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Manya Auster Feldman - August 11, 1998

So you were in the French zone of the displaced persons camp.

Right. 1948. We—I came in 1947, in January. There was alsouh, a, a journey. We were—we started out thirty people on a, on a bigtruck going through the—to the German—and we went through the Germanborder. Because I said, the guards were bought out and they let us go through.And about—there was one child among us, it was a two-year-old boy. Andas we went into Germany about maybe twelve kilometers, the truck broke down.Now, what do you, what do you—how do you—what do you do now? Gointo Germany were illegal. Go back to Poland we don't want to. So, so we'restanding there on the road in the middle of nowhere. And I am, I am—I'mstill cold now. I'm shivering. I'm always—I'm anemic and I, I, I'm afraidof cold, cold weather. So I'm sitting there and I'm shivering. And all ofa sudden I hear two men come, come and say, "Who wants to walk, to walk toBerlin?" I said, "I." And I got out with these two men. And we started walking.We came into a mill, you know, where they um, do flour? And we, we got in—firstof all, we got into the—where the guard was sitting. There was a um,little oven. We warmed u. . . ourselves up. And we asked him how far is itto the next town, Ebensee. So he told us about six kilometers. And we walked.We came to the station. And uh, it was a very small town. And right away we,we, we looked different than the rest of the population. So they arrestedus. They took us into the uh, police station. And. . .

Who arrested, who arrested you?

The Germans.

The German police.

The German police, yes. And they started questioning us. Whoare we and how did we get there and what—so we said that we are—weuh, we didn't say that we came in a truck with more people. We said that wewere we, we went through the border on foot. That's what we told them. Andour aim, we said, is to go into Berlin. We understand they have displacedpersons camp, camps and we want to go to Palestine. This is our aim. Becausewe are Jews, we come—the two guys were from concentration camps. Theyhad numbers. They were very rough with us. But finally they gave in and theyput us on the train. And we came into Berlin. And we alerted the people whoare part of the, of the um, business group that were uh,that rented out thistruck. And they sent another truck and uh, they brought them back. The baby,by the way, died that night.

The baby?

The two year-old b. . . baby died.

How were they rough with you? You said the police were roughwith you?

Oh, they, they, they did not abuse us physically. But they wererough in questioning. They wanted to send us back to Poland. And we, we, weput up an opposition: You can kill us here. We're not going back to Poland.