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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 tenth year of the First Person program. Our first person today is Mrs. Helen Luksenburg whom we shall meet shortly. This 2009 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. 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 is a volunteer in some capacity with the Museum.
We will have a First Person program each Wednesday though August 26 and we will have First Person programs on Tuesdays through the end of July. The Museum’s website at www.ushmm.org provides a list of the upcoming First Person guests. This year we are offering a new feature associated with First Person. Excerpts of our conversations with survivors are available as podcasts on the Museum’s website. Several from this year are already posted on the website and Helen Luksenburg’s will be posted over the next few weeks. The First Person podcast join two other Museum podcast series, Voices on Antisemitism and Voices on Genocide Prevention. The podcasts are also available through iTunes.
As most of you know on June 10 a gunman full of hate came to the Museum and tragically took the life of Officer Steven Johns. Officer Johns in giving his life and his fellow Officer stopped the gunman before he could cause more horror and cause more harm to people here at the Museum. We would like to ask you join us in a moment of silence in honor of Officer Johns, his family, his friends and his colleagues, including those here at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Our first person today is Mrs. Helen Luksenburg who will share her first person account of her experience during the Holocaust and as a survivor for about 40 minutes. Depending on time we will have an opportunity for you to ask Helen some questions when she is finished speaking. Before you are introduced to her I have several requests of you and a couple of announcements. First if possible please stay seated with us throughout our one hour program, that way we minimize any disruptions for Helen as she is speaking.
Second, if we do have time for question and answers at the end of the program, we ask that if you have a question you make your question as brief as you can. I will repeat the question so everyone in the room, including Helen, hears your question before she responds. If you have a cell phone or a pager we ask that you take this opportunity to turn it off. For those of you who may have passes to the Permanent Exhibition today please know that they are good for the entire afternoon so you can stay seated with us through our one hour program
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. Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), the disabled, and Poles were also targeted for destruction for racial, ethnic, or national reasons. Millions more, including Soviet Prisoners of war, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and political dissidents also suffered persecution and death under Nazi tyranny.
More than 60 years after the Holocaust, hatred, antisemitism, and genocide still threaten our world as we saw so dramatically on June 10th. The life stories of Holocaust survivors transcend the decades and remind us of the constant need to be vigilant citizens, and to stop injustice, prejudice, and hatred wherever and whenever they occur.
What you are about to hear from Helen Luksenburg is one individual’s account of the Holocaust. We have prepared a brief slide presentation to help with Helen’s introduction. We begin with this portrait of Helen Luksenburg who was the eldest of three children from a comfortable, middle class, Jewish family.
On this map of Europe the arrow points to Poland. On this map of Poland the arrow points to Sosnowiec where Helen was born April 4, 1926. In this photo we see Helen, who is circled in the middle, with her two cousins, Edzia on the left and Hadasa Cudzynowski on the right as they pose with a bear in Sosnowiec.
Helen was just 13 when the German army invaded Poland in 1939. By the end of the year Jews were subject to a host of discriminatory laws. Helen’s father was forced to close his textile business. Here we see German troops marching into Poland.
In 1943, the Jews of Sosnowiec were forced to move into a ghetto. This photograph is of a sewing workshop in the Sosnowiec ghetto. I believe if I remember right, I don’t know if you can see my cursor. I believe it is on Helen with her head bowed right here in the middle. On the left we see a photo of girls who were a member of the Hanoar Hatzioni Zionist Youth Movement in the Sosnowiec ghetto. On the right the photo is a group of young Jewish women, members of the Hatzioni Zionist Youth Movement picking vegetables on the farm.
Helen was deported to Gleiwitz and the first arrow points to the location of Gleiwitz after being selected for forced labor. Gleiwitz became part of the vast Auschwitz concentration camp network. While there Helen met Welek Luksenburg through a fence. He was a fellow inmate.
As the Soviet army approached in January 1945 prisoners from Gleiwitz were evacuated. Helen survived a death march which is shown by our second arrow on the map and she was forced to march to the Ravensbrück concentration camp which the third arrow points to. It was there that she was liberated by Soviet troops in 1945. Helen would reunite with Welek in a displaced persons camp in the American occupied zone of Germany. They would be married on March 2, 1947.
Helen and Welek, now known as William, live in Silver Spring, Maryland, just outside of Washington D.C. Upon their arrival in the Washington D.C. area in 1949, William became a master plumber then bought and ran his own service station for many years before retiring. The Luksenburgs have three children. Two are doctors and the other is an attorney. They also have five grandchildren. Both Helen and William are volunteers here at the Museum and they are very active in civic matters. Helen works at the Museum’s donations and membership desk where you will find her on Mondays. William, who will be our First Person on July 7, is with us today and I’d like to acknowledge William in the front row.
And with that I’d like to ask you to join me in welcoming our first person, Mrs. Helen Luksenburg.
