Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Simon Goldman - June 6, 2003

Brother Goes to Germany

So what--when he came to see you, did they suspect that you were Jewish too?

No, no. He did, that was a different, different farm, so. When he came back and came on my farm, they told him to leave. But he came there to tell me what's happening and he stayed there on a farm for awhile. And there was nothing for him to do. I mean, there was different farmers. And uh, so he decided--before, yeah--he decided that he's going to be enlisted to go to Germany as a Polack, to work in Germany.

Did he have false papers?

No, no papers. I didn't have any papers either, nobody had--didn't have papers. But he enlisted to go to Germany as a Polack to work. And how he, how he got through the inspection, because they usually give you an inspection, you know.

A medical.

A nude, nude, yeah, medical inspection. I don't know how he got through that. But he, he made it to Germany and he was working there. And he used to correspond to me, sending me letters, you know, sending me some clothes because they were getting paid. So that helped me out a lot too because if I was getting letters from Germany, you know, so. They knew that, that, they knew that he was--they couldn't have suspected me as being Jewish. So I worked on a farm and he was in Germany. At the same time I was on a farm that my first cousin, the same age as I, he came by the farm there and he had the same problem with the, with the language. And he escaped from the--they already closed off the ghetto in ???, in ???. And he came out there and he waited until he caught me--he knew too where I was. He caught me behind the barn and he was telling me what's hap...what happened in ???, you know, they closed up the ghetto. And he came out with the, with the Polish wagon through the... When they came through the market and he sneaked on a wagon and he came, and he got out. And there was nothing I could do for him. I said, they don't know I'm Jewish here and if you stay we're bo...going to be both in trouble. Because I was completely open, I was never hidden. So I said, why don't you go and try to find someplace else where you can stay. And that's the last time I saw him. Never heard from him again.


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