and for the next two or three days we were inseparable. All of a sudden he disappeared from view. I was just about to move on, when I again noticed him leaning against that same stone wall, still clutching that instrument in his hands, but now it would be silent forever. Both of his hands were heavily bandaged. The day earlier, he had found a detonator or some other explosive device, and while examining it, the device exploded, severing several of his fingers. It was with great chagrin that I left my newfound friend and that town behind me.

I next found myself in the city of Lyon. Shortly after arriving there, while walking down a narrow side street, I noticed a shabbily dressed man walking in front of me. Every once in a while he shot furtive glances at me to see if I was still following him. When he went into the basement of an old apartment building, I followed him in, and was surprised to see about twenty foreign speaking men and women hiding in that damp basement that had become their home. When the man I followed into that basement realized that I was from Germany, and I informed him that I came from Leipzig, he inquired if I knew a family by the name of Last.

When I told him that they were my uncle and aunt, he took me to them. The Last family lived in the apartment adjoining that of my uncle and aunt in Leipzig, with their three sons and a daughter, and since we were so very close, I called them by that familiar name. In Lyon, all six of them lived in a tiny apartment, and they were deathly afraid to speak to me, fearful that we would be overheard by the German soldiers patrolling the streets. The Gestapo in Lyon was under the command of a S. S Lieutenant later Colonel named Klaus Barbie.

He was nicknamed the butcher of Lyon, because of the hundreds if not thousands of Jews and resistance members whose blood was on his hands. Ironically, after the war, he was hired by the U. Military, and he worked for U. Military Intelligence in the American occupied zone of Germany. He later fled to Bolivia, and when his war crimes were discovered, he was returned to France to stand trial.

He was convicted of war crimes in the city of Lyon in and sentenced to life imprisonment. He died in prison in Also in Lyon, I met a Jewish woman who after a few furtive words, and upon hearing from me about my musical family, informed me that she had a cousin in Paris who was a well-known composer.

I remembered her name and address, and upon arriving in Paris after the end of the war, one of the first things I did was to contact Madame Aaron-Cohen. Lyon being a large city with a large German military presence, proved to be very unsafe, and thus I went further south to the city of Grenoble. Grenoble, also being a large city, had a large German garrison, and because of my fear of being caught, I felt no safer there than in Lyons.

I remember very well early one morning being thrown out of bed by a tremendous explosion very near to us.

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As we later found out, it was a German military headquarters that was blown up by the French resistance. Shortly after the explosion, the French police rounded us up, and we were forced to sift through the rubble to search for bodies and survivors. A few days later, I befriended a member of the resistance who told me about a village in the nearby mountains, where the Catholic priest was very sympathetic to the resistance movement as well as to the plight of the Jews.

Thus, I made my way to the village of Villard de Lans. My first step was to see Monsieur le Cure Monsignor. He immediately sent his housekeeper to get me some fresh clothes and shoes. I had worn the same dirty clothes for several months, and my shoes were held together with rags and string. That evening, I had the first real meal in years. For the first time in years, I felt safe.

I was also able to listen to some great music again, as that priest also loved the classics, and had quite a large record library. The Germans did not have a large number of soldiers stationed in the village, but every few days, a large column of soldiers armed with mobile artillery pieces would invade the village to flush out any members of the resistance, as well as any Jews who might be hiding there.

At such times, the priest would hide me behind a wall in the attic, or I would mingle with the parishioners during church services. One day, I told the priest that, being Jewish I was not allowed to kneel during prayer, so he told me to just lean forward in order to give the appearance that I was kneeling. Also, one thing that the priest told me will forever remain in my memory.

Thus, I worked for that farmer in exchange for room and board. Monsieur and Madame Pouteil-Noble were elderly farmers who never had children. Therefore, they treated me very well. I had a comfortable bed to sleep in, and I was well fed. Every once in a while we would kill one of our rabbits, and also eggs were plentiful. This new lifestyle was quite an innovation for me. Here I was a young man who was raised in a very culture conscious environment, shoveling manure, tending the cows and pigs, and working the fields. Quite a different lifestyle then I was accustomed to. While working on the farm, I befriended the leader of one of the resistance groups in the area, and from that time on, I became a member of the resistance, although I continued to work on the farm.

Being with the resistance afforded me a good opportunity for some sort of protection whenever the German troops came to the village for one of their searches. I changed my name to Daniel Dupont, and was able to obtain forged documents bearing that name. I also became the youngest member of the group. Barely fourteen years old, I became their courier, and it was my duty to relay messages between the various groups of resistance fighters in that area.

