Leon Merrick
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BILL BENSON:
Good Afternoon and welcome to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. My name is Bill Benson and I am the host of the Museum’s public program, First Person. Thank you for joining us. We are in our ninth year of the First Person program. Our First Person today is Mr. Leon Merrick, who we shall meet shortly.
First Person is a series of weekly conversations with survivors of the Holocaust who share with us their first-hand accounts of their experience during the Holocaust. Each First Person guest serves as a volunteer here at the Museum. We will have a First Person program each Wednesday until August 27. In July, as we did in June, we will also have a second program each week on Tuesdays. If you go to the Museum’s Web site at www.ushmm.org, go to Public Programs and click on it, you’ll find a list of those who will be the upcoming First Person guests for the balance of this year.
This 2008 season of First Person is made possible through the generosity of the Louis and Dora Smith Foundation to whom we are grateful for again sponsoring First Person. And I would like to let you know that Mr. Louis Smith is with us today. Lou, thank you.
Before you are introduced to Leon Merrick I have a several requests of you and a couple of announcements. First, we ask that if it is at all possible please stay seated through the one-hour program. That way we will minimize any disruptions for Leon as he speaks. We hope to have an opportunity for some question and answers towards the end of the hour, if we do and you have a question, I ask that you make your question as brief as possible. I will repeat the question so everyone in the room hears it, including Leon, and then he’ll respond to your question. If you have a cell phone or a pager that has not yet been turned off, we ask that you do so now.
I’d like to let those of you who may have passes for the Permanent Exhibition this afternoon know that they are good for the entire afternoon, so you can stay with us through the end of the program and then go to the Permanent Exhibition.
In January, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum announced that it began providing information to Holocaust survivors and their families from the International Tracing Service, or ITS archive. Located in Germany, the archive was the largest closed Holocaust archive in the world, containing information on approximately 17.5 million victims of the Nazis, both Jews and non-Jews. After years of effort the archive has been opened to the Museum. The ITS material is being transferred in digital form to the Museum in a series of installments, the first of which arrived in August of 2007. More information on the ITS collection can be found on the Museum’s Web site, or by visiting the Museum’s Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Holocaust Survivors, that’s located in the Wexner Learning Center on the second floor.
The Holocaust was the state-sponsored systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Jews were the primary victims, six million were murdered. Gypsies, the handicapped, and Poles were also targeted for destruction or decimation for racial, ethnic, or national reasons. Millions more including homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war, and political dissidents also suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi tyranny.
What you are about to hear from Leon Merrick is one individual’s account of the Holocaust. We have prepared a brief slide presentation to help with Leon’s introduction. And we begin with this portrait of Leon Merrick who was born January 8, 1926, in Zgierz, Poland.
When the Nazis attacked Poland in September 1939, Zgierz Jews were moved to Lodz, Poland, and the arrow on this map points to Lodz. Leon worked as a postal worker in the Lodz ghetto, delivering letters, milk, and ration cards. And here we see a group photo of the postal workers in the Lodz ghetto. And I might mention that if you look to the third row from the top, I’m going to put the cursor on it, it might be difficult for some of you to see, but the third row from the top, second person in from the left, is Leon. I would also like to note, that if you follow the cursor there, you can see the yellow star that Jews were forced to wear. A number of them are visible to you.
Here we see a view of Lodz ghetto residents crossing a pedestrian bridge between the two sides of the ghetto. And in this photo, a child vendor carries wares in a tray slung around her neck in the outdoor market in the Lodz ghetto.
In 1944, Leon was taken to a forced-labor camp in Kielce, Poland.
From there he was evacuated to the Buchenwald concentration camp and the arrow on this map of major Nazi camps points to Buchenwald. Three months later, Leon was sent to the Flossenbürg concentration camp. This picture is a picture of a work detail at the Buchenwald camp. After Leon was transferred to the Flossenbürg concentration camp, he would be there for a while and then forced to go on a death march. Here we have a map that shows the location of Flossenbürg.
After the death march Leon would be liberated by United States forces on April 23, 1945. And we close the slide presentation with a photo of Leon posing with friends in Schwandorf soon after his liberation. And Leon is this gentleman on your far right, right there.
After the war, Leon worked for the U.S. Army in Germany before coming to the United States in 1949. With the $23 that he received upon arrival, he made a new life in Washington, D.C.
He was drafted into the United States Army during the Korean War, and eventually Leon opened his own restaurant that he ran for a quarter century here in Washington, D.C. Given its closeness to the White House, it was a popular place, especially for Secret Service agents. And when Leon retired the Secret Service agents threw a party for him.
Following retirement in 1993, Leon and his wife Nina have remained here in the Washington, D.C. area. Leon is a volunteer here at the Museum’s Visitor Services and you will find him here every other Saturday. He is also active with the Jewish War Veterans. Nina, who fought with the partisans in World War II, continues to work as a Hebrew teacher. Nina is also a volunteer here at the Museum and has been a volunteer since the Museum’s inception. I’m pleased to let you know that Nina is with us today as well. Nina, if you wouldn’t mind letting folks know you’re here.
Leon and Nina had two daughters. They lost their daughter Mira at age 27 due to a rare liver disorder, 22 years ago. Mira was an artist.
Their daughter Marsha is an MSW social worker and the mother of Leon and Nina’s two grandchildren. Their granddaughter is in her third year of college and their grandson has now completed college. And with that I’d like to ask you to join me in welcoming our First Person, Mr. Leon Merrick.
Leon, thank you so much and thank you for your willingness to be our First Person today. You were not quite 14 years of age when the Germans invaded Poland and came into your town in September 1939. Perhaps we could begin today, Leon, with you telling us about family, about your community, and about yourself in those years before the war began.
LEON MERRICK:
Yes, well my family consisted…I had a younger brother. He was three years younger than I was. Before the war broke out, I was going to public school in Poland. I had friends, Jewish friends, non-Jewish friends. We got along fine. I was playing, I was on the soccer team. I was playing, you know, soccer, it’s called football in Europe. But when the Germans came in, everything changed. So the Germans came into my hometown September 8, 1939. Okay.
BILL BENSON:
Leon, I’m going to stop you for a moment before we go on there. Tell us, did you have a large extended family?
LEON MERRICK:
Yes. I had cousins and uncles and aunts. You know, we got together for holidays. We were very close, but when the war started and the Germans assembled us in the marketplace one day, and they said this place is to be “Jew-free” all my family and we ourselves we went different directions.