BILL BENSON:
Helen, thank you for joining us and for your willingness to be our first person today. In the late summer of 1939 you were just 13 years of age and you were living with your parents and your two younger brothers in Sosnowiec, a heavily industrialized area very close to the German border. Before we talk about the events that began after the German invasion of Poland, tell us first about your early years, about your family, about your community and about yourself in those pre-war years.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
Before the war, I attended school. At the age 13 Jewish children were not allowed anymore to attend school. I was the oldest one of the three children. I had a brother and a younger sister. My sister hardly could read yet but we couldn’t afford for awhile we had a tutor for her, but after my father said, “We can’t afford.” We didn’t have any income coming in. We were selling everything possible and one mistake my parents made…they had some jewelry and they buried it. My grandfather had a house in a small town. Because I was born near the German border, my mother living through one war already was very nervous. She was close to a nervous breakdown. So my father put us on a train to go and live further away and we went to the small town where my aunt lived in the building. We stayed there for a couple months but I missed my father so somebody gave me a ride with the horse and buggy to go back home.
BILL BENSON:
Helen, may I interrupt? Before we go on with what you are about to tell us. Let me ask you; tell us just a little bit more about your father. I remember you telling me he was a very kind man and about how he would take rolls from the home to feed poor children. Tell us a little bit about your Dad.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
Before the war I don’t remember…he was busy making a living. But during the war when he sent us out he used to go and stay at 3 o’clock in the morning a bakery to get some bread for my aunt and her children. She was a sick woman and they didn’t run away. Most of my Mother’s family ran away from…because we were so close to the border. But, he used to get up at 3 o’clock in the morning, stand in line to get some bread and he went and took it over to my aunt.
When I arrived at home after I missed my mother and father after two months I opened the credenza and it was a pile of bread, penicillin was growing on it. I said to my father, “For whom did you save that bread?” He said, “For my children.” He thought that any day will come that he have enough bread. We had to throw out that bread. It wasn’t edible anymore.
Awhile after my mother arranged some things to be able to come back with my brother and my sister. My father never was the same…because when I was born near the German border. The war broke out on Friday September the 1st and the same day I remember standing in the street in the evening, that Friday, giving out coffee to the Polish army defeated coming back from the border.
BILL BENSON:
They were in retreat and you were serving them coffee.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
The war didn’t last long. The longest period was on Warsaw, when they took over Warsaw. I think three or four weeks and Warsaw fell too. We stood and gave out coffee to the army and the Polish army was every…wasn’t mechanized. Everything they were wearing heavy shoes, with nails in it in order not to wear out the soles. Everything they carried on their back. It wasn’t motorized at all. The next day the Germans just drove in with the trucks, with the tanks, and everything. It wasn’t like Germany. And, our problems started. We had to wear armbands on the left arm. We were not allowed on certain streets to walk. Schools were obsolete for Jewish children and everything was limited. At 7 o’clock in the evening you were not allowed to be…you were not allowed to be on the streets anymore it was curfew.
Life was getting more difficult. You made a living just selling everything what was possible. Our mistake, my parents mistake was, rather my mother’s that little bit [of] jewelry she had we buried it because we run away. My mother was very nervous and she will run away with…my father put us on a train going to the small town what was my grandfather’s building there and lived with my aunt and the whole family…I remember there were a lot of younger children in the family. I belonged to the older grandchildren. The small children they were so pampered before the war and when the war broke out everybody was crying. They were hungry and there was not enough bread even.
After awhile, being there I missed my father because he never came to join us. Somebody gave me a ride on a horse and buggy and I arrived. I didn’t recognize my father when I arrived. He looked like Gandhi when he was released from prison. He was bald and he lost so much weight I said, “What happened?” and he opened the credenza and it was a pile of bread, as I mentioned before. Penicillin was growing on it. I said, “For whom did you…?” “Save that bread for my children.” We threw it all out.
Because he was…all men had to go and register. He was going every day before we came to the city hall. He got to the corner, it was a long walk, and he turned around and he continued for about a month. The last day he came they called it off. He didn’t have enough carriage to go in because he didn’t know what to expect, what will happen. He walked…the first day he had a beer with a friend. He walked with the friend, my father went straight and the friend made a left turn and the Germans were arriving on the motorcycles and they yelled out, “Halt!” He didn’t listen. He was running, the man. My father went into the first building. They opened the doors and let him in because they knew him and they trusted him. The man never made it. They shot him on the spot. My father never recovered after that. He was not like the same man. He was afraid of his own shadow. When by the time I arrived after two months I didn’t recognize him.
BILL BENSON:
Helen, you and your family would live under these circumstances until sometime in 1942 when you would be forced into what you called an “open ghetto.” Tell us what an open ghetto was and what happened.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
We didn’t know what to expect. August the 1st, 1942 we all were called to a sports stadium to register. Everybody, whatever we could dress the best to impress the Germans. We arrived there and we stood the whole day. My father kept saying, “Let’s wait. Let’s wait. Maybe they will send us home. They will change their mind.” Finally by 10 o’clock at night we approached the table. The tables were set up alphabetically and so what happened…they obtained my parents and my younger sister and they took me and my brother and me and shoved us off and said, “Go home!” I started to cry and my father gave me the keys. I said, “I didn’t want to go.”
