Theodore Lehman

00:00:00Patty O'Connor: This is an interview with Ted Lehman on Sunday, February 8th, 2004, at the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond, Virginia, conducted by Patty O'Connor. Could you please state your name and place of birth?

Ted Lehman: I was born in Sosnowiec, Poland, on July 25th, 1927.

Patty: How old are you now?

Ted: Pushing 77.

Patty: What languages do you speak?

Ted: I speak Russian, German, Polish, Yiddish, and English.

00:00:37Patty: Where were you living before the Holocaust began?

Ted: In Poland.

Patty: Could you describe your life before World War II?

Ted: We lived in a very modern city on the shore of the Baltic. My father was a newspaperman. I was the only child. Summers, we would go visit my grandparents in Sosnowiec and my mother's parents in Zawiercie. It was a very good life.

Patty: What type of education did you have? Ted: I didn't finish grade school because Hitler came in 1939. I didn't go to high school, but I did have advanced degrees from colleges in the United States, University of Wisconsin and Columbia University in New York.

00:01:43Patty: What was the predominant religion in your area?

Ted: Roman Catholic.

Patty: Before the war, did being a Jew have a religious or a cultural significance to you?

Ted: Both. There was anti-Semitism in Poland, quite a bit of prejudice. However, one must say, in spite of all the anti-Semitism, there were no camps, there was no extermination. It was a difficult life for a minority in Poland, but not an impossible life.

Patty: Did you have any non-Jewish friends before the war?

Ted: Many. Most, as a matter of fact, because there were very, very few Jews living in Gdynia. In a whole town of, I believe, 250,000, maybe 1,000.

00:02:47Patty: Where were you living when the Nazis invaded your country?

Ted: I was with my maternal grandmother in Zawiercie.

Patty: When did the Nazis occupy your country?

Ted: Started September 1st, 1939. I think they were in Zawiercie either on the first or second day.

Patty: How old were you when the war began in your country?

Ted: Just 12.

Patty: Can you describe what happened when the Germans captured your city?

Ted: The war in Poland did not last more than 30 days. At first, the changes were very minor. Then Jews had to wear an arm band, later a yellow star. In 1941, a ghetto was created. Jews had to work. From time to time, especially after 1942, after the Germans invaded Russia, the population was gathered in a marketplace, market square, and selections were being made. Old people, even some children, were sent off to labor camps, not yet extermination camps. That followed.

Patty: What were your first experiences with the Nazi occupation?

Ted: I was drafted to work at 14 or 15. On a second assignment, I decided to make that my permanent job because it was a very good job. It allowed me to leave the ghetto, and I worked for the SS. The SS was there because that part of Poland was annexed to the German Reich. It was part of Großdeutschland. Many Poles were shipped off to the protectorate around Warsaw, and German Volksdeutsche were brought in from all sorts of places, including Russia, Yugoslavia. Whoever had a German connection was brought to settle there. I became an interpreter because I spoke to them in their languages, and I spoke German very well. I stayed in that job until August 1943, when they took us all to Auschwitz.

Patty: How were you moved into the ghetto? What was that experience like?

Ted: By that time, two years into occupation, there was starvation. More Jews were brought in from outside, a whole bunch of them from Czechoslovakia. Moving from seven rooms to one room wasn't such a big deal. Survival was the problem, an extra potato, organize something. Of course, we were under constant threat of being selected and shipped off to camps. Being in a ghetto, living under horrible conditions, really didn't mean anything. The main thing was to survive the Germans. There was no doubt in our minds that Hitler would lose. It was a question of when. For most, it was too late.

Patty: What made you feel that way, that for sure that he would lose?

Ted: My father knew world events. Two things happened to convince him. The Japanese attack on the United States at Pearl Harbor, and Hitler's foolish move to move against Russia. That he conveyed with us with such strength, and rationality, and conviction that at least everybody around me knew this would be so. Now, mind you, in 1943, when we were in a camp, this was after the Battle of Moscow. After the Battle of Kursk, the Allies were in Africa. Mussolini, I believe, that week was either kidnapped by the Germans, rescued by the Germans, or was hung, I don't remember which. The United States was in a war. There was no question. As a matter of fact, I don't think the Germans even questioned the fact of losing. They were bombed every night. There were horrible stories. This was post-Stalingrad. It created a very, very unique situation in the factory where I later worked, because here were Russian prisoners of war, Jews, all sorts of untouchables who looked worse than the untouchables in India by then, and German workers. All the people, their sons were either dead or still fighting on the front, who began to realize that the people in stripes were winning, and they were losing. They remembered what happened at the end of the First World War, but they never did that in the First World War. I'm talking about 5,000 to 6,000 people on a factory floor who were concentration camp inmates. It was a strange relationship we had.