So as far as we were concerned, we had an aunt next door, I mean the next city of Lodz. It was about 11 miles away. So we decided to go over there. So my mother packed up, you know, essentials, you know, like bedding and clothes. And furniture…we called our gentile neighbors in and at that time, you know, our Anglican friends declared war on Germany. We figured the war isn’t going to last long, you know, two big powers. And we were going to come back and claim the furniture, but it never happened. The rest is history.
BILL BENSON:
So you had given your furniture to gentile neighbors in the expectation that…
LEON MERRICK:
In the expectation that we were going to come back. And we never came back to reclaim it, you know.
BILL BENSON:
How quickly after the war began did the Germans occupy your town? It was almost immediate wasn’t it?
LEON MERRICK:
Eight days, September 8, I remember the next day…well I’ll tell you, a day before, the bombardment got very heavy and we decided, just like anybody else, we went to the countryside. So my mother packed us up, we all went on foot into the countryside, we were sleeping outside. It was still warm, September 6 and 7, but at night everything was weird. The Polish government let out all the prisoners from the jails, opened the jails, and all of the sudden we’re laying on the fields, we’re sleeping, and they wake us up. They’re looking for money, and all their hair was all shaved. Strange characters, you know.
BILL BENSON:
These were just regular prisoners?
LEON MERRICK:
Prisoners, yeah
BILL BENSON:
They had all been released?
LEON MERRICK:
They had all been released. And then I don’t know what was going on, but all able-bodied men had to report to a certain place near the city, south of Warsaw. They’re going to assemble… they need some people who served in the Polish Army. And my father served in the Polish Army, so he left us all in that village and he went to the Polish…he went along to the assembly point and we decided to go back home. But on the way home, if you notice the Polish stragglers already, disheveled, you know and horse and buggies and you know.
BILL BENSON:
These are Polish Army…?
LEON MERRICK:
Polish Army units and they are all disheveled and they’re running away from the Germans. So, finally we made our way back home and our neighbors were glad to greet us, “Glad to see you,” and they had cows and goats and they milked the cows and they gave us warm milk and food.
Maybe we were there for about an hour or so, we made ourselves at…we heard shooting. And our Polish neighbor says, “Come on let’s go to the kelic [basement], the Germans are coming in.” So the Germans come in that afternoon. This afternoon I didn’t go out, but the next day I went outside and we see all soldiers in different uniforms. Polish uniforms, they’re green. And the Germans were gray type, you know? So the Germans were in my home town you know? And people were looting businesses in there because there was no…the Polish government, the mayor, they ran all away, they were afraid. So there was no law. So that’s what it is.
BILL BENSON:
And then not too long after that you were forced to assemble. What did they do?
LEON MERRICK:
Yes, before this I was, everyday, I was going…they had lines for bread, bread lines. And I stayed in the line too. And then, they had, among the population they had the ethnic Germans. I considered them all Poles. I thought they were all Poles who worked up with my father at the factory, but oh when the Germans come in, they all had armbands with the swastika here. And he saw me, I said “come on here, put me in the head of the line, you’ve been working with my father in the same factory,” but he was German, I thought he was a Pole you know? Well he was a Polish citizen, but of German ethnicity you know? And they were a fifth column.
So not long afterwards a rumor was going around, all the Jews had to assemble in market square. So we didn’t know what we should do. Should you pack something up or what do you do? So I think we took a few items, essentials, with us, we took my younger brothers, and we went to this marketplace.
I forgot to mention, the city I was born in: 29,000 population and 3,500 Jews. And we all assembled, we were sitting on the cobblestones, and we were guarded by German police. And after a while an ethnic German came up, he stood on I think a crate or something and he announced that this place is to be “Jew-free” in like two or three days. So, we didn’t know where to go.
My mother had a sister in the city of Lodz, L-O-D-Z, and so we decide to go over there. So we, my neighbor had a horse and had a wagon, so we put our bedding in there and clothes. And like I mentioned before, we told the Polish neighbor to come in and they can have our furniture for the time being until we come back. And of course they agreed to it. And so we went to the next city of Lodz. It was about 11 kilometers away, about 6 or 7 miles.
BILL BENSON:
So the announcement when you assembled was that this town with 3,500 Jews is now going to be “Jew-free”? You just had to leave.
LEON MERRICK:
To be Jew-free, right. And so everybody went every place, wherever somebody could. So we just went to the next city of Lodz, and we came to my aunt’s. We just had the bedding, we took bedding and clothes you know? And when we were over there for a month or two they announced they were going to form a ghetto in the city of Lodz. Okay?
So we knew it was going to be a ghetto, so they formed the city ghetto, and so we had to find a room. So my father knew somebody, he pulled some strings and found a room and we all moved in, and everybody had to have a job. Because if you had a job you get an extra bowl of soup in the place of wherever you work. So my father worked in the main hospital, we had five hospitals in the ghetto. They were clinics before the war, but then the Jews came in when they formed the ghetto, so they made a hospital. And my father worked in the hospital and my mother got a job in the orphanage. And of course later on, in a couple years or so, I wanted to get a job too. I’d seen these young fellows going around with satchels delivering mail so I told my father, “Maybe I can do…maybe I can do this.”
BILL BENSON:
Before we go there, a couple questions for you, Leon. The ghetto was formed in the spring of 1940, so you’re just essentially a four-year-old boy…you’re very young. I mean fourteen-year-old boy excuse me. Describe for us, before you go on, describe what the ghetto was.
LEON MERRICK:
Okay. The ghetto was less than two square miles and they packed in 160,000 Jews from the beginning.
BILL BENSON:
From all over?
LEON MERRICK:
From all over. From the city of Lodz and from the environs too. And food got very scarce, okay. Everybody was going around hungry. So this was essential to have a job and you got an extra bowl of soup. But it was very dangerous in the ghetto. You know you see people, the next morning you got up and you see people laying there that died overnight on the street. And especially when it got cold in the wintertime, the Jews ripped out the wooden doors from the buildings and the frames for heating purposes, you know. And they put blankets on, you know.
BILL BENSON:
So they would take the doors and door frames and burn them for heat? And then hang a blanket…?
LEON MERRICK:
Right. So this was in 1940, right, when they formed the ghetto. But later on, so for the first year and a half I had no jobs. My mother worked, and from the place of employment she got an extra bowl of soup so she can share the remaining ration with us. My father he also worked, he also got some food.
BILL BENSON:
But you, because you were not working, there was not an extra ration for you.