So my father said, “Somebody has to survive and you will be the one.” And I am the only one who survived. At the time I got some connections and things they let them out. But, three months later I was sent out because the…mostly was to register that the Germans had the names and the age and everything. I was sent out and my parents moved to a ghetto. Before, what I called an “open ghetto” we were not allowed to walk, do anything on certain streets. They were just like the middle of the city we were allowed to move around. Schools were no more schools and after that, after I left they had that big…1942 when they met in the stadium, sports stadium, was mostly to register. The city wasn’t big enough in this one place to accommodate all the Jewish people in one ghetto.
So…one ghetto was at one end of the city and another they divided between A and B. We got B and we were at the other end of the city.
BILL BENSON:
Helen, before you would be forced into the closed ghetto, into B,…before that time one of the roles that you had was to get news for the family. Would you tell us a little bit about that?
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
We were not allowed to have radios. Everybody…once somebody was hiding a radio some people had to stay. Most people lived in apartments. We didn’t have single houses. Somebody had to stay in front of the building and watch out if a German police man doesn’t come in and he would shot you on the spot because consider you a spy right away.
So if three men got together and started to talk about politics, I used to go to a relative who had a restaurant and listen in to the news what they were talking and bring it to my father. I was 13 years old, 14 years old and to bring the news to my father
BILL BENSON:
Your father also called up on you, and if you’ll tell us about this too…once he lost his business and you no longer had things to trade, your father asked you to help him go collect debts owed to him.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
He made me a list. That part, not too far about maybe 5 or 6 miles away was the German border. That part belonged to Poland after the First World War, but the Germans renew their old border so that was. My father made me a list of customers what he trusted. I took off at the time I was about, I don’t know if I was 14. I took off my arm band, pretending that I am not Jewish. When I got to the border the German guard said to me, “How come I don’t have a permit?” I said, “Because I am 13 years old.” You had to have a permit from the time you were 14 years old, so he trusted me. He told me that I have to be back before 6 o’clock because the guards will change and I could have some problems with it. I remember I came back, I brought some money with me. I don’t remember 200 marks or something like that.
BILL BENSON:
But you had gone and actually gotten it from these former customers.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
Yes, he made me a list of people what he trusted and I went and I will never forget…on the road when I walked back was just fields and the snow was February I guess, 1943 No…
BILL BENSON:
’42 probably.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
’42. And, no maybe ’41. And, the snow was beating on my cheek, on my right cheek. I was going back. By the time I came home my whole face was swollen, especially my right side from the snow beating on it. But, I brought home some money. When I looked at my children, and what the responsibilities a teenager during the war, what we had…how careful we had to be, how to protect our parents. We were afraid to…my father to go out. I used to bring the news. We were not allowed to have radios like I said before. We couldn’t afford to subscribe to newspapers, because there was no income coming in. You were selling whatever you could and I started to tell you that my mother had some jewelry but when she sent us out because she was so nervous being so close to the border, my father put us on a train and sent us to that small town. So we buried everything, was a basement and they had once a flood in the building, so they covered the flood with dirt. The whole family, whatever they had in jewelry, even fabrics but we didn’t even go and look because the fabrics just became nothing.
We couldn’t even sell it for bread. After the war some people, my uncles, one of my aunt’s brothers had a mill. And one of the sons survived so he stayed and his father, what his father survived. The boy was 15 and he stayed with us in the big city and he went back to the small town to be able to get back the…do you know what happened?
The Poles killed him because he came back for his property. So everybody we were afraid to go back and dig out anything. It wasn’t worth it. My older cousin than I said, “You survived the war and you will risk your life for some gold?”
BILL BENSON:
Helen, you started to tell us about being forced into the closed ghetto. Your family went into ghetto B. Tell us what life was like in the ghetto.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
I wasn’t there a long time because they knew we changed address and they came and got me. I was there maybe a week or so. But, to give you a picture of it, we got that ghetto was B. We got B and we got it in three rooms, a kitchen and two rooms, three families lived. We got the kitchen. And what you brought with you is two single beds, a table and chairs, some pots and pans and some clothing. Whatever you work all your life for you left behind. Because material things are not important, material things can be replaced. Life is important. I remember that I wasn’t there long because the militia knew I was…We had our own government so I went and complained that we don’t… The two other people…we didn’t have any privacy because everybody had to go through the kitchen.
So I went as a speaker. I was 14 by that time or whatever. So militiamen recognized me. He was a friend of my cousin and he comes over to me says, “What are you doing here?” I said, “I want to speak to the man who was in charge of housing.” He said, “Look on the wall.” And he points out to me my name is on the wall. He said, “Go home.” And as I left two militiamen were behind me. I came, my suitcase was always ready because you didn’t know middle of the night who will come and get you out from there. So, my mother packed up and I left and I never seen them again.
BILL BENSON:
You were just 16 years of age and you were all alone. Where did you go from there, Helen?