Patty: I'll ask you more about that in a minute. Could you tell me, working outside the ghetto, did that provide additional food or supplies for you?

Ted: We never stole anything during the war. We organized things. Yes, I did organize anything that wasn't nailed down. You couldn't lay your hands on much, but it helped. It was a very good job.

Patty: You mentioned selections that were taking place. Did that affect any of your family members?

Ted: My father, whom we left in Gdynia at the outbreak of the war, found us eventually in Zawiercie and was selected to work in a labor camp to build a factory for crop. He broke his arm and came back. One of my aunts, Dora, was 34. She was selected to a labor camp. Nobody of my immediate family was selected for a death camp until August 1943.

Patty: Was there any involvement with partisans? Anyone in the ghetto have any-- [crosstalk]

Ted: On a periphery, I had no personal involvement with partisans.

Patty: Was any resistance attempted?

Ted: In the ghetto?

Patty: Yes.

Ted: Not in our ghetto, in the Warsaw ghetto. I lived through it in the ghetto, and I know the feelings we had at the time. We knew instinctively that after the war, most of us had to go to Israel. There was no place for us in Europe. It was a momentous event. Jews finally began to fight. It's interesting to see the change because now some of us say, "Hey, we'll take you with us." It's a great threat, but it doesn't solve the basic problems, none as gross as Auschwitz.

It cannot be compared to people waving Mao Zedong's Red Book or crazy people in Cambodia killing people with eyeglasses. There are crazy things going on in the world, but this was so well organized, so well thought out. Here was a cultured nation talked into the killing of 10 million people, not just Jews. It's frightening to contemplate that something like that can be done, and was done very efficiently.

Patty: How long were you in the ghetto?

Ted: The ghetto and the place where I worked, which became a camp outside the ghetto, I was there until we were shipped off to Auschwitz.

Patty: Was everyone in the ghetto transported at one time?

Ted: Most were transported at one time. Some remained to clean up, to confiscate whatever was left. Then they, too, came to Auschwitz approximately six weeks later. I met one of them, who also survived and who's in the United States. When I go back to Zawiercie today, everything stands as it was. Town has not been bombed, has not been destroyed, very little construction. I walk the streets, and the only thing different is that there are no Jews. The only Jews in Zawiercie, to the best of my knowledge, are in a cemetery. It was a very vibrant, old community.

It's almost frightening. It's almost beyond explanation, because when I go there, I also go to Auschwitz, the site camp where I was in Birkenau. I was in a quarantine camp. I was there for six weeks. I see all these people in my mind, but of course, they're not there. Something like that that we lived through is very hard for me to understand, and yet I was there in a line. I stood there freezing. I was there in selections, et cetera, beatings, and whatever. I don't think we're going to understand this Holocaust for many, many years to come.

00:16:51Patty: Are there any other experiences in the ghetto that you would like to share?

Ted: I'll tell you how I got to work for the SS. I went to school in Vienna before the war, so I spoke fairly good German. Not the SS German yet, but German. At the end of that working day, one of the men said, "I want to take a couch to my girlfriend." I said, "If you give me the address of the girlfriend, I will take care of the couch." I did. I came back home, and there was a woman, a tailor. We went upstairs at about eight o'clock in the evening, and I made her make me an armband which said worker, SS, lager, Wartenau, which was the German name for Zabrze. The SS was exactly as the SS is on the lapel.

I did not return the wagon on which I slept the couch. I had it with me. Left it downstairs. The next day, when I reported to be assigned to a new job, here I was with this band in plastic on my left arm, lower, actually, and the wagon. I said, "Look, I got this, and I'm working for the SS." He says, "Fine." I came back with this band, and I said, "I've been permanently attached to you." He says, "Wonderful." Now, eventually, my mother worked there, other people I could bring, and they built a little camp. Not really a concentration camp, but a lager.

