Freda Magnus - July 22, 1982
Violence in the Ghetto
What, what kind of punishments did you, did you have or did you witness at the camps?
That's what I say. Beating, hanging--in the ghetto--I forgot about this--in the ghetto when the German came in for the first thing they did--wanted to make, you know, Jews should be afraid. They took five people from, from the city--was, was known men and they hang them up you know, on um, on um, around, you know, like on um, a place--a known place and they told everybody to go and see them hanging and they hanged them maybe more than a week that everybody should go and see how those people hang for nothing ???. And then when they took, you know, they came into our backyard they said, "Everybody out," they saw a man with a long beard, you know, they cut the beard and beat him. And this I forgot again, you know, they once take my father up to the Gestapo, you know, there was a Gestapo there, you know, and they ask for money and they beat him up. My father came home black like, like this. Beaten up his whole um, body was black like this beaten that he should give the money. Oh, a lot of time ??? made a lot and you saw when you, when you went on the street one couldn't--where ever you walked--one couldn't walk so fast, you know, they went and, and gunned them down in the middle of the street and other people was looking. You can't forget those things but uh, still the people tried to, to analyze what kind, you know, what kind of people have they been? What kind of people? And it's so funny when, when, when of us, you know, good when you talk to some after the war nobody from the Germans said, "I didn't know a thing what's going on." They said, "I didn't"--after deliberation--"I didn't know a thing was going on." How could they don't know? And how could they do those things? How? How they, they killed and took the money and everything that we cared about, the gold teeth they tear...teared out a life of people when they saw it...
Where was this?
In, in the ghetto. Yeah.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn