Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Abraham Pasternak - May 11, 1982

Life in Betlan During the War

Was anyone in your family or the community aware of the changes in regime and, and...

No, first of all, let me tell you about the community. There was very little communication, if you really want to know. It's a, it's a sm...you know, in spite of being about a 5,000 family population, or whatever, we had one telephone, which it belonged to the post office and a Jew didn't have any access to go at that time, especially in the last days or so and to go and find out...who would call me on the telephone? And then there was radios. "The Voice of America" did not tell us anything about Auschwitz. I didn't know anything about...we knew that Jews are being picked up but we didn't know they're going...they're slaughtering them, I mean, by the, by the thousands, by the millions. We only knew this...that we were responsible for the war because every time that we used to be picked up, I mean, to go for the labor force...to go and work...to go and clean up the toilets for the, for the office...I mean, for the police or clean up the football...the soccer field or clean up the streets. You know, there are so many things I can go back and tell you. For instance...all right, let me finish this and I'll go back and tell you some ridiculous things that they did to us. So, while we were marching there was a priest...a Catholic priest...and we had on our armbands and he said, "You see these little kids? These are responsible for the war." Now, can you imagine? I'm responsible for a war! I'm responsible, I mean, for, for, for Hitler's war...because of me this is a war. While I was doing these times, I was walking once on the sidewalk and my ??? who were charge of us...

In the labor force?

Was the labor...what? Was the labor force. And I was, what? I was about sixteen, seventeen at the time. He was walking arm in, you know, with his girlfriend but he wanted to show what a ??? he is so he made me get off the sidewalk and, you know, in Europe once in a while you see there's a little bit of a...not a creek...you see, the water runs down between the sidewalk and, and the street. I don't know what you would call that. It's just a...

Sewer?

...sewer. But it's an open sewer. He insisted upon that I walk in that sewer so that he could show off, I mean, to his girlfriend, okay? That's what they did to us. Or here is something else: uh, everybody had to have identification cards and Jews had to take a special identification card...they had to have their pictures on them. So we took the pictures and here again my uh, father, Alav Hashalom, said to me, "Avrum, ??? Go, go and send the pictures...take over the pictures." I did. And I was having payes at the time but my...at that time, I mean, my payes were, you know, tied up or behind my ears or something like...I tied them up. I hid them between my hair so that uh, they shouldn't have access, I mean, every time I go and pick on me. But they knew about it, you know, some of these guys that worked over there and them too. His girl...his girlfriend...the parents of her...the parents of this girlfriend were very good people. They were close to, to uh, to my mother and father because we used to buy our milk...I used to go to their...to the barn when they used to milk...I used to go to the barn and wait there and stay there and watch him while he was milking the cow so that I can bring home the milk because there is a Jewish law, a Jewish kid had to be with the uh, with the...during...at the time of milking. Well, may be strange to some people but this is it. Al knows about it. So she had a boyfriend who worked...who happens to be one of the Hungarian sergeants, whatever. And I walk in there...it was a Friday before Shabbos, I'll never forget it...and he wants to show off to his girlfriend and she didn't say a God damned thing about it because...and she knew me. And he cut off my paye...one of them and he left one of them to make me look, you see, I looked ridiculous that way. So I come home and I said to my father, I said, "??? payes" and he said, "Now, what do you want to do?" and I said, "I would like to cut off the other paye." He said, "??? If you cut off the other paye, then he won. Leave it on, what difference does it make? You can hardly, can hardly see it." And, naturally, I would never do against my father. I wasn't happy with the decision but I was never uh, I was never uh, do against my father's wishes. You know what's interesting? It really didn't matter. Nobody knew about it. So these are the things, I mean, these are the type of the things that they used to do uh, to us. I mean, because they felt they had the authority they can pick on us and do anything they wanted with us. It would be like ??? lech. We would turn the other cheek and that was that. This was our...


© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn