Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Fred Ferber - September 11 & 25, 2001

'48.

Right. January, 1948.

Who were you with?

I was at that time with my uncle Sam and Cyla Wiener. Sam and Cyla Wiener. My mother was with me and eh, there were some other people, Eva, who was a, a wonderful young girl, she was a good friend of mine, and I cared for her very much. Eva Hoyblum, her mother and her uncle. I think that makes about nine. There may have been one more. Anyhow, so that night we crossed the, we crossed the river also and it was eh, it, it was also very traumatic because uh, getting on, on the, on the canoe, whatever it was, it was, we were all afraid it will tip. Eh, we, we crossed the river, then he told us where to go because he went back. And we kept going and going and going. It was late at night and in the morning it was, we didn't know whether we crossed the border already or we didn't cross. The snow was awfully heavy. Going was eh, very hard, but we kept going. And then late, late eh, at night, actually it was maybe four, five o'clock in the morning we finally knocked--eh, we, it was all fields, we went through different fields, like, semi-forest. Then we run into a, a home and all of us were extremely tired and cold. And we knocked on the door and a German eh, eh, a German, a German eh, person, the owner of that house opened the door and they welcomed us in eh, he gave us some food. Eh, we la--, we went, we laid down eh, eh, found room to sleep for, for, for all of us. He was very kind, and eh, whether he wanted to be kind or whether he was overwhelmed by nine people is besides the point. He, he was very nice to us and he told us that we already cross the border already eh, two, three, four miles before. So we were happy to know that. Next morning we got on the--he pointed us which way to go to get to a railroad station. We got to a railroad station and then we continued on eh, to Tirschenreuth to where my cousins, some of my family members eh, were, were, were living.

What town were you in when...?

Tirschenreuth, Bava...Bayer, in Bavaria.

So the German who took you in was also in Bavaria.

He was in Bavaria, right, right.

Had you heard of Kielce?

Kielce, sure.

The pogrom in Kielce.

Yes.

You had heard of that already.

It was not a question, I, I heard it, I wasn't there. I, I, I--you mean after the war?

After the war.

Oh yes. We heard about it. We heard about it and eh, eh, actually it, it was. We heard about number of pogroms, it was not that specific one, there was one of many, okay. We were afraid. People in Poland were afraid because there were small little towns all over, there were pogroms eh, against the Jewish people, okay, eh. There was, I think eh, eh, Naradowa, what was the name of this particular party--Party Naradowa, I don't remember the specific name eh, eh, of the, of this particular group of people that, that were creating that havoc.

Party of the Land, is that what that means?

Yes. Something like that. Party Narodowa means the party of the...the land's...the people of the land, something like that. Uh, so that's one of the reasons that we were running away too, because eh, as I told you before I didn't want this particular eh, priest who was eh, who I told him I am Jewish. I was going to school in Sopot, nobody knew I was Jewish. And then he was trying to convert me to, to Christian, Christianity and we all got worried that uh, if people find out that we're Jewish, eh. In Sopot there were not too many Jews uh, with the exception of the Russian Army. There, there was practically no Jews.