LEON MERRICK:
No, I got normal ration.
BILL BENSON:
Normal ration.
LEON MERRICK:
Normal ration. But my father, he worked at the place so he…when he came home he didn’t eat the full ration, maybe just a half a ration. And my mother did the same thing. So it was left for me and for my brother. But a year later or so, when I was fifteen or fifteen and a half, I want to do something too. I was in the ghetto, before I had a job, I was always afraid, maybe the Germans come in and they were grabbing people and putting them on the truck and taking them away outside the ghetto to work.
So I was always mindful of this and when I was walking in the ghetto I would walk between buildings, I had a plan in case I see the trucks and the Germans came out and they were grabbing people. I’m going to go into this house and go in the alleyway and go on the roof and walk out. I had a plan. But later on I got a job. I got a job at the post office. And I was delivering mail.
BILL BENSON:
Leon, I was amazed when you first told me that mail was continuing to be delivered. Tell us a little bit about that.
LEON MERRICK:
Yeah, okay. So in 1939, Poland was partitioned, the Germans invaded Poland and the Soviets came from the east. So Poland was divided more or less in two, you know, behind the Bug River. A lot of Jews went away to the Soviet side, … inside was very hardship you know. Okay, so as long as the mail delivery, don’t forget when the ghetto was formed, people had relatives in Europe. They had them in the Benelux countries which means Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, and Lichtenstein and all these places.
And also when the ghetto was formed, later on in 1940…the fall of 1940, they brought in a lot of Jews from Czechoslovakia. And a lot was intermarriage and some of the non-Jewish spouses decided to come into the ghetto with the spouse and some decided not to come in. But those people had relatives on the other side and they send in packages; packages and letters. So they had a functioning post office.
BILL BENSON:
And how long did you continue working at the post office?
LEON MERRICK:
Until 1944.
BILL BENSON:
But your work at the post office would change eventually, wouldn’t it? Mail would begin to slow down.
LEON MERRICK:
Yeah, the mail would slow down. So we were delivering letters to report for the transports, you know. So it was pitiful you know. Especially in the wintertime, I had a letter for somebody to report for a transport and I come to the certain building and I holler out a name like “Goldberg” or “Lichtenstein” whatever his name might be. And then I’d hear a faint voice answering behind the curtains. The people that burned the doors so they put blankets up in front of the door. Especially in wintertime, the blanket was all frozen stiff. So anyway, I heard a faint voice behind the blanket, I knew somebody was there inside. And I made my way in and I heard cracks in the curtain, the ice goes falling down. And eventually I come inside and I don’t have any good news for them, just to report for transports. And they’re all laying in the bed, it was pitiful. You know they’re hungry in bed, and the smell. It was just bad times.
BILL BENSON:
You told me that when the ghetto was formed there were a number of the houses that faced outward, outside the ghetto, but the outside, the front side of the houses would be boarded up, because the Germans were shooting into the houses?
LEON MERRICK:
Yeah, the houses…well you have seen this picture with the wooden fence and the barbed wire and it was very dangerous to go near the barbed wire. Sometimes a German guard enticed somebody to come to the fence and then shoots him, or takes his hat off and throws it and then says “Go get it.” And then took a potshot at him.
And there was no law. You couldn’t do anything against a German. So the people whose windows were facing the barbed wire and the wooden fence, they put some blankets on it and at night especially, they didn’t put any lights on because they were afraid of potshot. And the special entrances too. This was just a regular building on the street, so they boarded up the entrance and somehow they knocked some bricks out and they had a different way to go inside.
BILL BENSON:
On the backside…
LEON MERRICK:
On the backside, right.
BILL BENSON:
Leon, tell us what happened when the Nazis moved in some Gypsies into the ghetto.
LEON MERRICK:
Yes, okay. I think it was at the end of 1941 or so, it was in the fall. And all of a sudden the rumor was going around that they were going to decrease the ghetto, mind you yet, with a few city blocks. And they decreased it and they put up some barbed wire and they brought some people in. We didn’t know exactly who they were. A rumor was going around that they were partisan fighters or they were Americans, we didn’t know exactly, but actually they were Gypsies.
So, the food was going in from the ghetto, the bakers were baking the bread and it taking to the Gypsy camp and I’ve seen the German police, German police station, Kripo, the Criminal Police, they were going into this Gypsy camp and we heard shots every day. And they moved into these houses that the Jews lived in before. Like I mentioned before they had ripped out the window sills and the doors and this was wintertime and they just froze to death. There was nothing there. There were just…the elements were right there.
So one morning we got up in the morning and they were all gone. I think they only lasted about three or four months. They took them to the nearby Chelmno extermination camp. Of course then we didn’t know where they had taken them. We didn’t even know where they were taking the Jews. Rumors were going around that they were taking the Jews to work on farms here and there, but we didn’t know exactly what they were doing.
But then one day the Germans… there was a Catholic church in the ghetto and the Jews didn’t go to the Catholic church. So during the ghetto times, the church was locked up, it was closed. But one day the Germans opened up the church and they were bringing transports of bedding and blankets and clothes to the church. And they were taking Jewish women to sort out the clothing, okay, and then a lot of things fell off of this clothing, from the package, a yellow star, or a letter…so we know these clothes came from the people who left the ghetto. You know, they came to their death.
BILL BENSON:
Leon, you mentioned that there were some clinics that became hospitals inside the ghetto. What did the Germans do to the hospitals?
LEON MERRICK:
So my father worked in the hospital as I mentioned before, and one morning he came home. He said, “The Germans rounded up the hospitals and they took out all the patients. The trucks drove up and they took out all the patients. They went upstairs to the maternity ward and they took the children and they took threw them out the window. They put them straight on the trucks that were waiting downstairs, they threw them all down.” My mother, like I mentioned before, she was working in the orphanage. They took all the children out, so the next day she had no job to go back to. And so this is what happened. And I remember this like today. I remember I stood right near the trucks over there and I’ve seen how they loaded people on the trucks.
In September 1942, the Germans announced a curfew, nobody can go out for eight days. So the Germans, this one German, went from house to house, and people in Europe have courtyards, and when they didn’t have courtyards the people had to go down the streets. They had to line up and the Germans looked them over. All the elderly people and the people who were sick and young children up to the age of about 12 or 13 they took them out and the wagons were waiting outside and took them to an assembly point. And then they took them to the train station and we still didn’t know exactly where they were taking them. A rumor was going around they take them to the farms, to work on the farms, who knows where they take them.
