Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Joseph Gringlas - January 14 & 22, March 18, 1993

Return to Poland

You went back to Poland? We should talk about how you went back to Poland.

Yeah, back to Poland.

You and your brother together?

Yeah.

Did you think anyone had survived?

We knew--we didn't think survived, but maybe, you know, I just think of my brother, that brother, which remember I told you about in the army eh, Polish army, fighting...

Yeah.

...the war with Germans. He survived and he never seen it. Who, maybe when, we couldn't think about maybe we'll go back and we'll find him. We came back eh, we went on the tr...it was trains going through Poland on the tra...you know, going through Ger....We went on the trains in Germany going to Poland. We saw a lot of the--Leipzig and Dresden was like finished. All the buildings were like skeletons. We sa...we felt good about it. They should have the taste what we went through. And then we came Poland and we, we, we were--I was with my brother where they're loading, on the train going to Poland on the coals. You know coal--on the coal they use them to make the train go, the locomotive. So all was dark, we came my hometown. In hometown we found some, from my hometown, some survivors. We made a committee and they helped us, food, something, dress, getting, you know, clothes.

Was the Joint there?

Yeah, it was probably organized by the American Jewish people. But the, the people worked is the people were, were survivors.

Mm-hm.

And uh, I went to my, the town, it was the same thing, was the war. It looked like same thing. And I went to one of the, go...eh, going back something to tell you about something. When the war broke out. Can I go there?


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