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
From there we were detained in a building what I went to school in. From there they sent us out, was a man who was a buyer with a cane I remember. We were all lined up and he picked his merchandise. But, I being the first time in my life away from my parents I attached myself to two friends of my cousin, what they were a little bit older and one girl who went to school. I stayed close to them. We all went to the same camp. The man, we were lined up and he was picking the merchandise, but two of us work on one shift and two work on another shift. I wasn’t with all the other two.
BILL BENSON:
He was picking you to be a slave laborer?
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
That’s right, to work.
BILL BENSON:
Tell us what kind of work they made you do.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
I worked, they call it Deutsche Gasrusswerke. It was a chemical factory. Actually, the main office was in Dusseldorf, in the north of Germany. They built the factory in Gleiwitz because they were afraid that the planes at the time couldn’t reach so far to the Polish border, closer to the Polish border
BILL BENSON:
So the Allies couldn’t bomb it because it was so far away?
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
They built a factory closer to Polish border because today Gleiwitz, with shifting the border, Russia took part of Germany. Germany took part of Poland. Gleiwitz is now in Poland. That was what I worked. They were building the factory. The men were building the factory and we were operating after it was finished. We produced black soot. What was from fine coal and oil in high temperature.
Every machine was as long, like half of this area we are in, with 12 windows in it, small windows and pilots. On the hour you had to check on the one machine was a cement bag and you had to pick it up and go to the front and weigh the production. What more you cleaned the pilots, more production came out. Each time you opened that little window there were 12 windows in each machine and 12 machines. Multiply it by 12, 120.
BILL BENSON:
144 windows. And so these big cylinders were very hot. You were filthy dirty.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
120 degrees.
BILL BENSON:
And what were your hours that you were forced to work?
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
We actually worked 8 hours a day, but on weekends in order to have one Sunday in three weeks, we had to work after two shifts, had to work 12 hours. 12 hours a day and 12 hours [a] night. These machines were going 24 hours.
BILL BENSON:
So you got one Sunday off every 3 weeks. Every 3 weeks.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
Every 3 weeks. That’s right. So you try to wash your underwear, do something for yourself.
BILL BENSON:
Would you mind telling us about the nightgown you had from your mother?
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
Before I left my mother packed me, because it was wintertime. As a child I always wore pajamas, but my mother had flannel nightgowns. So she put the flannel, that I will be cold in the winter, so she put her nightgowns for me. The first night we were in the Durchgangslager. How do you explain Durchgangslager temporary camp. And we slept there and when I got up I couldn’t believe my…the first night I took off that nightgown and lice were already in the seams because there were sick people sleeping there. We didn’t have mattresses. We had sacks with straw in them. The beds where sick people were there and it was infested with lice and so we got them all right away.
BILL BENSON:
You still had a few photographs at this time, didn’t you? You would lose them later.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
Oh yes, I had photographs from my family.
BILL BENSON:
In your pocket, right?
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
I was wearing a pair of pants. That was after the evacuated us. That was 1945 already and we were in a different place and was a role call and we had to leave the room, the barrack. So I didn’t have time to put on my pants and my pictures were in my pocket of the pants. By the time we got back to the barrack all the pictures were confiscated and I never had a picture of any…
BILL BENSON:
You had them with you through the camps for several years before that happened?
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
That’s right, but that was almost toward the end of the war.
BILL BENSON:
When you were at Gleiwitz working at the soot factory, besides the extraordinarily hard work conditions, what about the food? What did they feed you?
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
The food was two thin slices of bread and it was not made with normal flour and things. Who knows what they did to it. They gave us a soup. This soup consisted [of] potatoes and sand. They never washed the thing properly. Or spinach, rather. They never washed it properly. Once on Sunday, if I didn’t work on a Sunday, they gave us some meat. But the cook, we always laughed about it, the cook’s thumb was so fat, big, that when he was holding the spoon he thumb covered half of the spoon so it wasn’t much meat left on that spoon.
BILL BENSON:
Helen, at one point, if I remember right, you received a package and you were told it was from your family, packed with some bread in it I think.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
In the beginning they used to allow, like free sample of one pound and that was before our holiday Passover. I arrived in March. I could tell in the piece of cake that my mother wasn’t released from the prison or if they killed her, I still don’t know until today. That she didn’t bake that. I know my Mother how she baked.
BILL BENSON:
But they told you it was from your Mother didn’t they.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
It said the address and so…I guess one of my aunts. My Mother had five sisters, baked it and sent it to me.
BILL BENSON:
But you knew it wasn’t your mother.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
But at least it was such a [camaraderie] and solidarity in everything between the family that my husband had aunts in my hometown too. Nobody sent him a package. His parents were already gone, 1942. What?
BILL BENSON:
He is agreeing.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
He shows me about the number? When they put the numbers on, when they used to be a labor camp and SS came they were sitting at tables.
BILL BENSON:
This is when the SS took over the camp? Okay.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
That’s right. He had to stand completely naked, how God created us, in front of three SS men. What did the arm have to do with the rest of the body? But, they tried to take away your pride, your dignity, everything at the same time to tattoo the number on you. I removed the number. I wasn’t ashamed of it, but when my first child was 22 months old he was reading already and he kept asking me when he will have a number. So, I decided, I found a doctor who removed it. I couldn’t explain to him, he was too young to understand.