Two-way radios could not be used, as the Germans could easily spot their position. They spoke no French, and I could not admit to being able to speak fluent German, since that surely would have given away my identity. However, since I understood every word they were saying, I realized that they were going to take me to Gestapo Headquarters for questioning. That would have meant unspeakable torture and finally death, as they certainly would have discovered that I was a Jew. Thus, it was a favorite method for the Germans to identify any males they arrested or searched as a Jew.

The Germans routinely made men drop their pants, even in the middle of a crowded street, in order to discover if they were circumcised or not. As they were marching me back to the village at gunpoint, we were fired upon by some of the resistance fighters and during the ensuing confusion, I was able to escape, and make my way hastily back to the farm.

After that, every time the Germans came to the village, I would go into the woods to rejoin the members of the French resistance, since that seemed to be the safest hiding place. Since we could not light any fires, as they could easily have been detected by the German patrols, our meals consisted of raw horsemeat, and raw eggs, which we punctured with a nail at both ends, and then sucked out of their shell,.

It was while I was working at the farm, that the priest put me in touch with a family by the name of Deutsch. They were originally from Germany, and lived in an apartment in Villard de Lans with their daughter who I judged to be about twenty years old at the time. When the war ended, they moved to Paris, and I renewed my relationship with them when the O. It was the Deutschs who provided me with new clothes and also some financial assistance that enabled me to buy some necessities and also for fare for my weekly trips from Montmorency to Paris. They truly became my guardian angel at a time in my life when I had a lot of heartaches to overcome.

They, and my soon to come trip to America, gave my morale the boost that it needed after all I had gone through the past six years. A few months later, the end of the war was in sight. During all those years, I was unable to contact my uncle and aunt in Buffalo, but I still remembered their address. He wrote them a nice letter, advising them that he had located me, and that I was safe and sound after much suffering. Following the German surrender, I went to Paris, that most glorious of cities. Although I was housed in an orphanage, the Villa Helvetia in Montmorency, a suburb of Paris, I spent most of my time there.

I contacted Madame Aaron, and she totally took me under her wing. I took piano and composition lessons from Madame Aaron-Cohen, and practically lived in her home. The year was , I was fifteen years old, and had seen and suffered enough to last a hundred lifetimes. I lived through five years of barbaric cruelty, bombings, strafing and starvation, but now, things were beginning to turn around for me.

One story from the orphanage at Montmorency that I will never forget occurred shortly after I arrived there. I had written a letter to my aunt and uncle in Buffalo in order to let them know my whereabouts. About two or three weeks later, I was overjoyed to receive a package from them. Among other snack items in the box, there was a large box of corn flakes. As I did not speak English at that time, I was unable to read the instructions on the box, so I enlisted the help of the orphanage staff, but to no avail.

Their English was no better than mine. However, you cannot imagine the sight of about boys digging into that box not knowing what corn flakes were or how they were meant to be eaten or if they were meant to be eaten at all. Early one afternoon at the orphanage, I was summoned to the front door because I had a visitor.

I absolutely had no idea as to who could be visiting me, and to my great surprise, I was greeted by a captain in the American Army who introduced himself as Irving Green. It turns out that he was acquainted with my Uncle Leo in Buffalo, and my uncle asked him to get in touch with me. From that day on, my life changed totally, as America now seemed to be more of a reality.

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Captain Green took me to the American Embassy, and he was very instrumental in getting my visa in order. I still remember drinking my first Coca-Cola ever at that club. After my arrival in Paris, I contacted the International Red Cross and some other refugee organizations in order to find the whereabouts of my parents. Although the Jewish community in Europe had been decimated by the Nazis and their henchmen, surviving Jews roamed throughout the continent searching for family members who might have survived, and also for some vestige of their past.

While awaiting news concerning the fate or whereabouts of my parents, all kind of thoughts ran through my mind. How would I react if I were lucky enough to be reunited with my parents? How much would they have changed? How much have I changed since we were so tragically separated just three years before? My cruel experiences during those three years have turned me into an adult at age fifteen. I was no longer the little boy they entrusted to the O.

After a few weeks however, the International Red Cross notified me that my parents were transported to Auschwitz, Poland, in , and that they were murdered in the gas chambers there I was also notified that my grandparents were murdered in the Warsaw ghetto. Now, as I look back, I realize how really young my parents were at the time of their murder; my father 45, and my mother barely I was finally able to contact my family in Buffalo, and they put the wheels in motion to enable me to immigrate to the United States. Waiting for what seemed an eternity, I was finally able to leave Europe.

I arrived in the United States on the SS Desirade, a converted freighter, on 16 April , to join the wonderful uncle and aunt who raised me as one of their own ever since, and the brothers and sisters I never had. My family absolutely refused to speak to me in German, so that I would be forced to learn English quickly. The assistant principal at Bennett, a man by the name of Abraham Axelrod spoke Yiddish, and I asked him how long it would take me to graduate.

