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Joseph Gringlas - March 18, 1993

The Kommandant?

Kommandant, he's one of the leaders. And then from, from Auschwitzafter a few hours there. And uh, we went up there, on top of that, there wherethey go when the trains went by like the guards made a special to look up,you know eh, a high bell that can look out and see what's going on. So I waswith my children and my son-in-law and my wife. And, and we had, at the endI said something. I said, I said eh, "How wonderful the children had interestedto come and go so far away and to and to see the whole thing what I went through."I said, "This should be the last time the Holocaust happened this world. Andbecause there's a lot of things going on now that people didn't learn anythingfrom this gruesome war, what happened, how people suffered. And we lost oursix million of our Jewish people." And we went back home.

When you were in Birkenau, when you went to visit Birkenau,did you go to specific places that you remembered in the camp?

Yeah uh, as, but we walk in Birkenau inside the big-that wherethe fence go by, is a wall and the wall is a plan from the, from, from allthe plan, all from Birkenau the, where all the crematoriums and the barrackswere. And I told my son-in-law, I said see this, I was in D. And it was rightthere where the section D was the barracks where I wa...I was staying.

It must have been hard to go back.

It was very hard. It was, it was very hard uh, I. Before I leftgoing to that trip I went to my doctor and he said, "Are you crazy to go backthere?" So I said, I said "My children are interested to go and want to seewhat went on there." And then he gave me some, gave me some pills. In eh,in, in case I feel very. And I was, in my hometown I felt worse, I don't knowwhy, I felt wor...I was very, like, it, it's just I couldn't, I couldn't getmyself together. It was just unbelievable. And, and, and, and my-and thenmy daughter said, you're going to take those pills you won't be able to tellme anything. So I didn't take it. And in Auschwitz I uh, I explained everything.I say I was there. It was terrible. It was unbelievable, that people goingthrough that.

You told them specific stories about...

Specific stories what went on. And it was recorded on video camera,my son in law had. And he asked me, I told him about Mengele and how he pickedme out to go to Buna where I met, again-that my brother there. So it's, itwas, it was unbelievable story to be able to, to go through that. But it's,the good feeling was that I was alive and was with my children together there.See what went on.