BILL BENSON:
Once the SS took over, then as you were beginning to tell us, not only did they strip you of your dignity, but in every way things turned far, far worse.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
That’s right.
BILL BENSON:
What happened?
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
What happened…the put us in a small ghetto. You had to leave everything behind, all the furniture, everything. I said before, what we took with us. And we just lived from hour to hour. We didn’t know what the next day will bring. The Germans formed a Jewish government. They were giving orders to these people.
One of my uncles worked, was in the main council in it so he used to send…Once I was so surprised. Middle of the night, he endangers his own son and sent him, middle of the night, to warn me not to sleep at home, that there will be that night they will come to take you out from there.
BILL BENSON:
Helen, the one thing if there is anything that you could say that was positive throughout all of that was that you met William.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
Yes, but I didn’t know that ahead of time.
BILL BENSON:
Would you tell us about meeting him? How that was even possible?
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
His cousin was my friend. He worked in my hometown. She pointed him out to me once and I liked his looks. I was a teenager. So I ask her to introduce me to him, she never did. So can you imagine I come to the camp.
BILL BENSON:
This is Gleiwitz, right?
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
This is Gleiwitz. And I was, my barrack was the first one by the fence and I see on the other side of the fence was the men’s camp. Who is there? It’s like God was the matchmaker. So, I still didn’t know him. How did I meet him? At one time we couldn’t, we didn’t have water in our wash barracks and it was a back door from the men’s wash barrack. A door you could go and fetch some water. So I went to get some water and who is there washing his clothes? A friend of his was there, he introduced us. The next day I am in my barrack and somebody comes in and said, “Somebody wants to talk to you by the fence.” I go out, it’s him. That’s how it started.
BILL BENSON:
And you got to know each other by talking over this fence?
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
Over the fence, yes. Once they…I don’t know what was the idea behind…he doesn’t agree with me. The Germans used a lot of psychology. Once they ordered us and the men to get together I guess they used psychology to realize that if a young man sees the opposite sex it will give them more hope to go on, work harder and to maybe to survive.
He comes over to me and talks to me and after he says to me, “You see we will survive and I will marry you.” You know what my reaction was? I didn’t have any hope that I will survive. I touch his forehead I thought that he has a high temperature. He is not conscious what he is saying. That’s how I felt about it. Eventually, we walked together when they evacuated. I took with a needle and thing I made a little bag for him from his towel, the small towels he had that he put the piece of bread what they gave him.
BILL BENSON:
You made this pouch for him to put his bread in.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
That’s right, his piece of bread. After we were separated and I didn’t know if he survived and he didn’t know if I survived.
BILL BENSON:
Helen, you were separated as the Russians closed in you were forced…
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
We don’t know about it. We didn’t have any inkling what’s going on, any information.
BILL BENSON:
But they forced you out of there and then you went on…
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
They forced, we walked. After three days walking they brought us back and put us on open cattle trains and the transport was from Auschwitz already on these trains, so we joined them. We were [there] for 12 or 14 days, without any food, they gave you a one piece of bread. That was January 1940. The only thing I remember…
BILL BENSON:
In January, 1945.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
’45 yes. 1945 and I remember just that the only thing we had that piece of bread, how long did it last? I had a blanket and everybody was picking up from each other’s arm, the snow that at least we had water. How did we survive so many days without food? You can’t imagine what a human body can, how much it can take.
BILL BENSON:
You mentioned that you were on the train 12, 14 days going hither and yon is how you put it to me one time.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
But people were dying and we were throwing them overboard. Some people tried to jump because it was a lot of snow on the ground. Some were killed…
BILL BENSON:
These were open cars?
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
Yes
BILL BENSON:
At some point you went through check points,
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
That was to our benefit because at least we had air. The trains what they took my parents to Auschwitz most of the people suffocated getting there because they didn’t have any air at all or a small window or something.
BILL BENSON:
Helen, as the trains passed through Czechoslovakia you told me that some of the Czechs tried to be helpful. Can you say something about that?
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
Yes some of the Czech…when we were on the trains when we passed Czechoslovakia some people stood on bridges and throwing bread to us. He wasn’t my husband at the time; he caught in the air a bread. He leaned over because they were open cattle trains, he leaned over, took the blanket [so] that he doesn’t hurt himself and somebody was holding his feet, [so] that he doesn’t fall over and he caught a big bread, European bread, in the air. The bread meant more [at] that time than today a million dollars and I don’t exaggerate.
So you think he cared for me so much, I jump in the wagon because I saw him. He was on the last of the men’s transport so I jump on the first women [so] that we could see each other. He just broke the bread in half and said, “Stretch out your arms.” Guess what? The bread fell between the two things. He never forgave me for that. Because he could at least it himself, no he wanted to share with me and I was a…who was it a Rose, what’s his name, the reporter? Once he interviewed us, he worked for…
BILL BENSON:
Oh, Charlie Rose.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
Charlie Rose for CBS and he interviewed us and he said, “Why she wasn’t athletic?” and he said, “She was a schlemiel.” That’s what he thought.
