Marvin Kozlowski - August 28, 2002
People Asking About Experience
Did anybody ask you after the war? Did anybody ask questions? Like when you...
Sure some people had questions I was going to be brief if they had to ask, yeah.
Did you think they really wanted to know?
A lot of people don't wanted to know and don't want to know.
Let me put it another way. Do you think that somebody that wasn't there can really know?
Wife: No, because I don't believe what we went through and we are here. How can I expect them to believe it.
No, it's impossible. Everyday you could write a book about every day life.
So what you told me today is about one percent--ten percent?
You can't describe this, you can't describe this. And I was lucky when I came in later. When uh, when uh, another time I came in, a Kapo came in, a Jewish Kapo came in to grab people to work and I was in the house. Who knows where I would have been ended up in. It was during the ghetto. And the guy was, happens to be a S.O.B. But, he dealt with us--we had the grocery store. He was selling tea and other thing, maybe coffee too. ???, you probably heard of him. He was maybe in, in ???.
Wife: Finland?
Yeah. Yeah Okay. Anyway, he saw me, he saw me in the house. He found out who it is, he let me go. Yeah. But.
You said a lot about Kapos.
Wife: Oh yeah.
Have you ever, did you ever meet one of the Kapos after the war, on the street someplace?
Wife: One of 'em almost killed my father. My father went anyhow. But they were trying to do something to him, they never did.
They tried. They thought by being mean to us, they're going to save their lives. They, they thought so. I remember, distinctly remember I think a guy by the name ???. Originally he was in Łódź. But they--when the Germans came in, he came into our hometown. And uh, they were uh, uh, taking a certain amount of people away. For no reason. The ones that working in the munition factory had a better chance. So his mother was one of the people. And we asked him to go out, asked the officer to let her go. He did not go out to save his own, his own mother.
Wife: Because he must--he would have been killed himself.
He would have gone with her, I can assure you that. Okay.
You think he should have gone out?
Yeah.
And then died.
Because we didn't believe that we were going to make it anyway.
I see. Did you ever meet a Kapo after the war? Ever see one?
No.
You never ran into them?
I didn't see
Wife: No. Why?
A Kapo? I didn't meet them.
Wife: ???
Yeah. Yeah.
Wife: ??? why didn't you tell him?
Yeah...
In Detroit. And what happened?
Look, this guy happens that I met in the camp. I did not know him until then. I know him I saw him on the street once when he was a soldier in the Polish Army, that's all I knew him. So I really didn't have any connections with him, yeah. And uh, I don't know how he was. I know some I met were not good.
Wife: What do you mean people didn't talk about it.
Oh yeah, yeah. They were talking about him yeah. All I know that I was in uh, in uh, I heard about him
Wife: ???.
they were in, in one of those, in one of those uh, barracks. There were few barracks when I was with him and I came to uh, ???. As I say, he lied. The people that know him, stayed--kept there. The rest of the people were sent away.
Wife: That's how the people worked. The Germans didn't know who had the money or who didn't.
Yeah, okay. So uh, he was there and he was the uh, the Blockführer. Which means by Blockführer, you were in charge of giving out the food okay? So in the morning you would give out a piece of bread. The bread was about equal so you couldn't do very much. Maybe he was left for, he left for himself. And uh, I distinctly uh, know a guy told me that he was at coming and they would, they would mix the food, they would give him water. He said, "Why did you mix it?" He took the, uh...
Wife: Ladle, whatever.
Yeah, there was a ladle, they hit him over his head, okay.
Wife: Well he got his share. He's dead for twenty-seven years.
Yeah.
Wife: Very nice person.
Very nice person. And from a, from a, a, a high family, from very nice family. People became animals.
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