Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Samuel Biegun - February 15, 1983

Life in DP Camps

...we had some of the schooling, you know, from uh, I took up--I started taking up tool and die making, which uh, I couldn't change when I was transferred to a different camp, you know. Uh, I had to take--they didn't have tool and die and I had to take up carpentry. So I could never, you know, have finished my education because I was traveling from one place to another.

In this camp was it mostly Jews?

Most of 'em, yeah.

Was there...

Only survivors, most of them survivors.

Were there services, religious services?

Yes.

Holidays?

Holidays, yes. We had enough food to eat. I mean, it was from the relief from the American...

And you were going to school. And your brothers and sister, brother and sister was going to school?

Well, my brother was in a different place uh, me and my sister were in the same but my brother was in a different place and then, then he came back to us.

And you were there for how long?

In Berlin uh, '46, '48, two and, two and a half years. And then we had to uh, fly to the blockade to uh, Frankfurt, from Frankfurt took the train and went to, near Stuttgart, which is uh, ??? and from there we went to Israel, '49.

Let's go back a little bit. Your--you had to move from Berlin. Is it now, because it was what, then...

Because the uh, the Russian blockade had been, had to liquidate all the, the refugee camps.

You were there two to three years, right.

Yes.

Were you--were your family--was your family trying to go somewhere from there?

They were trying to go either to United States or, or to Israel because my father had a brother and a sister that time with families.

Where?

In United States, in New York. Then uh, my brother and sister they left for Israel so we decided all go.


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