Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Louis Kaye - May 9, 1983

Your friend is living there now?

I think. I don't hear nothing from him, I think he's not living no more. He's an older man. He would be now, he will be like my brother's age, he will be already close to seventy-five, eighty and he was sick. His kids might living in Poland. But I used to get letter from, about five or six years ago, I used send him money. I just wanted to help him. But when I come into Poland after the war in my city... See my village was left over you can count the people. Nineteen forty-six we have a Pesach in Poland... I still got a picture from Poland from eastern, what, like they did. All together was sixty, seventy people, and fifty people from different, around my city. What's left over, only twenty people.

You talking about Jewish people?

Jewish people. And everybody run out. They was, they was afraid to stay there. Don't stay, they will kill you night time, don't take chances, stay around here. Walk away from here.

You say that uh, one of the Polish people helped you.

Who did help me. Nothing special. What he, what he help me? He was a barber. I was waiting in the line coming in the concentration camp in Germany, he was looking for people from his own city, so he do me a favor. At home he was an anti-Semitist. At home, where they... He was hating Jews. So, he took me out, not waiting the line, and he cut me the hair and don't beat up. He help me. But at home, he would kill me. So, when he come home after the war, the whole little village now, I helped just a little. It was nice and he helped me, but still, he, I know the way he was before and the way he was there when he was concentration with me. He was a politic, it was not because he's Jewish. If the Pol... if Polish people will help the Jewish people, there would be lots of people living today. The same thing with the ??? the ??? like every German. If the Polacks will help them, there would be lots of people living today. When there was fighting the Warsaw ghetto, there was more be afraid from the Polacks than for the German too. They was fighting both. If the Polack help you, he, he got paid a top price to get a gun or ammunition or everything. They don't help you because they won't help you, try to get you out more and more from you.