I Was There: A Witness for Future Generations

An Interview with Saul

Meeting Saul

Leslie: Today I’m in Miami, and I’m going to visit Saul. He was born in Hungary into a very religious family.

Leslie: Hi, Saul. How are you? I told you I was going to come with something. I made the babka for you.

Saul: Oh, my God. Chocolate babka!

Leslie: Okay, so I figured if my kids love it, you may like it.

Saul: I’m sure I’m going to like it.

Leslie: Where do you want me to put this?

Saul: Any place in the kitchen.

Leslie: In the kitchen?

Saul: It’s here. This is my late wife. I just lost her.

Leslie: I’m sorry. It was last year, right?

Saul: Yes. That’s my first wife. My wedding. And those are my two sons.

Childhood in Hungary

Saul: I was born in Hungary, in a very rural little town. No more than 3,000 people, 55 Jewish families. In a Hasidic family. I had long payot and a very Hasidic way of life until we were taken away. I was a rebellious type of kid. I was not happy with the Hasidic way of life as a child.

Leslie: Can I jump right in? I feel terrible asking you, but I see it’s fading away.

Saul: Yes. Listen, it’s a lot of years.

Leslie: How many years? When did you get it? How long ago?

Saul: As soon as I got to Auschwitz. [Year unclear in captions.] I was among the first transports from Hungary. Not the first—the third or fourth transport from Hungary. That’s why it’s such a low number: 3913 [tattoo number requires verification]. You had no name. You only had the number.

Leslie: You look so young. What is your secret? How old are you, first of all?

Saul: Ninety-two.

Leslie: Even your skin is amazing.

Saul: Yes, but here you can see the age.

Leslie: Hungary was allied with Nazi Germany. Saul’s parents were grocers, and until 1944 daily life remained fairly normal, despite the constant antisemitism.

Saul: In the schoolyard, it wasn’t bad. With our classmates, we sort of got along. But the teachers were very antisemitic. They were the ones who taught antisemitism. They wouldn’t even call us by our first names. They used to call us “Jew boy” or “Jew girl.” Yes, the teachers were very antisemitic.

The Roundup and the Brick Factory

Leslie: [The supplied captions give an inconsistent date and country for the German invasion.] Jews were rounded up into ghettos. Then the deportations began at a relentless pace.

Saul: It was the last day of Passover, at five in the morning, on a Sunday morning. They were knocking on the window: “Neighbor, get up, because by ten in the morning you have to be at the schoolyard. If you don’t show up there, the gendarmes will come and get you.” [A phrase about the local police is unclear in the captions.]

Saul: All the Jews from the village were gathered. They transferred us to a brick factory. The brick factory had a roof with some pillars, but no walls.

Leslie: How many families were there?

Saul: Fifty, sixty, seventy families. People were trying to hang up sheets so the families could have some privacy. Terrible conditions. Very little food. We spent about three weeks there.

Deportation in Cattle Cars

Saul: One morning, they announced, “Get up. Give up all your personal belongings.” They mainly meant jewelry or money. That’s what they were after. They announced that they were marching us to the railroad station, and they loaded us into cattle cars. Maybe 90 to 95 people in each cattle car—women, children, babies, elderly people. [A short phrase about families is unclear.] Families, of course, wanted to be together.

Leslie: So you were all squashed in there?

Saul: All squashed. They gave us a bucket of water and a bucket for waste. As soon as the train started moving, the bucket fell over. It spilled, so we had no water. We were on that train for two and a half days.

Leslie: You were mentioning that you still recall, to this day, the sound of the cattle car when it closed, with that latch that closes.

Saul: A horrible, horrible sound.

Leslie: You were in the cattle car for two and a half days?

Saul: Two and a half days. No food, no water.

Leslie: No water. You couldn’t even sit?

Saul: No, we couldn’t sit. There were some [word unclear] people; they made some room to sit down, or they collapsed, or whatever it was. It was very frightening. At night, we were sidetracked. It was dark, and there was shooting. Then, of course, we arrived at Auschwitz.

Arrival and Separation at Auschwitz

Saul: As a 13-year-old, I jumped off the train because it was very high. But elderly people, or women with children, couldn’t do it. They just shoved them off. Over the microphone, they were yelling, “Able men, one line. Women and children, the other line.” There were a lot of people. It was chaotic, with yelling.

Saul: As we lined up, my father was among the able men. My younger sister, my mother, my older sister and I were standing with the women and children. As we were standing in line, a man who worked on the railroad came over to my mother. He said, “Listen, let him go to the men’s line. If somebody asks how old he is, he should say he’s 18 years old and ready to go to work.”

Saul: The more the man talked to my mother, the stronger she held my hand. But I was already conditioned by the antisemitism. I was older than 13 as far as that was concerned.

Leslie: You mean your maturity?

