Saul Raimi - July 7, 1982
Post-Liberation
And were you sent to a DP camp?
Yeah, then I was sent to a PDB camp. Oh, that was a DP camp from all nations. Unfortunate, you know, our good friends the Ukrainians ???. A lot of those Ukrainians were SS who served with the uh, Germans but they got uh, uh, the Americans gave them the status as refugees because they couldn't move back to Russia. And uh, after we uh, and we stayed in that camp hospital. After we uh, recovered a little bit we, uh--me and my friend, I'm always talking we but we always were together--there was a little town not far from there that a Jewish community was forming.
Mm-hm.
Uh, from the uh, survivors and in that little town we uh, got a room with a German family and we--I stayed there from forty--I think '45 'til '48 where I had all my papers, my brothers, and me. Finally I ran into a uh, GI who happened to be from Michigan.
Yes.
I, I managed in the first month after I recovered a little bit to notify my family--I had a bit of a large family in Detroit--that uh, I'm alive, you know. They thought uh, they didn't know. In fact, they couldn't believe that I'm the only surviving member in a family of eighty people there in uh, Poland.
And you're the only one?
Yeah. The only one. They, they--now there cousin who survive but he was a Russian. But actually from the Holocaust I'm the only one who survived but uh, that cousin uh, happened lucky enough to escape to Russia. Uh, I--they send me papers to come into America but when the creation of the state of Israel, I decided not to go to America that time and go to Israel to fight.
Mm-hm.
I came to Israel '48 and I was in the army for about two years, in the Israeli army and in '52 I came not here, to Canada. Stayed in Canada for two years and then I came to America. I don't know what ???.
Oh yes.
[interruption in interview]
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