Emerich Grinbaum - October 3, 2000 & January 8, 2001
Father's Attitude
I don't want to belabor this, but on one hand there's this survival of the fittest mentality on the other hand your...
No! This...
...father did not pursue...
Not entirely, of course, of course. But you know, there the survival of the fittest. That, that was the survivor. You know, unfortunately, many times even some Jews were uh, there were Jewish Kapos. Not in our place, but there were some Jewish, Jewish Kapos in other camps. And they--not everybody was behaving good, you know. That's also part of survival. Uh, in Warsaw, we had, we had a guy who, a Jewish guy from our area. His name, I, I remember, Zoltan, Zoli Friedman, a young guy, very nice looking, smart guy. And for reason he, he always managed to be on some kind of position. In Warsaw and here. I don't know how did it, he did it. And he was the one who, who decided to put uh, help the uh, consulting whom to send to this Kommando and the other Kommando, which was you know, because he knew ev...these people. And he was rather rude. He had to be rude otherwise they would have kick him out. And people were very angry at him. But there was some other side. If you are interested. There was a very nice guy, a doctor from Nagy Varod, Nagy Varod is Transylvania. That belonged to Hungary also. You know the part of Transylvania, Cluj and Nagy Varod they took together in the camp. He was a doctor. His name was Dr. Deutsch and he was, he was very good in German. A lot of people spoke German and he was the...
Deutsch?
Deutsch--and he was the interpreter then because mostly there were Hungarians there, as I said. And he spoke Hungarian. So when the German wanted to convey some message you know, during the Zählappell, he was the guy who came and he interpreted. And he had a good job, he didn't go out to work and he did some writings and all the interpreting different things. And he was a, he was a very nice guy. When we met him he always tried to joke and to cheer up and, and I remember uh, just a case, a mentality in the camp--when the previous Lagerführer was the Meyer, who was very rude and, and sometimes if you didn't stay in a line, he kicked her you know, and you know, you have to stay in you know, and not very when something was not in order or something. And this Deutsch went always with him because he had to tell most of the Hungarians, they didn't understand uh, Yiddish ???. Those of us from Transcarpathia we understood Yiddi...uh, uh, German because we spoke Yiddish. But real Hungarian Jews they didn't speak Yiddish. So they didn't speak German either, except some of the more educated. So he had to interpret. I remember cases that Dr. Deu...somebody didn't stay in a line or something was not in order. So there was expected to have beaten up. So Deutsch was so smart, he, he sensed that. He went up to him and he give him a pat you know, he give him a...
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