BILL BENSON:
Helen, they would eventually they would force you to a place called Ravensbrück.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
Yes
BILL BENSON:
Tell us about Ravensbrück.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
When we arrived after, I don’t know after how many days, we reached Ravensbrück. Ravensbrück at the time had 32,000 prisoners, women. Only women, men were not there. The furnaces stopped already, that was 1945, about March or April. We didn’t know what’s going on, that it’s almost the end, that Europe was liberated in June, 1944. We didn’t know, had any inklings at all. Sometimes you thought the Germans used to wrap their lunch in newspaper. Sometimes in the factory we picked up a piece of newspaper. They were always so victorious, that they were winning the war. So, we lost hope. We said that was the end. We didn’t have any information what was going on.
BILL BENSON:
Of course, you had no idea where Willie had gone at that point.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
No, I didn’t know where he is, if he is alive or not.
BILL BENSON:
Right. So what happened to you at Ravensbrück?
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
Ravensbrück we were not there too long. You know how this small…how you call it, not beds but cots or something?
BILL BENSON:
Cots.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
Five of us on one little narrow thing had to sleep. I had a piece of bread so you didn’t have where to keep it. I put it under my head when I fell asleep. By the time I woke up the bread was gone. It was nothing but thank God we were not there long, maybe one week. From there they sent us away again. I worked on a bombed airport cleaning up. I was peeling potatoes. That was a good job. When they picked me to work in the kitchen at least I was eating the potatoes. In Germany they cook the potatoes peel cut off they call it, in the skin. So we had to peel the cooked potatoes. So at least I had enough potatoes to eat.
Once I took home, I had a pair underwear with the elastic in it and I was scared stiff to take a few potatoes with me to the barrack to share it with my friends. But, I went through it.
BILL BENSON:
It would not be long after that that you would end up being liberated. Tell us about your liberation, Helen.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
You know, they evacuating us again. The old guards were guards from Hungary, the old people. Because all the young people had to fight on the front, Boys at 15, the Germans. So the old guards, we were evacuated and we were walking. We came to a rest place and finally I saw civilians on the road. So I said to him, “We’ll catch up with you. Let us rest here.” And he didn’t care. He really didn’t care.
BILL BENSON:
This was the guard, he didn’t care?
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
The guard. So, we just walked away. We were resting by a place and a young German soldier in uniform stopped and started to flirt with us. I guess we still looked halfway decent. I looked at him, he didn’t have a gun, he didn’t have a belt. I remember my Mother’s stories, what she was telling us after the First World War. A child could disarm a soldier because they didn’t have the belt and they didn’t have the gun. I looked at him, he was in uniform, but he didn’t have a gun. I was the youngest one of the four. I said to him, “Do you know who we are?” He said, “Mädchen, girls.” I admitted to him, “Wir sind Jiddin.” His eyes bulged out and he just walked away.
BILL BENSON:
And what did you say to him?
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
That we are Jews.
BILL BENSON:
To this German.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
Jiddin. That Jewish girls. And he just walked away. I felt at the moment, I felt liberated. So, so strong that got my hope back to go home. Not to give up. He didn’t care. But, I was so brave because he didn’t have a gun. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be so brave.
BILL BENSON:
And Willie would agree that’s no schlemiel there. Tell us what happened then. Helen you were liberated but you would then get very sick.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
I didn’t actually see the actual liberation. My biggest regret is that I didn’t see the mighty German’s downfall. Because I had a German woman invited…oh we were walking and we met again some Poles who were working there as forced labor. Three men gave up their room. They went to sleep in the barn and four of us slept there and the German woman invited us for supper. Farmer’s supper consists of a pitcher of milk, a pitcher of rendered pork, and some mashed potatoes. I saw that combination, not because it wasn’t kosher, I just was so…my stomach couldn’t tolerate it. They took me to the hospital. I had typhus. So I actually, my only regret is that I didn’t witness the actually downfall of the mighty German army. I still regret it today.
BILL BENSON:
And you didn’t even, did you really fully realize you had been liberated until you actually…
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
Yeah the Russians liberated. So we were afraid of the Russians also. Not for the reason because I am Jewish or anything. We were afraid they were soldiers hungry that they can rape us. So, I made…we took over a villa, an empty little house. Being the youngest one I was the smartest from them, if I may say so, because I made a sign and in Polish “Zaraza” means quarantine and it’s in Russian too and put it on the front of the door. So nobody bothered us.
BILL BENSON:
That was very smart.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
You had to look for ways how to survive.
BILL BENSON:
Well I know that as our time starts to get short, Helen, I know everybody is going to want to know very much how you found Welek, William, again. Would you tell us how you were able to find each other?
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
I was leaving Poland. I was for two month in my hometown.