We had a mission to make the Germans Volksdeutsche, some of them not even speaking Deutsch. The difference between a Reichsdeutsche is a German who was born in the German Reich, including Austria, a Volksdeutsche could be somebody who, under Catherine the Great, immigrated to the steps of Russia and had German blood. Blood was very important. Blood meant everything. One thing, it worked against them somehow. I would not be here were it not for that single little fact that whatever they took from us while we were alive or after death, they did not take our blood, and blood is what they needed, transfusions, but they couldn't pollute good Aryan blood with Jewish blood. Blood was important, and if somebody was a Volksdeutscher, he received upon arrival in that part of Poland, which was next to Germany, a Führerbild, a picture of Hitler, Fahne, and everything else he ever needed, beds, spreads. You name it, they got it. Also, clothes. Clothes by the carloads, the kind of car that you see outside, most of them with yellow stars. Suits, shoes, overcoats.

I saw in the pile of clothes an overcoat that was absolutely a classic, fine material, herringbone, had a belt on it, which had a clip of two rings. It was elegant, so I organized it. I couldn't wear it naturally in a ghetto, but I wore it to Auschwitz. It had belonged to a French Jew, because on the yellow star there was the word Juif, Jew in French. On this coat, I had the band. We moved up to the selection by Dr. Mengele in the first row. He sent me to the left and then saw the bands with the SS on it, Möbellage, furniture storehouse. He said, "Sind Sie Tischler? Are you a carpenter?" I said, "Yes." He sent me to the right. I walked over to my uncle and my father. That's the story. That had an influence on my later life.

Patty: Were you allowed to keep that coat?

Ted: [chuckles] On the ramp, men were selected to stand on one side, women on the other side. Those who were selected to the left, I believe, went directly to the crematories. We were told to leave our suitcases, take as little as possible, and we marched to a reception center, where we had to completely undress, but those who had belts could keep them, hang the belt from the right hand. That's what I kept, a belt. Whatever we had was taken from us. We were given then prisoner uniforms, and I remained in the quarantine camp for almost exactly six weeks.

Patty: How old were you at that time?

Ted: 14.

Patty: When you arrived at Auschwitz?

Ted: I was 16. I'm sorry. I was 16 when I arrived in Auschwitz. I was born in 1927.

Patty: What was the transport like going from the ghetto to the camp?

Ted: It was a car, red, not green like the one outside.

Patty: A railroad car?

Ted: A railroad car. It was pretty frightening. We knew where we were going. We spent two nights and a day and a half. That summer was very, very hot. Some people were dead on arrival in Auschwitz. If there was a frightening moment in my life, that was probably it. At the same time, there was a sense of resignation. If they kill me, they kill me. There's really nothing we can do about it. Some people tried to escape. Some people tried. It was useless. Holocaust was very well thought out, organized. It wasn't like the Yugoslav concentration camps or anything like it. Do you want me to talk about the car?

00:26:22Patty: If you would.

Ted: I'm 16 years old. I'm standing between my father and my mother. We soon realized that we're going to Auschwitz. We knew what Auschwitz was. Maybe we didn't know about the gas chambers, but that people didn't return from Auschwitz, we knew. Probably the most traumatic moment in my life was when I told my mother, "You've got to forget about me. You have to save yourself." Why? Because I was her only child, and she lived for no other reason but to see me survive. My father, by then, was very disgusted with life and probably did not want to survive. There were people who just gave up. If they didn't give up in the car, maybe they gave up when they realized that the wives were dead, the children were dead, and they became what we used to call Muselmänner. You could see it. Another curious thing in the camp happened. Saints became saints. Thieves became thieves. Stool pigeons became stool pigeons. Everybody's character floated to the top. There were no complexes, I don't think, in the camp. Certainly no persecution complexes, inferiority complexes. We were persecuted. We were inferior. We knew it.

00:28:34Patty: What was the first thing that you saw or heard when you arrived at the camp?

Ted: At first, we saw a ramp. It could be a railroad ramp, any place without a station. Then we were marched along a road, and we saw prisoners in stripe uniforms, thousands of them. There were 20 barracks. At times, there were 2,000 per barrack, so we're talking about a small city. In every camp, there were 20 camps, barracks stretching there. My father made a comment. He says, "You see, you can live here, too." It was a very profound comment. I didn't understand it at the time, but we knew that not everybody died. What we didn't know is who was selected and who wasn't.

