Bernard Hirsch - June 29, 1982
Learning of the Holocaust
How did you know about the camps--the concentration camps?
After all we knew that our--they took our parents there.
But how did you know what was happening there?
Uh, this uh, it's hard to answer. Probably we knew from it uh, we were three hundred boys in the army. Somebody probably had some information what's going on. Like I said, the rabbi from Nitra he gave a lot information what...what's going on. We knew it that they are--and then another thing I knew it because mine brother--the youngest brother they took April--in April and they took him in the salt uh, in the salt mine in Poland. And Passover I run--I went home for a visit to my parents from the army. The whole uh, almost everybody had uh, papers--legal, legal.
Yeah.
They said that we could go for Passover home. So when I came home my mother was crying that he is dead already--my brother--my youngest brother.
How did she know?
I don't know from where. She was--I just walked in, she was crying. I never forget. I just was walking to the house and she was crying already that he is not alive. That was six weeks.
So you don't know how you knew about what was going on in the camps, but you just knew.
We knew that something is going--they knew that it's going on something.
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