But when I was working at the post office and I was waiting for the distribution for the mail in the room, I heard the rumor, somebody came, she said, “Have you heard, that the people who are going on the transports are being gassed? They give them a towel and they give them like a piece of soap, and they go inside, but instead of water, gas is coming out.” But nobody believed that. You know Germans, all this…cultural society, everybody had a title, doctor, professor, and they were all the biggest killers, now we know it. They all had to graduate from colleges and universities and they were heads now of mobile killing squads and camps and all this stuff.
BILL BENSON:
So as brutal as you knew they were, you didn’t think…
LEON MERRICK:
We still didn’t believe it, we didn’t believe it no. If a German came into the ghetto and if he came onto the street, if he walked on the sidewalk, we couldn’t walk on the same sidewalk. If he had a cap, you had to bow and we had to go on the cobblestones you know.
BILL BENSON:
Leon, One of the things you had mentioned to me about being in the ghetto is that there were friendly doctors in the ghetto who would prescribe potato peelings. Say something about that.
LEON MERRICK:
Yes! Well hunger was prevailing, hunger. My mother herself, the hunger was so bad that I remember one time my mother made a cake from ersatz coffee grounds. Can you imagine that?
BILL BENSON:
Ersatz coffee grounds? So not real coffee grounds?
LEON MERRICK:
Not coffee grounds, ersatz coffee grounds. I remember I looked at the cake and the cake was round and I just wondered how the cake stuck together because we had no eggs in the ghetto. I don’t know…but somehow you know the women, they found a way to improvise. Coffee cakes and especially now I mention the hunger was so bad that if somebody was sick and they discharged them from the hospital and they had a friendly doctor, they went to him, to a friendly doctor. he would give a prescription for potato peels, because they had public kitchens.
So if you had a prescription for potato peels, the people find out which in kitchen the women peel the potatoes thick. And so they went over there and they found out. But the best jobs in the ghetto were the public kitchen and the public bakeries. The flour came in bulk so they had to bake it. So the best job was either in the bakery or in the kitchen. If you were in the bakery you could eat all the bread you want but you had to have pull, you had to know somebody to get a job like this, okay.
BILL BENSON:
Leon, you would end up, with your family, spending almost four years in the Lodz ghetto before you were finally taken away from it. Tell us the circumstances that led to you being taken from the ghetto and where you went and what happened to you once you were out of there.
LEON MERRICK:
It was 1944. They were constantly taking out people, because the Germans … for work and for the gas chambers, okay. So one day…
BILL BENSON:
You were about 18 years old?
LEON MERRICK:
I was 18. I was 14 [then] I was four years in the ghetto, I was 18, I worked in the post office. They needed people in Germany and post office job is not essential. They put me on the list and I got a summons to report. So from the beginning, at that time we heard the Soviets had come and had made an offensive and were already on the other side of the Vistula River, the main river in Poland. And here I’m getting a summons report and my family was still intact. My father, my mother, and my younger brother! He was three years younger. Here I’m 18 and he is 15 when I get the summons.
BILL BENSON:
And just you got the summons?
LEON MERRICK:
Yes just I got the summons. So I was hiding for several days, because I didn’t want to report. I had to share the rations with my family you know. But then I guess people were talking to my parents they said, “Listen, he’s young, 18 years old, they’re not going to kill him. They’ll probably take him to work.” And I wasn’t the only one. A lot of people my age got summoned, not only from the post office.
So finally I came out and went to an assembly point. Over there they fattened us up. They gave us a lot of bread to eat, and soup maybe twice a day. Then my father, I remember the last time he came towards the wire, I have like a picture of it, you know a print in my head. It was March, he had high boots on, a pea jacket, a hat, and he came to the other side of the wire and he was you know, talking to me. And this was the last time I’ve seen my father. But my mother, I don’t remember. I think maybe she didn’t want to come, she just couldn’t come. And my younger brother didn’t come either. And then they took us on the trains, took us to the trains. And put us on the train. After riding a few hours, the train opened up and the trucks were waiting.
And don’t forget, we came from a place where we had no food, but we had a lot of clothes. My mother packed an extra sweater and an extra jacket and pants and shirts. We had no food. Zgierz was an industrial city. So we had clothes. So we got off the train, and I put my duffel bag right there and the German guards are waiting there and also a few people, Jewish people who run the camp, labor camp nearby. And they said the duffel bags would come later on a separate truck. I never saw the clothes! When I got to the camp I never have seen the clothes. They led us into a whitewashed barracks. And the next morning, in the morning, the whistle blows, I wake up and I see a fat German standing there. I was dazed I didn’t know exactly where I am…just overnight. The day before I was home with my family and now all of a sudden I’m just…all of a sudden you know…
BILL BENSON:
This place was Kielce?
LEON MERRICK:
It was Kielce. It was Kielce. And the next day they took us to a labor camp, well this was a labor camp for Jews, for Jews already there. For women and men from the surrounding city. But the women were in different barracks and they marched us under guard to a factory where we’re producing ammunition for the German armed forces over there.
I worked the night shift and the food was relatively good. Better than in the ghetto itself. Because at night, first of all I got my own ration in the camp. A lot of people didn’t need this soup from the kitchen but for some reason, they were from the surrounding area and they knew their way around. They had food. But at night I went to the non-Jewish kitchen. If they had food left over they gave me a bowl of soup. But I remember the signs in the mess hall itself. At that time, in 1944, England had a Jewish [secretary of state for war] his name was Hore-Belisha, you know. And the Germans… “The Jew, this British Jew” or something like this and his name was there. Posters, right there, with the big hooked nose over there.
So I was in Kielce in this camp, and one day the guards came. In the meantime, don’t forget, the Soviets are on the other side of the Bug River. They’re already in Poland. The Germans were afraid that the Soviets were going to come closer, so they said, “Let’s pack up, okay.” So they put us on the train, open cattle cars, we rode for a few hours on the cattle cars and came to…and then the train stopped, trucks were waiting. We went on the truck. We came to a small city still in Poland, Przedborz. And the place was swarming with Germans, uniformed police, and different kinds of uniforms. Gestapo men, and they came to the trucks and they ask us, “Who are you people?” and we told them, “We are Jews,” “You are Jews? You came here to help us win the war?” What are we going to tell them? We didn’t tell them nothing. We kept our mouths shut, okay.