We were confronted by trustees, kapos, who made it very clear that we would all probably die anyway, but if we wanted to die sooner rather than later, any order not instantly obeyed would bring this about. They demonstrated by beating and hitting. Then we went through all sorts of procedures, including the tattooing of numbers on the arm, and then we became prisoners. Of course, there is a plus to being a prisoner in Auschwitz. They can't send you there anymore, and you're still living. You're still walking around. Six weeks later, they selected me to work for a factory next to the city of Breslau, which is now a Polish city of Wrocław. I spent a little more than a year making cannons for the Firm Krupp.

Patty: When you first arrived at the camp, and you saw the prisoners that were already there, how did they look? What was their condition?

Ted: I could make a fortune in America selling the Auschwitz diet. There wasn't one person who had an ounce of fat on them. Everybody was very skinny. Also, their head was shaved, and we all looked different in the stripe uniforms and wooden clogs on our feet. We knew we were in a concentration camp. There were some who wondered, who had some curiosity, or wanted to find a friend in a different barrack. Most of us didn't. Most of us were so exhausted by endless marching in step, im gleichschritt, links, links, links und links, hours upon hours, four or five hours of sleep, up at 4:30, marching to the toilet, getting off the seat in seconds, having literally your head broken.

Marching to stand in line to get warm, though it wasn't coffee. It tasted like grass, smelled like grass, but it was something to eat. A soup at noon, a soup in the evening with three fingers of a portion of bread, which was, I think, made of sawdust because it crumbled. It certainly wasn't any kind of bread that I ever ate before or since. It wasn't a place to gain weight, and it was a place where the selections were continuing. At one point, all of us, naked, stood outside. Those that did not look fit, not that anyone did, but fit, were taken to the crematories. There was a selection by Krupp people for the factory.

There was a fear of typhoid at one point in Auschwitz, in Birkenau, so the Germans had a delousing, entlausung. It was in the fall. It was very cold. All our clothes were taken from us to be boiled, so we stood naked all day. Many just couldn't do it and died. Literally fell to the ground and died. This was just before they took me away to Fünfteichen. The clothes we got were wet. I found my father with clothes that didn't fit him. I somehow, don't remember even how, kept exchanging that night and found him a suitable uniform. That was the last time I saw my father. The next day, we were on the way to Fünfteichen to work for Krupp.

00:36:18Patty: Your father was not selected for that?

Ted: My father was selected and then refused to be taken by a director of Krupp. My father was a linguist. He was taken to a labor camp not far from the city of Breslau, where they were building a factory, where he was an interpreter. There were many French people there. He spoke fluent French or German. Broke his arm. They sent him back to Zawiercie. There in Auschwitz, in Birkenau, the director recognized him, probably didn't like him, and said, "This one we will not take."

The kapo, the trustee in charge of that transport, used him as an interpreter in Birkenau. He said, "I really need him." The SS officer had, I don't know what the word is, a stick, officer's stick, offiziersstöck. Hit my father across the face, knocked off his glasses, broke them, and he wasn't selected. My uncle was. My uncle was born in 1905. He was an extraordinarily strong man, sportsman. He died in 1944, January 6th, The Three Kings' holiday in Fünfteichen. I don't think my father wanted to see this through. He had enough. He stayed around as long as I was around. What happened to him, I have absolutely no idea.

Patty: Do you know what happened to your mother?

Ted: I have no idea.

00:39:05Patty: Do you know if the other prisoners were all Jews, or were there political prisoners?

Ted: No. In Auschwitz, there were quite a few Poles, quite a few French Jews, many, many Soviet prisoners of war. Stalin did not sign the Geneva Convention. The Soviet Union did not sign the Geneva Convention. The Germans, considering the Slavs' untermenschen, less than humans, did not keep them in POW camps, but sent them directly to Auschwitz, and most of them died, all people in the prime of their life. There were Germans that were political prisoners. Absolutely, yes.

Patty: What kind of work was done in Auschwitz?

Ted: Primarily, we learned to become katsetler. They call those katsetler because this is what they referred to as a shortcut for Konzentrationslager, K and Z. We learned how to march, how to obey orders, how to form in lines, how to rip off our caps at the commands. This was not easy for people who didn't understand German. I knew the commands because I used to imitate the SS, and I spoke like the SS, so it was very easy for me. You had to assemble, get ready, come to attention, take off the hats, and sometimes turn to the right, the head, and to the left.