Saul: Maturity. But when it came to that—survival, whatever instinct—I said, “Mom, he knows what he’s talking about. He works here. Let me go back to my father.” So I went back to my father, but the men’s line was already moving. I didn’t find my father, and I never saw him again.

Leslie: You never saw your dad?

Saul: I never saw my dad again.

Leslie: And you never saw your mom?

Saul: My mother and my sister—I never saw them again.

Selection and the Loss of His Family

Saul: The line was moving. We got to the location where the selection was, and they asked me how old I was. I was afraid to say 18. I said 16, and they told me to go. I didn’t know where I was going.

Saul: We got to a central location where they took away our clothes, sprayed disinfecting powder and cut our hair. The only thing they left us was our shoes. We could keep our shoes. We understood that [phrase about the Gestapo unclear] they didn’t just want to kill you. They wanted to dehumanize you before they killed you.

Saul: In the evening, they put us into an empty barrack. I was asking people who knew me, “Where is my father?” We were only two kids among six or seven hundred people. The man in charge, the [title unclear in captions], took us by the hand to the door. He pointed to the chimney and said, “Do you see that flame? You don’t have parents anymore. They were gassed and cremated within two hours of arriving. You have nobody anymore. From now on, the only thing you should have in mind is to try to survive.”

Forced Labor and Survival

Leslie: Saul was sent with the youngest prisoners to a coal factory that was part of the [industrial complex name unclear in captions].

Saul: It was a [word unclear] break. First of all, we were indoors, and it was warm. We had very little interaction with SS guards. We were in fairly decent conditions. Our bunks were not that bad. We had blankets. The routine was that as long as you went to work and weren’t sick, you were a robot. That sort of thing.

Leslie: Did you ever try to escape?

Saul: No way. There were escapes maybe two or three times during that period. They pulled us back from our regular work, from our shift, to watch the hangings of those who tried to escape. It was horrible, horrible.

Leslie: He worked there like a slave from mid-1944 to January 1945.

The Death March and Another Camp

Saul: By the middle of the summer of 1945 [year as supplied; chronology requires verification], we saw British and American bombers every day, bombing all the surrounding factories. On January 17, they announced, “We’re marching. We’re leaving the camp.” That was where the death marches started. Anybody who couldn’t march, anybody who stepped out of line, was killed on the spot, at the side of the road.

Leslie: After three days of marching, they arrived at the [camp name unclear in captions].

Saul: We had to go for disinfection. We heard “disinfection” again, and “shower,” and thought that was going to be the end.

Leslie: Do you remember entering the shower, thinking—?

Saul: Before that, we said goodbye to each other. We were in pretty poor condition by that time, after not eating for approximately eight days, except for snow.

Leslie: So you hugged your friends. You thought, “That’s it.”

Saul: Yes. We had to undress and go into the shower. To our amazement, hot water came out. It was a real shower. So we came alive. But the conditions were horrible. There was a lot of sickness. People were dying. They had arrived at the camp already in very poor condition.

Saul: We got a lucky break again. A week later, they separated us, the youngest ones, and took us to the main camp, to barrack 8, which was a dummy showcase for the Danish Red Cross.

Leslie: You were there to show that you were well treated?

Saul: It was a quarantine area with barbed wire around it. We didn’t have to go to the main head count in the morning. The blankets were excellent. It was just to show off to the Red Cross.

Luck and Liberation

Saul: When I see other survivors, I ask, “How do you think you made it out?” There is no answer. Luck, or whatever. You had to be in the right place at the right time. That’s it. I’m no hero. I had lucky breaks. I’m telling you, I was a robot. [The following phrase about following whatever came his way is unclear in the captions.]

Saul: The first day, the first two days, the American Army showered us with Hershey’s. You see the Hershey’s? I still love it. In the American daily rations, there was a three-inch-long Hershey bar.

Leslie: So those already existed?

Saul: Yes, it was the same. To this day, I love Hershey’s.

Leslie: Because it’s a very good memory for you?

Saul: Yes. They were fantastic.

Leslie: Saul returned to Hungary, hoping to find someone. By some miracle, his sister and brother had survived. He lived with his sister for three years, then left for Israel and later the United States.

A Witness for Future Generations

Leslie: So you’re now telling your stories to the younger generation?

Saul: I do, because, unfortunately, I would never have believed that antisemitism would raise its ugly head again in my lifetime the way it is happening now. I’m there to tell them, “I have the number on my arm. I was there. I was close to the fire. I was close to the gas.” It’s not just a story. It actually happened. I am a witness, still today.

Saul: They should really learn about the past, and not just because of the Jews. It starts with the Jews; it never ends with the Jews.

Leslie: Wasn’t it too hard for you to talk about it?

Saul: It was hard, but it’s for a good cause and a good purpose. I wish you success. Show the film to a lot of young people so they learn from the past and don’t repeat the same mistakes.

Speaker unconfirmed: Thank you. Bye. Love you. Bye. Thank you. Thank you for everything you do. Be well. Okay. Bye.