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Szymon Binke - June 16, 1997

And what was it like?

Crowded. [laugh] People slept on the floor, we used to sleep you know two on this side and two on that side, so their feet were facing your face and your feet were facing their face. But, you know, made the best of it. At least we were together.

And was there running water? Was...

No, not running water. There was no running water in Balut. We didn't have any running water when we lived out here. You have to carry water. In fact, they, you know one of those uh, wells that you pump water? Uh, ours was always broken, so we had to go across the street, which was probably about 300-400 yards, carry two buckets and bring it in. And outhouses.

Outhouses.

Yeah. There was no plumbing, no uh, sewer system.

Uh, now was there any disease because of all this?

Yes, a lot of disease.

What sorts?

Typhus. A lot of typhus, yeah. But the worst, well, later on the worst one was uh, your uh, lungs, what is it? Uh, TB. From lack of uh, nourishment.

What kinds of rations did you have when you were in the ghetto?

Probably, well, it depends. You know, at first it wasn't too bad. But then it, as it, as it uh, progressed it got worse with the food. The food situation was terrible after about two years.

And how did you get food?

Rations. If you worked, you got, you got uh, some kind of card and you had to go and get your bread and I think like uh, maybe 200 grams of bread at first. Butter and stuff was nonexistent. Some maybe uh, uh, ten grams of margarine for a week.

Meat?

No, wait. Meat? At first we did get some horse meat. But uh, like maybe two, three ounces a week.

Could, show me where you, where you, where your um, here you were, were living, where your apartment was.

In the ghetto?

In the ghetto.

Uh, let's see if I can find it. I did find it, I think. Didn't I find it once before? Let's see. Brzezinska, Franciszkanska, Lagiewnicka, Pieprzowa, right here. Pieprzowa and Mlynarska, right here. See, this is Mlynarska and this is Pieprzowa. Right this corn...this corner was the, the, the apartment building. My grandfather also had a, a, a feed store in that corner downstairs and he lived behind the store. So...

And where would you go to get rations?

I don't remember.

But you had, did you have to go someplace else?

Sure, sure, oh yeah.

And stand in line?

Yeah.

How would...

Then when you worked during the day you'd get uh, uh, uh, some soup, you know like at lunchtime.

And you, did you work?

Of course. I worked the first, my first job was in a, in a metal factory, Metalabteilung Zwei [Metalworks Two]. I can't remember where it was. My second job was Altschuhlager. That means "old, uh, uh, warehouse of old shoes." Now I know where they came from. At the time we were too stupid, like I told you. We didn't know where those old shoes came from. They came from Majdanek or Treblinka or Auschwitz. They came back and they took 'em apart and uh, we, we, we manufactured the shoes. For the army I guess, who knows where they went. But uh, that was my second job. And that was on uh, Brzezinska, right, right [sigh], probably right around here, just right by the fence, the end of the ghetto. And the other side, like I, I told you once before, the, while I was working there, there were some people they had in buildings for maybe a month or so and we didn't know, we couldn't talk to 'em or anything. We used to see 'em from the other side of the fence. And later on they just disappeared and people are saying they were gypsies. But they just stayed there about a month or so and then they were gone.

Do you know when that was, roughly?

When?

What year that was?

Probably around '43, maybe '43, '44, '43 probably, yes.

What do you think happened?

[laugh] Now I know what happened. At the time I didn't. They all, I wound up in the same camp after them. Because when I came into Auschwitz, they sent us to the Zigeunerlager, which means the gypsy camp.

But there were no gypsies there.

No, no. Just...

What had happened to them?

[laugh] They were uh, exterminated.

Um...

I never met any in, in the other camps either. Never, never saw any gypsies. I think that's as far as they went is to, to Auschwitz and that was it.

You were eight years old in the ghetto.

Well first, yes.

How were you assigned such work?

Well, you either worked or uh, you had a chance of being picked up and sent out.

Did you see people being picked up on the street?

Oh yeah.

Well, how did, what did that look like?

They, they, they ask you for a work uh, uh, you know we had a like a, like an ID card from the place that you worked. And if you didn't have it there was a chance of gettin' thrown on a truck, no, well, not truck, wagon and uh, you weren't seen again.

And who would ask?

Pardon?

Who was doing the asking?

German soldiers or Jewish police, with, with the German soldiers, yeah. We used to call the Sperre.

Which means...

I don't know. They did, that was uh, going on maybe two or three times a week. They'd come in with, they needed bodies, so older people or kids or...

Did you do any other work in the ghetto?

Like what?

Well, you had these two jobs and then any sort of freelancing?