We had to march in cadence. That was very important. God forbid you missed, which was not difficult to do, especially on muddy days when we were in these clogs that came off. I think everybody who left Auschwitz knew how to fall in. Rührt euch. Achtung. Mitsehen. Augen rechts. We did that very well. Everybody in Germany during Hitler screamed. Hitler screamed. The SS screamed the best. Reich. Life and death.

We had to step aside off the sidewalk, what in Birkenau was a sidewalk, if we saw a German. There were very few of them. All the killings, everything inside was done by trustees. They did the selections, the Germans, but everything else was-- the killing was done by prisoners. We had to come to attention, and rip off our cap, and stay there until he passed. I didn't see him coming. I bumped into one. All of a sudden, I'm in front of a German who's looking at me. He says, "[German language]." I knew he was going to shoot me, so I said, "You can always send me to Auschwitz," in German. He started to laugh and walk by. That's how one died in Auschwitz. Bizarre things.

Prisoners were not allowed within three or four meters of the first wire. To amuse themselves, somebody would take a prisoner's cap, a German, and throw it next to the wire. Now he had a choice. Obey the order to pick up the cap and be shot, or be shot by the man whose order he did not obey. You must understand that a German who stood in a guard tower, who shot a prisoner, got a weekend pass to go home. There was incentive built into killing. The place was a killing place. It was spelled out that use the Jews or use the prisoners as much as you can, but the ultimate goal is destruction of the Jews, and the Gypsies, and whoever else. You could depopulate Russia and make it into a Lebensraum.

Of course, you realize this whole thing was a total fallacy, because after the war in Europe, Germany had lost land around its borders to its neighbors and was cut in half, East Germany on the Soviet side. What was left of Germany remains today the greatest economic power in Europe. Hitler needed Lebensraum, they say in Yiddish, like a loch in kop, but that's what we went through.

Once you were in a camp, you learned to live with it. Death in a camp was not such an awful thing. Dying was not a problem. Living was a problem. Does one really want to continue? Do we want to go home? To what? An empty house? There was no doubt among us what was going on, so the question was always, do I really want to go on? It was easy not to. It was an out. Some, of course, took it, particularly the young men. I'm speaking of men because I was in a camp only with men. Particularly, the young people with small children that they knew were dead.

When you talk about places like that, death was an option. I don't know if my uncle wanted to die, but probably so.

00:47:53I once interviewed twins from Zawiercie who lived in our building. They were about 20. Very good-looking boys, educated. Somebody in the '70s told me that one of the twins had survived. I said, "Oh, wow, I've got to meet him." He lived in Toronto, but he had a house in Pompano Beach in Florida.

Patty: I'm sorry, I'm going to interrupt you. When you say they lived in your building, are you talking--

Ted: In Zawiercie, in the towns where my grandmother lived. I went to see this man. At first, he thought I was my uncle. He didn't quite realize who I was, but we made that clear. He says, "There's nothing to talk about. I don't want to talk about Zawiercie. You've got towns like Warsaw, Vilna. Zawiercie was nothing." I say, "Your mother was Sorbonne-educated. You were Sorbonne-educated. There were many people." "Ah, there's nothing to talk about." I said, "Okay. Let's go to lunch." I'm sitting at lunch. I say, "What happened to your brother?" [chuckles] Mind you, they were 23 in camp, 24 at the most. He says, "My brother, were you together?" "Oh, yes, but he always was in the wrong line. He always was in the wrong place. I told him what not to do, and he did it." "And?" "He got selected." Twins, identical twins. One wanted to survive. The other one didn't. They were together all the time. Very difficult to explain. Can we take a break? [sound cut] Ted: Will I get a copy of the-- [background conversation] [sound cut]

00:51:00Ted: No. It's as the pictures. Not remarkable.

Patty: You were there for six weeks?

Ted: Six weeks.

Patty: Then what happened?

Ted: Then I was selected to work in another camp, a division of a larger camp, Gross-Rosen. I wound up working in a factory making cannons, a factory run by Krupp, called Berthawerk after Bertha Krupp, who also gave the name to the big cannon, the Bertha gun in the First World War.

Patty: Where was the location of that factory?

Ted: Not very far from the German city of Breslau today, the Polish city of Wrocław.

Patty: Were you transported in a similar manner as when you were transported to Auschwitz?

Ted: Transported in open lorries. It was an entirely different situation. We could not believe that we were leaving Auschwitz. By then, I had made some connections, and since my father wasn't taken, I became the interpreter for the head trustee who goes by the name Hauptkapo, not his last name, but rank. Oberkapo, Hauptkapo. It wasn't a long trip. Naturally, there were no women or children or old people. I don't think there was anyone there over 40 or under 20. I was the youngest of the youngsters there.

