Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Zoltan Rubin - January 12, 1983

Did you meet any other Jews in the uh, prison camp?

Yes, as a matter of fact, I had, not...You mean Jews on different papers?

Yeah.

As a matter of fact, one evening...See, when the Germans had problems with army soldiers, they were started to uh, recruit among the prisoners because we weren't Jews, we were all soldiers, right, so they considered us soldiers. But we didn't have enough food, so they felt maybe they can, they can uh, they can get some soldiers. So, there was one time, it was...I think it was the beginning of January, sometime in '45 already, they were uh, recruiting whoever will join that army, will be taken over to another camp and will get all the good food and everything, you know. So, one evening we got home from work...By the way, we were working at a...we working at a airport, where the V2s were transported.

The V2s ???

The V2s ??? And he came to me, I was on my bunk, and he says to me, "Santo, I will need your advice, I would like to talk to you." I says to him, "What is it?" He says, "I would like to ask you, would you recommend me I should join the army, the Germans?" And I says, "You ask me? If I'll tell you no, you can go report me. And if...I'm not going to tell you yes because I'm not going to." Anyway, I look at him and I says, "Tell me, are you Jewish?" "Yeah." I recognized him right away. Yes, he was a Jewish boy from, somebody from Hungary, I don't remember his name, I think it was Gluek, I've never seen him after that. So, there were, there were a few of them they joined, quite a few of them, they signed up. But nothing came out of it. Then, all of a sudden we had to start to evacuate and we were evacuated from one place to another place, and one evening, the three guys, we escaped and we stayed in the mountains. We stayed in the mountains 'til May, a whole month I would say, maybe six weeks...We stayed in the mountains, in, in Germany, in forests. We were living off the fields and stuff like that. Four, four, about four, four weeks I would say.