BILL BENSON:
So you made it back to Sosnowiec.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
Yes. And somebody gave us a ride. You can’t imagine the situation after the War. I remember we wanted to get on a train, people were hanging on the outside of the train. Everybody wanted to go back home. Finally, we made it to Sosnowiec. We all were from Sosnowiec. All four of us. Somebody comes over to me at the station and said, “You have a home here.” My cousin was liberated from Auschwitz and Auschwitz was liberated January, 1945. We were not liberated until May the 8th, 1945. So she was right back home.
BILL BENSON:
And had been for awhile.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
That’s right, almost a ½ a year. Her sister came and another cousin and I arrived and the girl at the station told me, “You have where to go.” My friend had her uncle who was one of the richest people in our town, he survived. He was hidden and he survived with a son. So she had a home and I had. The two others, I don’t know where they…they had to go and look for something.
So I had a cousin, I had home. But my cousin and her fiancé decided that they want to go, leave Poland and to go to Germany under American occupation.
BILL BENSON:
Because you are still under the Russians now?
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
That’s right. So I asked them if I can go with them. Five of us went. We got to Germany, back to Germany, and my cousin had a cousin who lived in Weiden in Bavaria. We got there and we stay overnight. I just was watching Kissinger the other day on television and he was talking German. They were videotaping him for something. His hometown we stay overnight because it was the closes to the Czech border. So we couldn’t go any further so we stayed in Furth. Furth, he was born in Furth, Germany.
From there we got to Weiden. We were seven people and one little room living. Three were sleeping on the floor, but whoever could help. People were not selfish at all. Everybody was in the same situation. Everybody lost everything. So from there I don’t know, I don’t remember…oh when I was going to Weiden I was in Prague. In Prague I am getting on a streetcar and a girl who was from Prague who was my overseer Edith called my name and I stepped down from the, I was on the steps of the streetcar. I stepped back and she said, ‘I saw Willie!” In Prague, she told me that. I said, “Where, what?” She said, “I don’t know I saw him in the Jewish community center in Prague.”
BILL BENSON:
In Prague, Czechoslovakia?
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
So that’s the only thing I knew. So my cousin’s fiancé, I didn’t want… we had to leave Prague to go further and he said, “I will go and look for him.” He went because there was a Jewish center something there. He came back he said, “I couldn’t find him.’ He didn’t live there; he was visiting somebody or looking for somebody there, that’s why. I lost track again. People were going from place to place, they were no communication at all, how to get around. Two girls came to because we stayed with my cousin’s cousin. It wasn’t my close relative, but her close relative.
Two girls came from the same town and they were talking that they lived in Bayreuth. You know what Bayreuth is famous?
BILL BENSON:
No
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
Richard Wagner Festspielhaus. So his name and Bayreuth. So she said who is there in Bayreuth and she started to mention names and she mentioned his name. That’s how I found out. He heard that I survived but he didn’t know where I am. I found out that he survived but I didn’t know how to get in touch with him. At least she pointed out that it was Bayreuth. It wasn’t too far by train to go.
So I sent him a little note. I didn’t know how he feels. Maybe he changed his mind, you know? Long time. So, I wouldn’t be angry at him.
BILL BENSON:
But you didn’t have an address you just sent it to Bayreuth?
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
I couldn’t do that. She said, “Oh he is in Prague.” The girls knew every move where he is. So she said, “But he will be back in Thursday.” He had a permit from a Lieutenant Governor in Bayreuth, who was American and gave him a permit. People used to come that time from Russia back. A lot of people who were more left oriented went during the war, young people, to Russia. So they were coming back and everybody wanted to come to the American zone. He had a permit from Captain Cooley. I remember the names, so many years.
Captain Cooley gave him a permit to bring these people over to the American zone because over there Russia was under, Russia was occupying Czechoslovakia at the time.
BILL BENSON:
But William was allowed to go bring him into the American zone?
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
So she said, “He will be back Thursday.” The girls, like I said before, knew when he is coming back. So it’s Thursday, it’s Friday, it’s Saturday, it’s Sunday, no Willie. So I gave up. He doesn’t care. At the time we were getting an apartment. They took over a big hotel and we got one room in that building. And he came there because somebody told him that we moved, my cousin and I. But I was still in the old place. So he got to that Café Wise and he, somebody was there and brought him.
My cousin stupid, she couldn’t hold on. I was on the third floor and she calls me, “Throw down the key.” In Germany every building is on the key. But she couldn’t hold on to tell me who is there. So I got so nervous I couldn’t find the key and I had to knock at the neighbor to give me a key to let them in. And he came in; I remember what he was wearing. A brown suit, a very long jacket, and he gave me a men’s watch and he said, “Will you get married.” And I say, “With what?” [I] didn’t have a pair of shoes even. I was wearing… my cousin was sharing her clothes with me because I didn’t have anything. I had a pair of shoes what a German woman gave me and the first rain I lost them. They didn’t fit right. So he bought me the first…he wanted to go dancing, so he got me the first pair of shoes. My first pair of shoes with a heel.