It didn't take long before we arrived there and marched into camp. Small place, no chimneys, no crematories. It was unbelievable. Little barracks with little windows, strange prisoners.

Patty: In what way?

Ted: We came from Auschwitz. In the stratification of this madhouse, people with numbers somehow carried greater prestige than people without numbers. The prisoners at Gross-Rosen had no numbers. They had numbers sewn on over the left shoulder and right leg, but we had the thing. The new prisoners took over the camp. Since we were the first of the first, we took over the best barracks. Since I was an interpreter, I was on the periphery of a very powerful man, not in the camp so much, but at work. Since he was a German, he was feared by all the other kapos who were mostly Polish. It was a different camp. Pretty soon, we marched out. We wound up in a factory. Here I was, fascinated by machines. I thought, "This is not as bad as what we came from." We worked there for a very long time. Most of us becoming machinists, very useful making cannons.

Patty: Was the treatment the same there, the food, the conditions?

Ted: The food was the same. They had a wonderful recipe. It required not only to have vegetables, but vegetables which were still in sand. When you ate, you ground your teeth down to swallow. Rutabagas, wooden things, even after boiling, they were wooden. They were stale. We were hungry all the time. I managed to organize a bucket of soup, a big water bucket, ate it all and was still hungry. Hunger and lack of sleep was a curse with us all the time. At times, it was easier to obtain a second portion. The comparison between Auschwitz, which was a death camp, Fünfteichen was a resort, in the sense that if they didn't kill you, maybe you will survive.

Patty: What was the approximate distance from the camp to the factory?

Ted: About three kilometers.

Patty: How long were you there?

Ted: About a year.

Patty: You mentioned that there were strange prisoners. What do you mean by strange? You said there were strange prisoners. I thought that's what you said.

Ted: When we arrived, there were prisoners there, prisoners who built the camp. They were prisoners just like we were, but from a different camp. They went to Gross-Rosen in the same way we went to Auschwitz. They were overwhelmed by the fact that we were probably better trained as prisoners. There was more discipline. There was more fear, really.

The Hauptkapo, who was German, took over that camp. It didn't benefit us much, but we were comfortable with him. That meant a lot. What did it do? In a way, he was protecting us. What he could not do is protect us when we were sick. When we were sick or injured or fell by the wayside, all were selected because even in Fünfteichen, there were selections in those who were sick and those who couldn't work. You can't say in Fünfteichen those who were old or young because everybody was in the prime of their life, but some of us were weaker than others, and those were selected and put in one selection in January of 1944, late January, 40 below zero. 40 below Fahrenheit equals 40 below-- What's the other one? Fahrenheit?

Patty: Centigrade. Is that what you're thinking?

Ted: 40 below is 40 below. Very cold. They were stripped naked, put in cattle cars, and choo-choo'ed all the way to the crematory. There was no doubt about it that all of them had probably died. There are pictures of similar trains, the one that was left at Dachau when the Americans marched in. It's not an unusual event for people to keel over and die.

Patty: Were the other prisoners there similar to, in Auschwitz, Jewish political prisoners? Was it a combination?

Ted: I think that by the time we got to Krupp, there were very few political prisoners left. They just simply died off. There were Jews in Fünfteichen, some Poles, many Russians. There were some Germans still alive by 1944. They had the best positions because, naturally, they spoke German. A German had German blood, not Jewish blood. It wasn't AB or positive or negative. It was Deutsche blut, which was very important. I always wondered how the Japanese became Aryan and also had pure blood.

Patty: How were you treated within the factory?

Ted: Awful. Which really didn't make sense. The most expensive part in the factory is the machinist. If he doesn't know what he is doing, he will wreck the machine. Here we were. Every hour, a cannon. The machinist starved and abused in a continuous way. Now, if you broke something, that was an act of sabotage, so they killed you. It was sheer madness to train people with the objective of killing them. If it happened sooner, so much the better because you could always get more. They did get more and more and more, and then it all ended. I wasn't there at the end. I was sent to Gross-Rosen and on to another camp.

Patty: Did that prevent any deliberate attempts to sabotage the equipment?

