Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Louis Kaye - May 9, 1983

Family Pictures 1

All right, Mr. Kaye is showing me a family picture.

Pardon me?

Wife: He's talking.

Yeah, I'm over here. These not the family picture, this only my mother, my brother and my cousin. This only a wedding. This my mother, this is my brother and my cousin. Those are all family from a wedding. This is a wedding.

Let me ask you something. I see some very old pictures here.

Right.

How did you happen to keep these pictures?

Because when, I told you, when, when I was in concentration camp, before they liquidate the city, my parents have neighbors across the street, Polack. And when I come back from concentration camp, the first thing they hand them over the picture to me.

What did they do, go into the house and, and try to save some things for you?

No, I was... See when I come to the city, I used to know the people. How small I was, I knew my... the neighbors everything, they were surprised to see me and everything. They say, you know, Lou, what I got, I got pictures your mother and father left you, I give you the pictures. The... Then it was a few months, then I run away from Poland because the pogroms start out 1946. The Polish people at Dachau they start talking uh, some Jewish people kill a baby for matzah for Pesach. They make pogrom, they kill Jews. I was there when the Kielce pogrom, when they killed... the pogrom. But then they took from the train, between Kielce and ??? they throw down the people from the train and kill 'em in my city. In my... Yeah.

When was that?

This was already after the war

After the war.

Nineteen forty-five, 1946. The Polish people, yeah. AK-Krajowa. The same thing with the partisans. Maybe you hear the story about the partisans. The partisans, they were afraid for the German and they, they fight the Polacks in, in the forest too. The, the Polack, the partisans, they were fighting the Jews. Like I say, for not the Polish people, would be lots of people living today.


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