Oh yeah, [laugh], at first I was selling uh, saccharine and candy. We had a, a friend of my father's was a candy maker before the war, so you know at the beginning there was a little sugar and he started, he was making candies, so I'd be peddling his candy right in the corner of uh, uh, not far from home. Let's see, let me find Brzezinska and, oh boy. Again I lost it. Let's see. Brzezinska, Franciszkanska, right around here, which was real close, yeah. Oh no. Wait a minute. Right here. Mlynarska and, right here, in this corner. See we lived here. It was only a block away. So...

So how did that work? Did you, did you buy the candy from him?

Right.

And then you would sell it for...

Yeah. A little profit.

And did people buy?

Sure. That was just the first year or so maybe, not even a year, but then things got, deteriorated.

What kinds of images do you have about the ghetto when you think about it? What, what comes to mind? What did it look like? What...

Dreary. Crowded at first, because at first uh, we started out with 150,000 Jews in this little area. But then you have plenty of room after, after a while. They kept bringing in people from all the suburbs. They brought 'em in from Czechoslovakia, they brought 'em in from Vienna, Austria, they brought 'em in from Germany and I think when, in 1944, I think we were down to about 30,000 or something, I don't even know. When the last...

What would a typical walk through the, the streets be like?

[laugh] We didn't do too much walking. You know, we didn't go for Spazier [stroll], like for a, for a walk. You just went to work and came home and...

Well, what would that be like? What, what time did you go to work?

Probably eight o'clock in the morning.

So you worked in the days and not on night shift.

Uh, no. Uh, the first job I worked night shift. I started out the night shift. That's right. Uh, that uh, metal uh, factory. I worked on a lathe. But the controls are supposed to be waist high. Well, to me they were up here, so I found a box I could stand on where I could, because the, the numbers on the controls, you have to look down on 'em. Well, I wasn't tall enough. So when I stood up uh, on a box I could see the numbers on the...

How did they assign an eight year-old to work on a lathe?

Well, I was lucky. I was big, you know. I was, how did they assign, [laugh] either, you either, like I told you, you either work or you had a chance of uh, gettin' caught and sent away.

And your father, did he work in the same place?

Uh, my father, no. My father worked in uh, he, he was in with uh, from before the war he knew vegetables and this, so he worked in the, in the main place where they brought in the vegetables, which was probably, oh God, let's see, Pieprzowa, Mlynarska, right, probably someplace around here there was a market. They called it Jonas Pilzer Platz. I don't know how they called it in Polish. Nobody, I tried to find out but nobody knew [laugh].

That's German.

Yeah, no. It was a Jew. It must have been uh, named after a Jew, Jonas, Jonah. And Pilzer could have been a, a nickname too. My uncle tells me he was the first one to, to put a stand with the fruits and vegetables there, so they named it after him. But I don't know.

So your father had a different job in a different part of the ghetto.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And your uncles?

Uh, let's see. Two of 'em worked in a saddle factory, you know with leather they were making, Sol and Larry, they worked in the leather uh, factory. Harry worked, he worked something with the, with the, with the streetcars. And my aunt, well, wait a minute. Then, then Sol and Larry went to the, to the straw factory. They made, in the straw factories they made shoes out of straw. They used to uh, uh, I guess for they, they needed it in Russia for the cold uh, weather in the front. And uh, what did my aunt do? She worked in a, in a, in a factory that they made clothes, tailoring.

And your mother?

My mother I don't think, I don't remember her going to work. Well, we had, she had to take care of the baby and try to keep hidden.

So she stayed out of sight.

Right.

Walking back from work, would, would, would it be dark at night when you would come back from your first job?

Uh, in the morning. That, that was in the morning already, yeah, probably.

So what would you pass on your way?

Six, seven o'clock in the morning. Streets. I don't, I don't remember what street the factory was on. The first one I don't remember what street it was on. The second one I remember and that was on Brzezinska, 96, but the second, the first one I don't remember what street it was on.

Would there be beggars standing on the streets? Would there be bodies anywhere?

Yeah, bodies. Oh yeah. Beggars, there were no beggars. Nobody would give 'em anything. Bodies, yes. They used to uh, you know if somebody died they used to put 'em out in front of the uh, uh, building and uh, a wagon would drive by and pick up the bodies.

So there's a, a kind of burial brigade.

That's right.

Um, what did you think about that?

We were in shock. You didn't, you didn't think of what's gonna be a year from now, you just thought for today. If you had enough food for today, you were happy. There was never enough food. If you survive, you had enough to survive, that was it.

Did, did anyone that you knew um, die in the building for example?