Ted: There were some deliberate attempts to sabotage the equipment, very few, because the penalty was awful. There were little things. I once observed a Russian throwing coal into an oven to generate heat or whatever. I saw him throw in the coal as well as the shovel. Then he went to look for another shovel. Those little things. You could grind down an instrument, but it was a dangerous thing to do.

You must remember that we were not in the best of shape at any time. Also, please keep in mind that the war by then was turning against the Germans, and there was no doubt about the outcome. It was simply a question of when and, "Can we survive?" To take unnecessary chances in the shape we were in was madness, particularly since it would endanger everybody else's life.

Patty: There were no escape attempts then either from the factory?

Ted: There were escape attempts, but I don't know if they succeeded. From Fünfteichen there were escape attempts. Most of them they brought back, put a drum on them and a sign saying [German language] "Returned from the trip," then hung him or shot him.

Patty: Was there anyone there that you felt you could trust or showed any kindness to you?

Ted: Oh, yes. You're speaking of the Germans or of the prisoners?

Patty: Anyone in the factory.

Ted: There were some Germans. I can't say they were kind, but they would not abuse us. That was a big thing. There were some who were Nazis to the very end and looked forward to killing us at every possible moment, tempered only by the fact that they needed us to run the machine. Some of us got very good at it. As a matter of fact, I became almost a journeyman machinist. I ran every single machine in my department from blades to grinders. I'm not talking about a grinder that sharpens a knife. I'm talking about a grinder that cuts something down to one-tenth of a thousandth of a millimeter, boring machines, drill presses, milling machines.

As a matter of fact, I was so good that when I came to the United States, I instantly got a job in a machine shop and worked in a machine shop throughout my years at the University of Wisconsin.

Patty: Is there anything else in the routine of the day that you would want to describe?

Ted: The routine of the day was up at 4:30 or 5:00. Let me make another remark. We worked on two shifts, 12-hour shifts. We changed on Sunday. Night shift became day shift. Day shift became night shift. What I'm describing now differs only in the fact that some of us slept during the day and some slept at night. At 5:30, we were up. At six o'clock, we were fed. Maybe 5:45 in the morning, or the same thing applied in the evening, was a cup of boiled grass or whatever. At six o'clock, we marched to work and arrived a little before 7:00. We were always counted everywhere. They wanted to kill us, but God forbid we should go missing.

We worked for 12 hours. The night shift or day shift went back to the camp. Six days a week, Sunday's off. If you worked on a night shift, you had not only Sunday off, but all day Monday, because you went to the night shift.

The march to work was obviously just as long as the march from work and vice versa. We got into the camp from work approximately 7:30. We got the soup and the slice of bread. Then we had chores in the camp. We seldom went to bed before 9:30 or 10:00. Then I got up at 4:30. Sleep was a major problem. If I leaned in the factory on a post, I would fall asleep. It was a struggle just as much as hunger.

Did I trust people? Yes. There were people you could trust, very few, but you didn't have an enormous circle of friends in the camp. For example, I knew most of the Russians in my department, but I don't remember anybody else. I don't remember who stood next to me in the next machine. I remember the guy at the inspection table because he was one of the Jews who was put into our apartment, my grandmother's apartment. He was a laboratory technician in that little tiny room.

We did not associate the way people associate in normal life. Our vision was the back of the man marching in front of you at best. We were attuned to hearing orders. We were very attuned to any trouble. To survive in the camp, you had to learn instinctively what not to do, instinctively what to fear, instinctively size up the man who was talking to you. Everything in the camp was a choice of life or death. One mistake and you're out. so a curious existence. You withdraw into yourself, and yet you stay alert all the time. Hitler really drove us nuts.

Patty: Changing from day shift to night shift every week, how did that affect you, having to change that routine?

Ted: Good question. The night shift was much quieter because the German management worked only during the day shift. For some reason, we always-- I, at least, looked forward to the night shift because sometimes I could steal an hour of sleep. Even the guards were more tired on the night shift and less of a danger.

There's something that has to be said about those poor German guards. They did everything we did. They marched in rain. We marched in rain. The only difference between us and them was that occasionally they killed or hit you. To be hit on the head with the butt of a rifle meant that you didn't walk and step anymore. If you didn't walk and step anymore, you got hit. If you got hit, you missed a meal. If you missed a meal, you were dead. We were always on a periphery of death. In retrospect, of course, nothing so bad can happen in your life again, but that's not a recommendation for another Holocaust, believe me. Patty: Is there anything else about the factory work or the camp that you would like to describe?