So the next day they took us to…we were sleeping in the field, in a village. And next they gave us picks and shovels and they made us dig anti-tank ditches against the approaching Soviet tanks. So we worked there on the anti-tank ditches, but we know this is only a temporary job. So we ask the guards, who were guarding us, they were friendly, we asked them, “What’s going to happen to us when the job is finished?” The guard, he shakes his head and says, “Well I don’t know.” So we said, “Why can’t you take us back to the city of Lodz, to the ghetto. We just came from there about two months from there, you know.”
And they told us the ghetto is being liquidated right now. So I left there in March, and they started liquidating the ghetto in May, June, July. The last transports from Lodz ghetto went in August, went to Auschwitz. So right now, I don’t know where my parents…so I’m the only survivor. I don’t know where my parents…they were left in the ghetto. But, I understand now from people telling me that some transports went, most of them from the Lodz ghetto went to Auschwitz, and later on the Germans re-opened a camp which is called Chelmno which is 35 kilometers away from the city of Lodz. This camp was an extermination camp. It was designed especially for the Jews of the city of Lodz and from the surrounding area. So that’s when they took out Jews, whole families. All my family, my aunt, all went to this Chelmno, the extermination camp, right there, but we didn’t know about it, but now we knew that.
BILL BENSON:
So he told you that it was being liquidated?
LEON MERRICK:
He told us Lodz ghetto was being liquidated. We went back to this camp after the war, went back there in 2000. We went back to Poland with a Jewish heritage group. We went to the city of Lodz. Then we went back to the city of Zgierz, where I was born. But I didn’t feel good about it, we didn’t know anybody there. We took a taxi from the city of Warsaw. And then because there was another couple with us and she also was in the Lodz ghetto, we went to this Chelmno extermination camp. And it was a beautiful day all day long! But when we got close to the camp it started raining and thundering and the camp itself was in the woods, it was camouflaged in the woods. We got out of the taxi, I had my camera. And the big trees were swaying back and forth it was thundering, and I had the impression that the trees told us, “Go away, get away! Leave us alone, Leave us in peace.” A bad feeling, bad feeling. Dark sky.
BILL BENSON:
You didn’t stay long there.
LEON MERRICK:
No! We couldn’t stay. We didn’t visit the camp. Just enough to see, to read one sign there, “For the German Jews.” When people came back from Germany after the war they erected that, you know. So we didn’t go. We didn’t get to the camp.
BILL BENSON:
Leon, you would, in the summer of 1944 you would be taken to several different camps, but would end up being taken to Buchenwald. Tell us about that.
LEON MERRICK:
Okay, so I was in this labor camp. Okay, so we were digging the ditches. But the job was finished, they took us yet to another camp, still in Poland. We did the same work, working in the ammunition, okay. And one day the Germans come in and they say, “Pack up. We have to evacuate the camp.” The pressure, the Soviets were pressing on the Germans. So they put us on trains, right on the double, okay. So they put us on the train, they close the cattle car, they put a bucket there for the people, maybe 80, 90 people, just enough room to stand up.
You just had a small window on top and barbed wire. And when the train starts moving along over there we lift ourselves up and we looked out and we start reading German names. So we know we’re going to Germany, but we didn’t know exactly where in Germany. In the meantime, the train moves on, and then the train stops to let a military transport through, and we see school children going to school. And people going to work, the whistle blowing and they’re going with their lunch boxes to work and from work. And here we’re locked up in the train just because we’re Jewish, nothing else. I’m 18 years old. And other people, it’s the same thing. It’s the only thing, we’re Jews, that’s why we’re locked up. And we didn’t know where we were going.
After riding for 4 or 5 days, finally the doors open up and we go out. The sun hits us in the eyes and we take a look and we see the concentration camp Buchenwald. We see the big flag pole with the swastika flying. We mingle around maybe for five, ten minutes, and then the guards came out and says, “Line up in a column of five.” They march us through the gate, and they led us in a big hall, big hallway, and this hallway had a long table, maybe from this wall to the other wall. And they say, “Everybody undress.” Stark naked, just men, you know.
And I undressed. And like I mentioned before, they took my clothes away when I worked in the ammunition factory, and the machines were running on oil and they didn’t give us any apron so the oil splattered on my flesh through my pants. I had no change and I developed blisters. In the wintertime it was very bad, it was hurting, so here I’m all undressed with everything on the table. At that time I still had pictures from home, and you know in Europe we didn’t have an address book like we have here. A letter came from relatives overseas, or from another city, we just saved the envelope and when time to write them a letter, we just looked up the address. So my mother gave me all these envelopes in my pocket, and she gave pictures from home, pictures of myself. When I took everything off and put it on the table, whatever I remembered in my head that was with me.
So here we’re all naked and a medical officer, a German, big black uniform, comes to me and he looks at me and there’s all blisters on both sides. “You got to be healthy to work” and I blabbered something out, in the best German I could, I says “I worked in the factory and had no change of clothes and they didn’t give us any aprons and that’s what it is.” He just shook his head and walked away. He walked away, okay.
So later, “Everybody to the next room!” I remember going steps down, we came downstairs and they must have had about 20 or 30 guys who preceded us. They were all the inmates, but they already had jobs in the camp. They had clippers and scissors and they shaved us, and underneath the arms and everywhere. Wherever they found a hair. Stark naked, you know. All the clothes is gone.
We go into the next room we had to be submerged into a big drum, disinfection water. Now don’t forget I have all these blisters on my knees, so it burns! And I’m all shaved, you know, raw, but everything has to be on the double. I’m talking slow, but this had to be on the double. “Schnell! Fast! Fast!” Anyways I was submerged I’m going out, I remember going…next, okay. The door is open and I see the shower heads. And I knew already about the gas, is it going to come gas or is it coming water? But there’s no way back, there’s only one way to go in. So anyway, we going in; three guys under one showerhead. We’re waiting, “What’s going to come out of there?” We’re all burning, you know, all the men. We start to push around in case the water comes out, you know, we’re standing there, and finally the water starts dripping out. After all this misery we’re still happy, you know. It’s water and not gas, okay.
So after we stay there a few seconds, everything has to be on the double, there’s people waiting behind me. We dried ourselves off, they must have given us a towel. We go to the next room. And they have a functionary, he has a pad and a paper and a pencil. “What’s your name, your father’s name, your mother’s name, your profession?” I said, “I’m a student.” I was 18 years old. What am I going to tell them?