We got fabric and I found a Viennese designer and she…I borrowed a machine and she was sewing for us so she made me a black dress and a blue dress and a skirt. That’s all what I could afford. So I was the best dressed that time. Everything by a designer, Viennese designer, how she press every piece of fabric before she cut it out. Anyhow, that’s how we met.
BILL BENSON:
And If I remember right, somehow or another, an uncle left Willie a really old Ford tractor, right?
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
Not tractor…
BILL BENSON:
A truck, a truck.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
A Ford, an old Ford, a car.
BILL BENSON:
And old Ford, which he then sold to be able to pay for your wedding.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
Oh yes, we wanted to make a wedding. Listen, we didn’t have parents to make a wedding. So he sold the car and he had to go to another city to buy kosher meat. I cooked the wedding party myself. I almost fainted. You know, I don’t know how many of you seen a Jewish wedding. You stay under… like a Chuppah. Chuppah, yes. I almost fainted because I was observing the rules and regulations. Bride is supposed to fast before. But, I cooked too. We had 50 people for the wedding, a cantor, and a rabbi. I got one gift, just some marks, 100 or 200 marks. I paid the rabbi with it. That’s the gifts I got. Nobody had anything. You can’t be angry.
BILL BENSON:
Helen, let me ask you we’re at almost time to close. You would come to the…still take you a couple of years living in displaced person camps before you were able to get to the United States and you got here in 1949. How were you able to come to the United States?
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
Because, he was in Munich. He would try a friend of ours with the wholesale stockings. So he used to, didn’t have money. He gave him on credit and he used to sell to other people who were in the little businesses, the stockings. He was in Munich to pay off the rest payment because the man was leaving and he went to Israel. After we came to Israel, after many years we went and visit the man. He said, “You were a schlemiel” he tells him. “Because you came purposely to Munich to pay me?” So he said to him, “How could I face you now if I wouldn’t pay you?”
So with what we had, so he registered and two months later they called us for examinations because the Americans didn’t let anybody if you had one little spot on the lungs or something you were not allowed to enter America. One x-ray he had, so big it was. I showed it to my son who is a doctor he said, “How could they tell from such a small little x-ray?” So they took another x-ray, larger one, and he had calcification just from a cold like Bursitis or something.
So we came to America. We were a week or so in a special camp near, in Bremen Häfen. We left from Bremen. Came to America directly to Washington D.C. Every city, the Jewish organizations, accepted a certain amount of displaced persons, DPs. Ours was we were very lucky, Washington D.C. Not knowing the language, not knowing a soul, how many things the Jewish organization JSSA [Jewish Social Service Agency] used to give us 30 dollars a week, paid our rent what was 30 dollars a month and sent us to Americanization school. We are still very grateful. I support them still, [so] that they can do the same thing for other people. I remember, this is funny, we were walking. We didn’t have, we didn’t know anybody, on 14th street. I saw black limos in front, stained glass and I didn’t know what. I read if funeral home in Polish. I didn’t know what it means. I thought it is a nightclub. Stained glass, limos in front.
BILL BENSON:
Funeral home.
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
It was very hard. We were really greenhorns. But not anymore.
BILL BENSON:
Helen, you of course, and as we said at the very beginning, you built a whole new life and now you have 3 children, 2 doctors and an attorney. I wish that we could spend more time not only hearing more about what you could have shared with us during the Holocaust and the war but how you were able to establish your new life here. I am going to turn back to Helen in just a couple of moments to close our program but I’d like to thank all of you for begin here. Remind you that we will have a First Person program each Wednesday until the end of August and each Tuesday until the end of July. Our next First Person program will be tomorrow, so that’s June the 24th, when our First Person will be Mr. Fritz Gluckstein, who is from Germany. Mr. Gluckstein survived the Holocaust by managing to stay in Berlin throughout the war despite several arrests and other very close calls. We hope that you can come back tomorrow if you are in town and some other time and if not this year put it on your agenda for a trip to Washington D.C next year.
I’d like to remind you that if you go to the Museum’s website you can hear the conversations that are recorded from the First Person program and you can get excerpt on podcasts as well as through iTunes. It is our tradition at First Person that our first person has the last word. So with that I’d like to turn to Helen to close and before I do, because we didn’t have time for questions of Helen, she will step down off the podium over here off the stage. So if you want to come up and meet her, say hi to her, or ask her a question absolutely feel free to do that. You’re ready for that, right?
HELEN LUKSENBURG:
Yes, and I didn’t tell any sad stories to you. I am sure you know about it and you heard them before. I want to close with in telling you my story today I hope to do more than provide you with a vivid memory to share. I hope that you will become convicted about speaking out against the kinds of things that created the Holocaust. The event that happened to me in the past are still active today when people deny the Holocaust and make antisemitic statements. These problems of genocide are still active in places such as Darfur and Congo.
Human beings everywhere always need within their community, individuals who are willing to speak out about serious injustices which can lead today to events like the Holocaust. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is an institution dedicated to helping such individuals be aware and able to speak out. I hope after hearing my story you will join me in working toward that good cause. Please come visit me in the Museum and look at our resources online. Thank you.