Oh yeah. A lot of people died in the building. Of course.

And did you help take them out?

No. I was, I was little. I was only seven, eight years old.

And you, you, you told me that your father had worked on another Kommando.

That was at the, the, the, the dead people?

Yes.

That was in concentration camp.

And what about the, was it the excrement Kommando that...

Oh yeah. That was in this field. Yeah. He, my dad used to work in this uh, right here, this field. And they'd uh, they'd uh, uh, put the excrement as a, as a fertilizer.

Human excrement.

Human excrement, right. And uh, you know, they needed help to push, because sometimes it got uh, muddy or something, they got stuck and they didn't want all the uh, fertilizer to go in one spot because it would burn the uh, the ground. So he'd help 'em push it. And then one day I guess this uh, guard, right here. There was, there was a fence and they had guards every few hundred feet and I guess the guard, the, the wind was blowing his way and he didn't like the smell and he took a shot and killed one of the men pushing the uh, wagon.

Your father told you about that.

My father was there, yes, helping him push that wagon, yeah.

What did he, what did he say about that? What happened to the body at that point? Did they just leave it there?

Just I guess, well everybody, you know, when they start to shoot everybody runs. Then they came back and picked up the body and, uh.

So at, at this point, age nine, ten, you're used to seeing piles of dead bodies in the street.

Oh yeah. Dead body didn't mean a thing. A dead uh, animal on a road bothers me more now than a dead body did in those days.

Was there lice?

Can we stop for a minute?

Sure.

I have to go. I'll be right...Over here?

Um, were there any other incidents like the one your father told you about that you remember?

Well, I remember one time they emptied, there was a hospital. I don't remember what year that was. That must have been '42 or '43. And they took all the sick people on, on uh, wagons and uh, took them out. And some of them, they, like kids, they'd throw 'em out of the windows. Didn't even bring 'em down. So [laugh] they got killed when they hit the uh, wagon.

Did you see that?

No. I heard 'em tell it. I didn't see that. No, I, I, I'd be, I'd be far away from them. Because I was a kid myself. I...

This kind of violence on the street, did, did you witness any of it? People being shot or beaten?

Oh yeah, beaten, yeah, a lot. Shot? No, I don't remember. Because it would have to be a German to shoot you. They, they were, they were the only ones that had weapons, [laugh] and when I saw one of them I, I'd be far away from there.

And, and, and people being beaten, do you remember seeing...

Yeah. Oh yeah, a lot. A lot.

Was that random? Was it uh, focused?

[pause] Yeah.

Random. Tell me what it was like, if you can remember. Did you ever stand in line for the rations?

For the food rations? No. For the, for the uh, uh, soup, yes.

This is at work.

Right.

And what were the rations that you would get for the family?

That was the food rations. You'd get a piece of uh, turnip, maybe uh, some potatoes. It was all on a scale, you know, but little pieces. You'd get uh, maybe uh, bread, like, well at first you'd probably get about uh, 200 grams, which was a nice slice. But later on as it went on it got smaller and smaller.

Was your father able to supplement this with uh, when he worked in the, in the field?

Some of it, yes. Yeah, yeah.

With stale vegetables?

That's right. [pause] And also when he worked in the uh, you know in the summertime he worked in the field. In the winter he worked in this uh, uh, vegetable warehouse, which we probably had it better than the average person because uh, always somethin' gets rotten, you know. Before they throw it away, why he'd uh, take it home.

Would he have to sneak it out?

Uh, I don't think so. No, he wouldn't, no, he wouldn't steal. He wouldn't take a chance on stealing, because he, it was a good job and he would uh, lose the job. So apparently it was uh, uh, it was okay with the higher ups to take something that was half rotten.

Were, were people starving?

Oh yeah, oh yeah.

And what was that like, to see people starving?

Always saw people's swollen legs like, like balloons and once your leg, you saw 'em, whe...whe...when their legs started to swell up you knew they were ready to...they wouldn't last very long. You know, they were real skinny on their body but their legs would be very swollen from the knee uh, down. Oh, the ankles I should say mostly, uh.

Anyone in your family?

[sigh] No. No.

You said that there was no running water and the sanitary facilities were less than...

Right.

Sanitary. Um, so were there lice?

In the ghetto, not too bad, no. I suppose there were some, but not, we didn't have too, we didn't have too much, no. We tried to, my mother was a real stickler for cleanliness and uh, I don't remember having any lice in the ghetto. But plenty of 'em in the concentration camp.

Uh, you said that the Germans had weapons, which means the Jewish police did not...

No, no.

have guns anymore.

No, no, no.