Nathan Nothman - November 30, 1982
Punishment in Gross-Rosen
The occasion--what I saw once, it's unbelievable. A father with a son was separated, and the son want to be with his father together. So the son run away from one camp and joined his father in another camp. Because that prison...that uh, son run away from one camp, they made appeal and they want to hang the son. But they made, they made so ruthless and, I mean, this is unbelievable how they are ruth...I mean, they, they were human. They, they didn't have no decency. They didn't have feeling for a human being. They, they want to hang the person but he was, he was standing--his feet was touching the ground. So they said to the father, "Come here, lift his feet from your son so he can be hanged." He said he wouldn't do it. "If you don't do it, I'll put you there and your son will be hanging." So the son in Jewish "Fo'ter ???" that means, "Father, hang me, but then take revenge." That was 1944, I would say October--September or October--end of. And he, and he didn't want it. So somehow he went and lift his son's feet. And that was this--this is, this--that was a crime that nobody can explain. And we ask to God, "Come by--why you--what--why should we suffer so much. What is it?" There was no answer. In 19...January 1945. We were working in the, in the, in the Kra...in that ???, we--they were, they were killing, they were hanging, they were--in January 1945 they evacuated the camp.
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