Ted: We had, in the factory, a priest, an old man. How he got not selected is a mystery. How he survived Auschwitz is a mystery. He was a Jesuit priest. He said, "I never ate much, and I always slept on hard boards." He was a saint. All of us tried to protect him, from the Hauptkapo down to almost all-- The Russian prisoners of war absolutely loved him. That was an interesting experience in the sense that it was a communal effort. I cannot recall another effort like that where people, including the Germans, took care of that man. He was selected and sent to-- in that transport I described earlier in late January in 1944. What else can I tell you about Fünfteichen?

The major difference between Fünfteichen and a death camp was that some of us survived. Very few survive a year of Auschwitz. Rare. That goes for Jews. That goes for the Sonderkommando. The Sonderkommando are the prisoners in charge of the crematories and gassing of other prisoners. They ate well because the prisoners who were taken, like my grandmother, I'm positive, right from the ramp to the gas chamber, carried some food or had some jewelry or whatever. They managed very well. The only problem was every once in a while they, too, were gassed because the Germans didn't want to have such knowledgeable witnesses.

Everything else is as you read. It takes an enormous amount of effort to make 10 million people and to kill 10 million people. 10 million were killed, 6 million Jews, all the others. The only other thing I want to tell you about that factory is that at the end of the war, I was no longer in a camp.

01:19:03Ted: I was an interpreter for the American Army. My job was to find out where these cannons were located so we could destroy them before they destroyed American tanks. Here I was making them, then interrogating German artillery officers to find out where they were located.

01:20:00Patty: Where did you go right after the factory?

Ted: Went to Gross-Rosen, were there for a very short time. Then I was in a camp called Hersbruck, where we built tunnels into mountains, later to be converted into factories that would be bombardment-proof. Let me tell you our arrival in Gross-Rosen. I completely forgot that story.

In the camps, we had learned to march in cadence in rows of five. The first night in Gross-Rosen, we marched into the barrack. The barracks had two tiers, one upper level and one basement, large doors. My group, [unintelligible 01:21:29], was to be quartered in the basement. We marched in and I fell 6 feet. There were no steps. I crawled to the wall. Everybody else was trampled to death by those who came later. The other thing I can tell you about Gross-Rosen is there was no salt. Somehow they ran out of salt and it was very difficult to swallow the soup without salt. Salt became a commodity beyond diamonds, beyond your imagination. That was concentration camp.

Patty: When you fell into the basement area-

Ted: There was supposed to be steps there. There were none. I don't know why. Maybe somebody built a fire. Maybe that should have been a ramp. I was one of the first, so I kept crawling, astonished, wind knocked out of me, and some others crawled away. We were marching, "Links, links, links und links," with guards on both sides, making absolutely sure that we kept marching. Eventually, the prisoners marched over the prisoners. Those were the few select to go to work.

I'll tell you one more episode. I got very sick. The dust in the tunnels that we dug affected my tonsils and I couldn't swallow, which meant I was going to die. There's no doubt about it, but I was saved by another prisoner taken into the camp. On the day when I first had this laryngitis or whatever, I couldn't swallow, I was outside of the tunnel making sure that the transmission belt that was carrying the stones wasn't stuck.

I was outside and it was raining. There was a guard outside. He was looking at me. I was a skinny boy. I ran a high fever that day. He kept coming closer and closer. I stopped and took off my cap because that's what one's supposed to do. He says, "Sprichst du Deutsch?" "Do you speak German?" "Ja." He said, "I want to ask you a question. What would you do to us suppose we lose the war? Not that it's going to happen."

I looked at him astonished. I said, "Was?" Then said, "Ha." He kicked me. I rolled down the mountain laughing. I was so happy. I could see his future. Here I was, starved to death, running a fever, a concentration camp inmates, in the rags, it was raining, and he wanted to know what we would do to him in case they lost the war. You know what? We didn't. We did nothing to them. You couldn't pay me a million dollars to scratch a German child. That is also a fact. That's where we should end.

01:26:00Patty: You don't want to talk about returning to Poland or anything about your family?

Ted: My family, none of them survived. At one point, I thought a second cousin survived, but I couldn't find him. That's not so unusual, not for people whose whole family was taken to camps. I thank you very much for your patience and for your profound questions. I hope I never have to do this again.

Patty: We certainly appreciate your time and sharing. Thank you.

01:27:20[END OF AUDIO]