Okay, so go to the next room, they gave me a jacket, no shirt, no underwear, gave me a pair of pants, no underwear, and they gave me clogs, wooden clogs. And I looked at them and I said, “They’re not the same size, one is bigger than the other one. They’re not going to fit.” He said, “I say they’ll fit! Next!” Alright, so I have two wooden clogs. So I go forward and we go outside.
This is wintertime, this is either late December or early January. I have a jacket here wrapped around and I have a pair of pants, I’m cold, no socks, nothing. And I see that this is winter in Buchenwald. Just the word Buchenwald is “all woods,” Buchenwald is on top of a hill. And snowflakes start already falling down and I’m standing there and they’re waiting for a column to have a big line. They’re lining up in fives and we have to wait until there is enough people. And then somebody comes out and says, “Forward march.” And they march us into a barrack.
It must have been a horse stable. Long barracks, no windows, or maybe the windows were covered up, I don’t know. It was a big barracks, they march us all in and we see all the bunk beds over there, and they have a naked light bulb hanging down and they have a stove in the middle. And they’re looking to send some people to go into the main kitchen and bring some soup and bread for the transport who just arrived. I mean us, okay.
So they give me a pail and I go over there, and the guy puts in the soup and he gives me a piece of bread. And I take the piece of bread and I put it in my pocket. I eat the soup and I figure the bread is going to be for later but in the evening I reach in and the bread is gone. Somebody had swiped it from me. Somebody swiped my bread!
You know to this day, in the concentration camp, I don’t remember but somehow I got a hold of a needle and thread. This was a civilian jacket, it wasn’t a jacket like the striped uniforms which you see here. They gave me just you know, a jacket, people who had died or come to the camp in 1938, so they had the clothes. So I sewed up the outside and I punched a hole here and I figured from now on whatever I get is going to go right through here, and that’s what I did. So I was in Buchenwald for let’s say from January and then in March the Germans…
BILL BENSON:
Tell us, before you go to March, tell us what of work you were made to do at Buchenwald.
LEON MERRICK:
In Buchenwald they took us to, we carried logs. They took us to the woods, Buchenwald, just the wood itself, they had some wood over there, they had very heavy logs, you know.
BILL BENSON:
In a really fierce winter, particularly.
LEON MERRICK:
A fierce winter. And no clothes too…and no clothes, and so it was very tough. And we came back, in the evening when we came back, before they fed us they made us stay outside for appell [roll call]. That means they counted us, okay. So we had to line up outside in the front of the barracks. They had a special place there, several barracks. But we had to line up and we had to wait until the German guard comes this time and he counted us.
Sometimes you had to wait for an hour. And this is wintertime, it’s cold. Snow is falling down and some people just falling down from exhaustion, they falling out from the line or maybe some people are missing. Some people came back from work and he couldn’t get up, or maybe he got a beating at work. So they send guys in to look for him and all of a sudden you see them pulling somebody out by the feet. He died or he passed out. They bring him out and they lay him down and he had to be counted. In other words, we had to wait until the number of prisoners is right.
BILL BENSON:
So you would remain in Buchenwald until March. You started to tell us then, as the Allies began closing in on Germany.
LEON MERRICK:
Right, so the Germans come in and say, “All Jews report in the main platz.” The main place, there was a designated spot where they counted us. So I didn’t want to go on the Jewish transport. I figured a Jewish transport, they’re going to kill us. So I didn’t go with this transport. So they lined us up, everybody, and you had to walk before the Germans. They were supposed to recognize who was a Jew, who was not a Jew, you know. Anyway I went through it. But the next several days, they say, “Everybody has to report,” okay? Jew or no Jew. So they took us into, they had a big hall, used to be a factory.
BILL BENSON:
Just for a second, when you say Jew or non-Jew, there were other prisoners there. Communists and all kinds of nationalities?
LEON MERRICK:
Yeah, all kinds of nationalities. I was a Jew, but Germans too, different triangles, but once we had a discussion, “Who was better off in a concentration camp, a Jew or a German, or somebody…?” A German, maybe he was a prisoner, but maybe his brother-in-law was a guard, or maybe his father was the guard, or maybe his younger brother was the guard. A German was always better off, but they had all kinds of prisoners.
Especially in 1944, beginning of 1945, they had Russian prisoners-of-war, they had Ukrainian workers who worked on farms. They had people from France, from Hungary, and all piled in. I forget, now I’m going to backtrack, the first night when I was in…when I laid down to sleep, or I laid down there, I had to go to the outside to go to the bathroom. They called it the latrine. So I just picked myself up and I go outside and when I come back, nobody want to let me in. They said, “You didn’t lay there,” or rather “you didn’t sleep there,” and they were all kind of nationalities, you know. I speak to them in German, or in Polish, but they know exactly that I want to lay down but they told me that I didn’t lay there. So the next time, I know better. Before I lay down in a spot I make sure I did my business and didn’t have to go out of the barracks.
BILL BENSON:
So finally then they’re told everybody is being transported…
LEON MERRICK:
Everybody, yes. Okay, so they kept us in a hold in Buchenwald itself, all day. It was getting already dark, dusk. They let us out and they had guards lining up with whips on both sides and we had to run through and they were beating us. It was wintertime, it was January, and they had their sleeves rolled up and they were beating, and I just run through and I lined up. Column of five. I think they gave us a piece of bread and then we had to wait until the guards came with their big German Shepherd dogs, and we had to march about 11 kilometers to this city of Weimar. They had the train station, okay.
They march us to this city of Weimar. They put us in open cattle cars, but I didn’t want to go before, so one of these guards gave me a kick in the back. I was hiding I didn’t want to go with this Jewish transport, but they pulled me out there and gave me a…and then when I, I couldn’t sit down in this cattle car because it was hurting me in the back. Anyway, I squeezed down and we were sitting there for a couple minutes and then the sirens were going off, an alarm. You know, you had to wait until, in the meantime we see the German guards with their searchlights, and then when it all got quiet the train started moving forward. All night, and the next morning the planes came. It was an open cattle car. They shot up the whole train again.
BILL BENSON:
So the Allies are shooting up the train?
LEON MERRICK:
Allies, yeah. Shooting up the train. The guards were right on the train, they could maybe view conscripts, but they didn’t know who we are, you know. Like I mentioned, I just had a civilian jacket, I didn’t have the striped jacket, and maybe from there it’s hard to see, who knows. So they’re shooting up the train, so a lot of people got wounded. So whoever was not wounded got back on the train. The ones who got wounded bad, he would not be able to work, they shot him and left him there, right there.
