Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Louis Kaye - May 9, 1983

Deportation of Family

When you were living in the ghetto...

Yeah.

...what was it like? How...What was it like?

In... I would say it was... Like I say, it was in the ghetto. I was not much long in the ghetto. In '42 they took me to concentration camp already though. Between nineteen... From '39 to '42, I was living in the ghetto. Day by day was afraid to go outside, and everyday they killed people. They put them in the woods, they put 'em here. If... They tell you don't do this, or don't do this, if you're hiding something. Because after they found it, they took you out in the middle and, and kill you. That's what they did.

Was your, was your family able to stay together for a while?

My family was stay together up... After they took my brothers away to uh, Lublin, I told you to the Lublin over there, there another concentration camp.

How many of your brothers did they take?

Three.

How did they pick out these three?

They just go in the street and pick people, they walking out. That's all, they don't ask you, it's just picking. How did they pick me up? They pulled me out and they took... put me in a bus and uh, in uh, autobus, a big one, like three uh, four auto they took us away and I didn't know where I'm going. Maybe if they would not took me out I would not be here neither.

Did you have a chance to see your brothers again after they were taken?

They come back home. I saw 'em.

Where did they go?

When they got back home, they took me out, away from them, and, and, and they did and took 'em, and they would go to Treblinka. They took 'em and kill 'em in Treblinka. If my father would not tell them to come home, maybe be living today. My father told them not to go to Russia. He could go escape from them by the border and jump over the grass.

So, when they took 'em out of the ghetto, they, they took 'em to where, to like a camp, a work camp?

When... What year?

The first time when they took your brothers.

They took 'em. They came, yeah, near the Russian border.

And your father had instructed them not to go into Russia.

Never... Not to come uh, not to go Russians, to come back here, because if you go to Russian, you become a goy or some... He was very religious, you know what I mean? But not, maybe my brother be liv... from the three brothers, when they would be Russians, they'd be living today. Though when he come back though later he was going with everybody to Treblinka. Nineteen forty-two they took him. They picked, the Germans picked always a holiday to kill the people.

A holiday.

Always on a holiday. Same thing ??? they killing the pigs, the same thing they took the people to Treblinka and kill 'em, exactly. Anything they do with here, they do over there with... make soap, make this from everything.


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