His response was that it took American students four years, so that it would take me at least as long, whereupon I told him that I would not be there that long. To make a long story short, I was only one of two students to ever graduate in two years. The other student was a girl from Poland. I lived in a rooming house on 98th Street in Manhattan. Breakfast was usually at a stand-up counter at Nedicks; 25 cents for orange juice, a donut, and coffee.

During the summer, I walked home quite often to save money on subway fares , and on the way home, I would stop in Central Park and listen to the Goldman Band concerts. Many a hot summer night I slept in the Park, as my room was unbearably hot. In those days, New York City was a much safer city, and people had no qualms about sleeping in the park. During that period, my Uncle Leo in Buffalo started his own concession business, and he needed help. Since he literally started on a shoestring, he could not afford to hire help, so that we all had to pitch in to save money.

For a number of years, I drove our big truck, making deliveries to theaters throughout New York and Pennsylvania. Eventually, I became vice president of Wavco, Inc.

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In , during the war with North Korea, I received my draft notice. A good friend of mine, a pianist, Ellen Goldstein, gave a going-away party for me. At that party, was a beautiful young girl of twenty, an art student, who was also an honored guest, since she and her family were leaving for Paris to join her father who was already there, working for the U. For both MaryAnne and I, it was love at first sight.

For the next few days, we could not see enough of each other. Our most memorable night that week, was a night out at the Town Casino. On June 14, , after being inducted into the U. Army at Fort Devens, Massachusetts. I was transferred to Camp Chaffee Arkansas for training in the field artillery. Since I was good in mathematics, I was trained as a fire control specialist, whose duty it was to direct the artillery fire so that the shells would hit their target. After our four-month long training period, we received our orders to report to Fort Ord, California after a two-week furlough at home.

From there, our destination was Korea. I immediately wrote MaryAnne to give her the bad news, but the following morning, six of us were notified that we would go to Europe instead of Korea. Since my military records had already been forwarded to Fort Ord, I had to wait at Camp Kilmer until my records caught up with me. From there we were taken to an old castle Sonthofen in the Bavarian Alps to await our final assignments. I was assigned to the Intelligence Service, but since I had an aunt my Aunt Mary still living in Poland, behind the Iron Curtain, I was considered a security risk, so that I was given the next best job.

I was sent to Frankfurt, to the th Railway Security Battalion, and it was my duty to patrol military passenger trains throughout Germany. As luck would have it, we also guarded the military mail car on the daily trains to Paris. Since I spoke French fluently, I made the Paris trip at least once or more every week for the next one and a half years. The train left Frankfurt in the evening, and arrived in Paris around six in the morning. We were picked up at the train station by the American military and taken to the PX in a Paris suburb. After a hearty breakfast, I would call MaryAnne, and sometime she would come to visit me, or I would take the Metro subway to her home in Arcueil.

We were thus able to spend an entire day together at least once or twice a week.

My tour of duty in Germany was not very easy for me. Here I found myself surrounded by the same people who had committed all those atrocities during the Holocaust just a few years prior. The people who brought misery into so many lives, the people who killed my parents, grandparents, other family members, six million Jews in all.

Since I spoke German fluently, I had the opportunity to talk with hundreds of German citizens concerning the Holocaust. Just as if they had rehearsed their reply, not a single one of them admitted complicity in the atrocities. MaryAnne and I were deeply in love, and in I asked her to marry me, and she agreed. That task turned out to be easier than I thought, since her parents both liked me very much. On the 7th of February, the mayor of Arcueil first married us, and that same evening we had our religious ceremony at the Union Liberale Israelite.

After the ceremony we had a beautiful dinner at a restaurant near the Paris opera, which was recommended to my father-in-law by Art Buchwald , the renowned newspaper columnist. The next morning we took the train to Rome, Italy, were we spent seven glorious days touring the city and the numerous art galleries.

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We also toured the other Basilicas, the Roman Forum, the Coliseum, and numerous other historical sites. From Rome, we went to Florence, where we spent several days touring the various Art Galleries such as the Uffizi Galleries, saw the original statue of David by Michelangelo, sculptures by Benvenuto Cellini, etc…Our last day in Italy, we spent in Pisa, where we visited the Baptistry with the famous Giotto bell tower, and of course the Leaning Tower. After a busy and hectic but terrific honeymoon, it was time for me to return to duty. We took the train back to Paris where I left my new bride with her parents.

I of course got to see her regularly on my trips to Paris. In April of that year, about a month before I was to come back to the States, MaryAnne came to Frankfurt, were I put her up at the Columbia Hotel for fifty cents a day. My bride came home to me on the Queen Elizabeth in July of the same year.

