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"We had, start sending SOSs because the vessel was floating into the sea, but it was not moving anywhere." | |||
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Gerda Blachmann Wilchfort Born 1923 Breslau, Germany 
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Well, as you can imagine there was a terrible mood. Everybody was very depressed. A few people committed...tried to commit suicide as I think uh the one man...he, I think he cut his wrists and they, he was the only one who landed because they had to take him to the hospital to...to tend to him. I don't know whether he stayed or not. I think he did. He must have been the only one who stayed. But you know, humans are always hopeful. You know, we always cling to the hope something is going to happen. They're not going to let us rot on the ocean. I mean, something had to happen to us. Of course, the fear was that we would go back to Germany. That was the big thing you know. So we...the food got worse and worse and the water was...water supply, I mean we had water but we had to be careful, and of course the parties were over. No more parties, no more, no more fun. We were just sitting and waiting--what's going to happen, you know, and uh here again the committee tried everything and sent telegrams all over the world trying to get us in but it was.... Everyday they had like newsletters printed and put out on board to tell us what's happening and everyday there was another country we were supposedly going to go, but we never...and nothing came about until finally at the--we were already--well, first we came to, to the coast of Miami and we thought we could, you know--I heard later that the captain had agreed that we make some kind of a forced landing or something but we didn't know anything about it. We just saw the uh Coast Guard boats surround us near Miami to make sure that we wouldn't even come close to the border, to the...to shore, so that was out. So we saw the lights of Miami. We saw the lights of America and that was it. So we slowly sailed back to Europe. And of course behind the scenes--you know--there was a lot of negotiations going on with the United, the United Jewish Appeal and there was a Mr. Tupper in Paris and he finally got it together that we will be divided between Belgium and Holland and France and England. | ||
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Yonia Fain Born 1914 Russia 
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We walked out from the city and outside of Warsaw we met many, many, many people. Most of the time young people who didn't want to be captured by the Germans and went to the eastern part of Poland, uh, believing that some sort of resistance would be organized. Where did we get the food? Where did we get the water? Where did we get places to sleep? The little towns on our way were burning and the people left them. They ran out. In the countryside the peasants came... the peasants came out and they gave us food. They said, "Take it, eat it. We don't want to wait with all our, uh, cows and pigs and horses for the Germans. You are our brothers." It was an atmosphere of fear and expectation. Uh, on the way we were all the time bombarded by the Germans' Luftwaffe [air force] and many peoples were killed. And finally, we went to the eastern part of Poland...to the eastern and, uh, southern part of Poland. And at that time we all of a sudden got the news that Poland will be divided between Stalin's Russia and Hitler's Germany. And we didn't know what to expect. | ||
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Leo Melamed Born 1932 Bialystok, Poland 
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The train to Wilno [Vilna] was such that you couldn't get on. People were standing in the aisles. There was no sitting room. Because I was a child, uh, someone gave me a seat, uh, on some boxes near a window, so I could actually watch, uh, from the window. But my mother stood the entire...it's...it's a couple hours' trip in normal times. It took the full night to do so, in fact, more than the night. We left...it was probably about six in the evening and did not arrive till nine the next morning. And during the course of that, uh, ride, the train would stop for what seemed like hours, some places. And there would be shouting and sometimes there would be gunfire. And, uh, in all of the...all of the accoutrements of war around us, and yet, uh, it kept moving. | ||
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Leo Melamed Born 1932 Bialystok, Poland 
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To me it was an adventure of unbelievable proportion, particularly when we hit Siberia, the real, uh, depth of Siberia, the cold. And, uh, watching the...the frozen steppes across countless and countless of miles when you saw nothing but frozen steppe. And you would think that there isn't...you know the monotony of that isn't much to see, but there is quite a bit of interest in...as you...as you...the...it grabs you, you know. You...you become mesmerized by the...the...these...these barren, white-covered steppes, miles upon miles, till you hit a city. And then you saw the outskirts and then some life. And since this was a single track, it would have to pull over at certain designated stations so that the west-bound train could go by. Now, it was one track, that's all they had laid. So we would spend hours in off...uh, off the track sites, waiting for the west-bound train to come by, as my father explained to me the process. And during that time, of course, um, my father would go down to the station to buy supplies because we only had enough on the ticket to pay for one meal. Uh, the evening meal on the train was paid for, but the rest of it we had to buy. So breakfast or lunch or, the other two meals were bought on these stations along the way. Uh, and we would eat in our cabin. We had a...we had a...a small compartment. So this two-week monotony broke with these moments on...in...in...in these stations like Minsk and Pinsk and so forth. | ||
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David Stoliar Born 1922 Kishinev, Romania 
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We left Constanta at night. We were pulled out of the port by a tug, a Romanian tug, and once they took us out into the sea, they disconnected and they left. Then, we tried to work the engines, we had a very, very hard time to make the engine work. It pop pop, and then stopped again. Anyway, I think it took us practically all night and the engine still didn't, didn't start. Then I understand that we had, start sending SOSs because the vessel was floating into the sea, but it was not moving anywhere. The captain send SOSs and eventually, now the, now the next day, the same tug, tugboat that took us, pulled us out, came back. It came back and we requested that they, if they could repair so that the engine can start. They tried and tried but they told us that it would cost us money. So we explained that, uh, we are left with no funds at all because the, the Custom took away everything we had. So then they requested that we, everybody that has a wedding ring, which we, miraculously we were allowed to keep. I didn't had one, but in any case, many, many, many people had. So we collected all the wedding rings from the people and we gave them to the crew of that tugboat. Then they went into the engine and they start, uh, playing around with the engine and they said, they, two conditions. If we give them enough money, they may be able to pull us all the way into the Turkish waters, which would take us about a day or so. But if we don't have enough money, then they said okay, we'll try to repair the engine and if the engine works, we are going to be with you, floating, uh, next to the vessel, into the international water, close to the Turkey, Turkish waters and then we will leave you there. So finally the engine start working and we start sailing towards Turkey and the tugboat was going next to us, and then it went away. | ||
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David Stoliar Born 1922 Kishinev, Romania 
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During the journey to Istanbul, first of all we could hardly move, because we were told that, you know, because of so many people, if there are too many of us on the deck on one side, the, the vessel can be in danger. So, first of all, they wanted us to move as little as possible and also, once we are on a deck for a few hours, also to try to keep the vessel in balance by not going too much on one side or the other. So we were directed, some people on the left side, some people on the right side, then go slowly. In other words, there was a possibility that, uh, the vessel may get out of balance if, if we move too much. So the conditions were such that you just stayed in your bunker as much as you can, without, without moving. So there was no way of getting cleaned up or, or even, even, you barely managed to, to drink water, never mind about washing or something like that. And as the time went by, it was getting naturally worse and worse and worse. | ||
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