BILL BENSON:
So they get shot by an Allied plane, they’re wounded, they can’t work so then the Germans killed them.
LEON MERRICK:
So then the train moves forward a little bit. By that time, it was March, the Allied planes were constantly overhead. So finally, one day they came and they shot up the whole train. I just jumped off the cattle car and I was hiding underneath the train, I was laying there. And then I could see the bullets hitting the gravel nearby. Popped the gravel, popped it up. And I’m just laying there.
And finally when it was all clear, the locomotive was out of commission and the Germans said, “Let’s line up, we’re going to march.” So they lined us up and we start marching. But they had one zealous young guard, he just went over the column, back and forth, and if someone didn’t walk straight he pulled them up and threw them in the gutter, shot them. And then everybody from the column runs over his pockets, maybe he’s got a crumb of bread or they pull off his boots or his shoes or maybe his shoes are better than yours. Until the guards come, “Everybody back in!” So everybody goes back to the column and we march a little bit further and the same thing happens again. Either a guy falls out from exhaustion or the guard pulls him out and shoots him. Everybody comes out of the column and goes over his pockets.
And finally we came to another camp which is Flossenbürg, okay, which you see on the map here. And the same bunk beds and they gave us the same thing for food. And I was there maybe two weeks or so. The Allies’ pressure was constantly on top of the Germans, so the guards come and says, “Let’s pack up we are moving out from here, okay.”
So I remember it was a sunny day and while I was in Poland I still befriended somebody. More or less we stuck our way more or less, you know we looked out for one another. I didn’t know him before, but I just met him in one of the labor camps you know, he was my age. So we marched together to the train, open cattle car, and we stay there and all the sudden the jets come and they shoot up the whole train. The train didn’t even start moving yet and something hit my face, so I turned to my buddy and I said, “Am I bleeding?” And he looks at me and says, “No, you’re not bleeding.” But I look around and see that it was a wooden sign here, a cross-road or whatever it was, one of the bullets that hit it splintered. One of these splinters hit my face. Not enough to cause bleeding, but I just felt a bump.
Then everybody jumps off the train, okay. The guards jump off the train and they run towards the horizon. On the horizon they had cottages you know, small cottages. The guards run towards them, and I run there too. I jump off the train, I run there, but not everybody run off the train, you know. So we go to the house and we go down to the basement and I heard the guards talking between themselves, they say, “The Americans have a depot close by, they’re going to come by. They’re going to load up some more bombs and ammunition and they’re going to come back and shoot us up again.”
But anyway, when it got clear, the guards come out, and, well we come out too, we come towards the train. As I mentioned before, not everybody ran away. The people who didn’t run away, the guards left all their rucksacks, their backpacks, and they helped themselves to the backpacks. They took out butter and margarine and sausage and cigarettes, and the guards come back and they see what happened. They lined us all up and they says, “Empty your pockets!” So whoever had something, they kill you, right on the spot.
And so finally everybody, “Get back in the train.” So the train chugs along further and the planes are always overhead and the guards say, “Your friends over there, why don’t you come and wave to them?” Okay, even at this stage you don’t want to die. So we took, whoever had a hat and we were waving you know. The planes came so low, we could see the pilot inside. Very, very low. And I remember especially the British planes. Now, I didn’t know it then, but now, with the circle on the tail and the fuselage, so low. And so we waved to them, and one day was very bad. They shot up everything, locomotive, and we couldn’t do anything anymore. The guards said the same thing, “Line up! Who cannot work? We’re going to send transportation.” I knew what “transportation” means, they’re going to kill you, they’re not going to send transportation for you.
So I was the first, almost the second, me and my buddy were the first and the second. We marched and we marched all day long. It was a big rain. I had a jacket here, and I think my button popped up, I had a string tied around here. I was all, short hair clipped, I had no hat. I just walked around and it was very very bad. I was all wet and we come toward evening, the guards said I was tripping already.
My feet, my knees got weak. There was nothing there to trip… you hear a shot here and shot there and the column passes by and you see somebody is laying there on the side and you march a bit further and you hear another shot and you see another guy is laying there. And I said to my friend I said, “I’m going back. I’m going to the side.” And he said, “You’re going to the side? You’re going to get killed.” I says, “Well I cannot make it anymore.” He says, “Lean on me.” And I just lean on him and we chug along for another, it was already…I chug along. And the same morning we came to a village and the guard says we’re going to rest here.
And we rest here and everybody is wet. They let us in a barn. You know a barn with hay and straw, and it’s warm over there. And you see everybody stealing from the clothes you know. All of a sudden I’m sitting there with my friend and an egg, a raw egg falls between me and him, a raw egg. Didn’t see a raw egg for years, so I break the egg in half and give him half and I take the other half and then we hear shooting, a little machine gun shooting.
And the guards are with us inside, and we see they’re taking white scarves and handkerchiefs whatever it is, and they tried to open the door from the barn and they put something on the rifle, on the front. A sign they want to give up, white, something white. And then, some of our guys in the barn looking outside say and they, “The Russians are here! The Russians are here!” Those were American tanks with white stars, but you come from eastern Europe, you know only about the red stars.
BILL BENSON:
You thought they were Russian tanks?
LEON MERRICK:
They are Russian tanks. Well some guys look out they were American tanks, okay. And then finally the door opens up and you look around, you in Germany, and you see all the houses, white flags. Instead of swastikas, white flags hanging over there. And the German transports and we, former inmates, we already free now, so we former inmates we go into the German transports and we take their boots, jackets. I took a leather boots. I put them on my feet. I had no socks. I pulled them off later on. I couldn’t take off my boots. I had to cut them off and bled, my feet swelled up, whatever it is.
So I had a German jacket and we go a little bit further up and we see American tanks rumbling by and they’re throwing down C-rations you know, C-rations and cigarettes and oranges and we grab it. I open my C-rations and there’s a piece of cheese inside in a can and there’s a package of cigarettes, four Chesterfields, long narrow pack. Four cigarettes and the match and I opened the packet and I took one cigarette out and I light up. I get a puff and I feel dizzy, I took it out and throw it out.
And we march a little further up and we’re passing a church and in the churchyard, the same guards who guarded us they already are guarded now by American soldiers, okay. And a few of our guards, you know we are all liberated former prisoners, you know, they’re jumping over this fence into the churchyard and starting beating on the Germans over there. An American chases him away from the prisoner. And then another guy jumps in and it’s the same thing.