In the meantime, the family theater and concession business had grown considerably, and I took over as the warehouse manager and buyer. In , MaryAnne and I moved to Wheeling, West Virginia, where I opened a branch office and warehouse, servicing theaters in the Wheeling and southeastern area of Ohio.

MaryAnne was expecting at that time, and in March , we became the proud parents of our firstborn, a son who we named Avery, after my father Abraham. That same year, we moved back to Buffalo and within a short period of just seven years, our other three children, Regina, Samuel, and Sarah were born.

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Later on, we also operated all the food operations at Fantasy Island, an amusement park in Grand Island N. When the real estate values of the drive-ins became too high, and the owners developed the land they occupied into shopping centers, we again diversified, and operated snack bars in discount stores throughout several states in the northeast, as well as in Canada.

After a few years however, competition from the nearby fast food chains proved to be too much and we gradually pulled out of all of them. After several attempts in the restaurant business that also proved to be unprofitable, mostly because of competition from the chain operators, I decided to leave the business, and applied for a position with the Federal Government.

As part of my job, I managed the Club, golf course, swimming club, as well as several snack bars. After about two months, during which I was involved with the construction of a new club building, I broke my foot on the job, and while my foot was healing, I was assigned temporary duty at the clinic, since that would not require much time standing on my feet. While I was at the clinic, my appropriated position at the club was done away with. I thus became a program and budget analyst, and within two months, worked myself up to a senior position in that field.

In September , I decided to retire by age 65, as the cold climate in the north made my life as a diabetic very difficult, and in December , we moved to our beautiful new home, in Chesapeake, Virginia. As to my musical life, I never became proficient enough on any instrument to consider a musical career. However, I continued to study music throughout my life.

I have a decent voice, a thorough knowledge of music, and am a good sight-reader. I was also music chairman of that choir, and was responsible for the first Buffalo area performances of the Missa di Gloria by Puccini, as well as the Mass in D by John Knowles Payne.

I derived the greatest pleasure having the privilege to perform under the direction of great conductors, such as Michael Tilson Thomas, Semyon Bychkov, Julius Rudel, Peter Peret, and Sir Neville Marriner, as well as numerous guest conductors. I was also choir director at Temple Beth El in Buffalo. While a member of the Buffalo Schola Cantorum, I served on a committee to select an American composer for a commissioned choral work for the choir. The chosen composer was Dominick Argento, whose Te Deum was given its world premiere by the choir with the Buffalo Philharmonic. She became a very fine artist, and won numerous awards as well as having several one-woman shows.

As for myself, I have always enjoyed photography and have become quite knowledgeable in it. Thus, since my retirement, I keep myself busy taking photographs, mostly of landscapes and close-ups of flowers. As I now look back on my life, the Holocaust, the horror of the camps, and mostly the death of my beloved parents, I realize why my life as well as that of the other survivors was spared. My survival is even more of a miracle when you consider that over 11, French Jewish children, and several thousand more who sought refuge in France, were transported to Auschwitz.

Of those, only very few were lucky enough to have survived the Holocaust. I will never forget the words of that Catholic priest in that little Alpine Village, that the one thing the Nazis will never be able to take away from me is my Jewish heritage. I will forever live up to that heritage with great pride. Unfortunately, my beloved parents were taken from me during my formative years. However, during those few short years that I was honored to have them nurture me, their influence on my life has made a lasting impression on me, and has made me the person I am today.

By their deeds and example, they instilled in me the desire to emulate the high ethical and moral standards by which they themselves lived. I am also most grateful to the aunt and uncle who brought me to this great land. They also brought me into their family and into their lives, and gave me the brothers and sisters I never had. Since they always considered me as one of their own, MaryAnne and I had our name legally changed to Katz shortly after our marriage.

My gratitude must also be extended to this great country, the United States, for giving me the opportunity to come to its shores, and to make a new life for myself. Most of all, I am ever so thankful to be blessed with the most wonderful life partner anyone could ever hope for.

Above all else, she has given me the greatest joy of my life, our four wonderful and devoted children. As such, I have been privileged to speak to schoolchildren as well as to numerous civic and military organizations in the Tidewater Area of Virginia about my Holocaust experiences. As difficult as it is for me to relive my experiences, the respect they have shown me during my speeches, as well as the hundreds of letters I have received from them, have moved me deeply. The opportunity to speak about the Holocaust has increased my awareness as to how important it is to never forget, and to not let it happen again to anyone.

Also, the main function of the Holocaust Commission is to teach tolerance. Therefore, I use my experiences during the holocaust as an example as to what happens when indifference, intolerance, lack of respect and hate permeates our society.