Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Henry Dorfman - August 11 & 25, 1989

Help from Poles

Is that the same people?

Yeah, where I was hidden, yeah. This is already the second generation. Some of them are the first. But the guy where we were actually hidden, he and his wife, he's not alive anymore. I'll tell you, he had--he has three girls and a boy. That girl just, you know, because, you know, fa...before my father was very much in touch with them. But I left in 1945, '44 actually, because we were liberated from the Russians. And like I say, we lived by that guy until the Russians liberated us in 1944 when they came in, in that little strip over the, over the Vistula. There was a strip by I don't know probably ten kilometers one way and five kilometers or ten--the length. We were in the middle. When they liberated us we right away went over the Vistula and then the, the bombing and the, the, and the Germans and things. But the Germans were already finished--just about finished. They were already escaping. So we went over, we went to Lublin. Lublin was the big city where--because that time there was no concentration camp people. There was all partisans underground, people hidden, you understand, on Polish papers and which I had Polish papers, you know. We all had Polish papers.

Where did you get the papers?

Papers we got from, on, from Warsaw. We bought 'em.

While you were in hiding.

Yes. My father got them. Different names, same pictures and everything.

But not through the people who were hiding you?

Nah.

No. Through the underground.

Through the underground. I was--we were getting papers from these. My father used to go out. I went with him out there, but I just didn't uh, listen. We were looking what's happening here, I didn't know so. But we used to go out and we used to get the papers from England from the underground papers. We knew about Mr. Roosevelt, about that bastard, we knew about him. That he could save, he could save hundreds of thousands of Jews and he didn't...[telephone rings] a lot of people go on living along with it, living along with it. You could, you could think--you couldn't even think, you couldn't even think about the, uh. You, you have to wind up in the hospital if you really want to think what you really have seen. I have seen mothers with little kids when we were going to the train grabbing away their little kid by ear or five or three away from their mothers and their fathers. And, and if the mother didn't want to get up she was shot right on the, right on the things, right in front of everybody. So I--what a murderers. And the world and the world was so quiet. So they, so they make money out of it. Why I didn't do it all along ??? because I think that we lived the same way, we. And even I'm seeing what's happening in the world, what's happening, what's happening in Israel. I have no faith. I wouldn't--except if the world is getting humanity or maybe. I'll tell you what happened to my daughter in Saginaw. Because she was, she, you know, she was a dancer, she was out from high school. This was--I mean eh, probably fifteen years ago, she's right now thirty-two. And she was going to Southfield High School and she went with a whole-- with a bunch of dancers you know, to perform in Saginaw. And I, and, and she come home and she cried and she didn't know what to do about it. She, she told her, her teacher. A couple girls they come up to her and says, "You're Jewish," she says, "Yes, I'm Jewish." "But you haven't got no horns." I remember like today. She was so disturbed it was unbelievable. She says, "What kind of a people are they? What are they taught, what, what is it all about? When--I normal somebody can come up to me and say I got horns? I supposed to have horns because I'm Jewish?" So I don't see that the education ???.


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