And we walk a little bit further up and we saw a farmhouse and I said to my friends, “Well let’s go into the farmhouse.” But before I go into the farmhouse, outside I see a big bucket with raw potatoes. Remember this, I told you I punched a hole here? I bend down here and I put down raw potatoes. I’m loaded down with raw potatoes already. I’m liberated. I have C-rations over there and these potatoes too, raw potatoes.
And we go inside and the place is very full of former prisoners and they’re cooking already, you can smell it. There’s no more place for us, so we keep on going. We come to, further down, there’s a big field with American tanks parked there and we walked around the tanks. And they know who we are, the soldiers, they come forward and we tell them we’re from Poland. “Poland?” And then you find out, a GI, maybe he’s from Chicago, Detroit, he speaks Polish. “So you going back to Poland?” Well who knows? I’m a half hour liberated, you know? I don’t know what’s going on with me. I don’t even realize. All I realize is about the potatoes you know.
And finally we came to… I just… this happened 60 some years ago and I remember today. We’re walking a bit further up and we pass a farmhouse and there’s a German guard sitting outside. He’s got one of them German hats with a feather sticking outside and, from Bavaria, because we were liberated in Bavaria. And I ask him, or we ask him rather, me and my friend, “You have any soup?” “Yeah, yeah, he says come on. Soup and sausage and everything.” So we come inside and the place is full already with my buddies too, you know they had a long table. They’re already eating soup and milk, and they give me milk, and they have a lot of women waiting on us. And those are women who ran away before the Soviets and they wind up in this village, looking for sanctuary and now they got overrun by the Americans you know.
And all of the sudden we came. We are liberated and you have thousands of people from the camps you know. And they’re trying to please us you know and they’re waiting on us and cooking for us. And so I was there maybe for two three days and the next day I cut off those boots, remember that? I put on the boots cause mine I couldn’t wear anymore.
We were there maybe for two, three days, I heard not far away there was a Jewish chaplain or something and some refugees, I went to him and we ask the same thing. He tries to console you and he told us there’s a Jewish home not far away called Schwandorf, maybe a few kilometers away from the village where we were liberated. I went to this home. It was a big building where all the people who were in the concentration camps, all the women who were liberated, all the Jewish women. And first they mixed up Jews and Poles, and somehow didn’t get together. So they had just Jews over there.
And I was standing there one day, near the door and I remember like today, a GI came in chewing gum, and said he needs four volunteers to go to work. Well look, I have no family, I’m not tied up right now, I says “I’ll go.” So he took us in the jeep and drove us outside the city and they had tents set up. And they made us to just clean the pots and pans and they fed us. Oh spaghetti, the first time, spaghetti! And, with meatballs! And something I should remember, I heard a GI from Chicago, he was Italian really, but he thought he could speak Polish. He was talking different words. Anyway, they fed us and I remember they had peaches, there were two and a half cans and I could eat a can of peaches in one shot there.
So anyways, I was working in the fields right there, and he took us back every evening, we slept in the building, and then picked us up in the morning, back to work again. But this lasted maybe two weeks or so and then he told us, “We’re leaving here, and we have to go to Nuremburg.” But he said, “Don’t you guys worry, we’re going to come back. We need you, you’re good workers.” But I didn’t give it any a thought. The guy that told us this looked like John Wayne. A tall fella, cussed all the time, smoking cigarettes you know. So he said it, but he came back after several days. Luckily we happened to be there. He put us on the truck. We had no ties to nothing…whatever we had, you know.
A month after liberation they took us somewhere else, and they took us to Nuremberg. At Nuremberg they were living in tents, you know. And we worked there…
BILL BENSON:
Leon, I’m going to probably have to bring this to a close. I hate to do it. There’s so much more we could hear about. So if you’ll bear with me as I make some closing comments and then I’ll turn it back to Leon.
Leon has obviously only given us just a glimpse, we’ve just scratched the surface of what all he could have told us. And I think of the many things he shared with me that we’re not able to hear today that someday we’re going to work on a four-hour First Person and you’ll be invited to come and join us because there’s so much more to hear, and of course Leon is just now at the point where he has been liberated. He would spend four years in Germany and then come to the United States, meet his wife Nina, start a new life. There’s so much more to share with us that he can’t, but I want to reiterate something we said in the beginning. Soon after he came to the United States, of course, the Korean War broke out. And Leon, now in the United States, gets a draft notice. And if you don’t mind me sharing this Leon.
LEON MERRICK:
No, go ahead.
BILL BENSON:
Leon gets his draft notice, he’s only been here a year. He gets his draft notice and he goes in and the officer that he sees, turns out, he realizes, Leon, that you’re obviously not from the United States.
LEON MERRICK:
Yeah, right.
BILL BENSON:
And it turns out that he’d been an army…
LEON MERRICK:
Liberator.
BILL BENSON:
Liberator of one of the camps. So by this time, Leon had met Nina, so he deferred his enlistment, his induction, for another year so Leon was able to marry Nina. Then he went in and served during the Korean War and I think that is just remarkable.
I want to remind you that we will have a First Person each Tuesday in July, as well as every Wednesday between now and the end of August. So we hope that you can come back and join us. We have another First Person program tomorrow, July 2 [2008]. Our First Person will be Mr. Manny Mandel, who is from Hungary. Mr. Mandel’s father was a well-known cantor in Budapest.
While life under the Hungarians, who were allies of the Nazis was difficult, things turned far worse for Manny and his family when the Nazis occupied Budapest in 1944. Manny and his mother would end up being part of a group of Jews that were to be traded for trucks, but as it turned out they would be interned at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp before finally being taken to the border of Switzerland and turned over to the Swiss in December 1944. So we hope you can come back and join us for another First Person program between now and the end of the year and if not, make plans to come back and join us next year.
It’s our tradition at First Person, that our First Person has the last word, and so I’m going to turn it back to Leon for the last word. We didn’t have a chance for question and answers, and you can understand why I think, but Leon will be available for a short while, over here by the side of the podium, if you’d like to come up and say hi to him and ask him a question. So with that, Leon, what would you like to say to us?
LEON MERRICK:
I jotted down a few words, I’m going to read it right quick. Let’s see, when I was in the camps I kept thinking how nice it would be on liberation day. Yet once this day finally arrived, after so many years of suffering, I felt all alone. I didn’t know if my family or those dear to me survived. I personally experienced a lot, but there is just one profound regret, that so many people I loved did not live to see this glorious day. Our experiences are reminders to all people in every place and every corner of this earth to become guardians of human rights, dignity, and freedom forever.
