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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 Mrs. Helen Goldkind, whom you shall meet shortly.
First Person is a series of weekly conversations with survivors of the Holocaust, who share with us their firsthand experiences associated with the Holocaust. Each First Person guest presently serves as a volunteer here at the museum.
With few exceptions, we will have a First Person program each Wednesday through August 27th. We are also having First Person programs on Tuesdays in June and July. The museum’s website at www.USHMM.org, that’s www.USHMM.org, provides a list of the upcoming First Person guests.
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. Helen Goldkind will share with us her First Person account of her experience during the Holocaust and World War II, for about 45 minutes.
If time allows, we will have a question-and-answer period when she finishes her presentation. Before you are introduced to her, I have several requests of you and a couple of announcements. First, if possible, we ask that you please stay seated with us throughout the one-hour program. That will minimize any disruptions for Helen as she speaks.
If we do have a question-and-answer period, I ask that you make your question as brief as you can. I will repeat it so all in the room hear it, including Helen, and then she will 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 that now.
I’d like to also let those of you who may be holding passes for the Permanent Exhibition for this afternoon, know they are good for the entire afternoon, so you can stay with us through our one-hour program.
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 2007. More information on the ITS collection can be found on the museum’s website, or by visiting the museum’s Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Holocaust Survivors that is located in the Wexner Learning Center on the second floor.
The Holocaust was a 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 Helen Goldkind 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 Lebowitz Goldkind. Helen was born in 1928 in Volosyanka, Czechoslovakia. Helen was one of seven children born to a close-knit Jewish family. On this map of Europe, the arrow points to Czechoslovakia. Helen's father owned a shoe store in their home town of Volosyanka
When Hungarians closed her family's synagogue, her grandfather, fearing for the safety of the synagogue's Torah scroll, secretly brought it home. In 1944, Germans occupied her family's town. Hungarian officials ordered that the Jewish star be worn and rounded up Jews sending them to the Uzhgorod ghetto. On this map of Czechoslovakia, the arrow points to Uzhgorod.
Helen's family was deported to Auschwitz. The arrow on this map of major Nazi camps shows the location of Auschwitz. She was sent to work on a forced-labor brigade in a Nazi munitions factory at another camp. Toward end of war, Helen was sent to the Bergen-Belsen camp. The arrow on this map points to Bergen-Belsen and here we see a photo of Bergen-Belsen.
Helen was liberated from Bergen-Belsen on April 15, 1945. Here we see a photo of liberated survivors. Helen emigrated to the United States in 1946. We close with this photo of Helen at her wedding to Abe Goldkind in 1947. Helen came to the United States in 1946.
As we just saw, she married her husband Abe in 1947. They would move from Richmond, Virginia to Baltimore soon after their marriage. Helen and Abe had three children. One daughter is a microbiologist with the United States Navy, and their other daughter is a psychologist. Their son is a gastroenterologist and is also with the U.S. Navy.
Helen and Abe would eventually move to Florida, but Helen moved back to the Washington, D.C. area in 2000 after Abe passed away so that she could be close to her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Helen has nine grandchildren ranging in ages from 13 to 31, and she has seven great-grandchildren.
Helen volunteers at the Membership and Donor desk, where you will find her here on Thursdays. She also speaks frequently to groups here at the museum, as well as in other settings. With that, I’d like to ask you to join me in welcoming our First Person, Mrs. Helen Goldkind. Helen, thank you for your willingness to be our First Person today. It’s good to see you.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Good to see you, too.
BILL BENSON:
Helen, when Czechoslovakia was partitioned and then occupied by Hungary, you were living in your home town of Volosyanka. Your family had lived there for several generations. Tell us what you can about your early life in Volosyanka—what your family life was like, what your town was like, and a little bit about you before the war came.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Okay, I come from a family of seven children and grandparents and uncles and aunts, and it was just wonderful. My uncle was a Czech officer. I was going to school, like, with everybody else and my life actually, as a young person, was very good because we all lived together.
My grandparents lived next door and I remember running to her, and every time I would come, she would say, “Oh, I’m so glad to see you,” and that was every day. [Laughs] So my memory of my childhood is very good while it lasted, but then of course, it changed.
BILL BENSON:
Helen, before we talk about that, one of the things you described to me was a beautiful synagogue in your hometown. Will you tell us a little bit about that?
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Yes. It was a small Jewish community, but we had a beautiful, beautiful synagogue. Most of the happy things were surrounded around the synagogue—weddings and of course, people went to pray. They were religious. And even Saturdays were happy days. People were free to worship. They used to go to churches, to synagogues; nobody bothered anybody.
BILL BENSON:
We saw in the slides, a photograph of your father’s shoe store. That was his business, operating a shoe store for Volosyanka?
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Mm-hmm. They called it a Bata store and the Bata store was a franchise. Matter of fact, when I came here to the United States, I saw the factory Bata, it says Bata. I say, “Oh, my god.” And my father made a very good living at it. We had a good life. But then also everything changed.
BILL BENSON:
All that changed. When Hungary occupied your community, your family and your community and your neighbors would live under Hungarian rule for several years. Tell us what changes took place when the Hungarians took over your part of Czechoslovakia and how your life changed under the Hungarians.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Well, first that I remember is, that if we would go to school and there were the same teachers. The Jews had to sit in the back and they were never called on, and my friends that were friends, you know, we used to play together, sort of kept on pulling away, so we felt terrible about it.
So my father decided that he will get a teacher, a Jew, that was fired from his job and [in] no time, the kids from the whole community came to our house and our house became a school. The synagogues were closed; we couldn’t go and worship.
My grandfather was very, very religious and they somehow managed to sneak out that Torah scroll, and that was in his house, and the older people (the younger people were afraid to go because the Jews couldn’t gather) they would gather in my grandfather’s house and that would be a house of worship.
BILL BENSON:
What happened to your father’s business under the Hungarians?
HELEN GOLDKIND:
They took it away because it was a franchise. We used to…I was a child and if we would ask our father what happened, he would say, “Well, it didn’t do so well, so sort of, I gave up,” but he didn’t give it up. I think our parents would try to protect us form this tyranny because we had such a free, good life. So then he had to do small things.
BILL BENSON:
What would he do to make ends meet after that?
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Okay, as I said, my grandfather and grandmother were living next door to us and they had cows, and horses and goats, so they were sort of supporting us in some way.
BILL BENSON:
Providing you with food goods.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Yes, bread and milk. I don’t remember having fruit.
BILL BENSON:
Getting by somewhat at that point.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Getting by.
BILL BENSON:
For our audience of course, if they’re surprised to hear, is the Hungarians had occupied your community. They were allies of the Germans, so with the Germans’ blessing, they had taken over where you lived.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Yes. Exactly. So they had to do what the Germans ordered them, actually, and that’s what they did.
BILL BENSON:
But eventually, of course, then the Germans would end up occupying the part of Czechoslovakia that the Hungarians had occupied, including your home town. When this happens, you’re an early teenager; things would even get worse. So now the Germans, Nazis were there. Tell us what happened when they came in and how things changed even to be far worse than they were under the Hungarians.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Well, when the Hungarians were there, at least the families were together. It was hard, but we were together, we were supporting each other. But when the Germans came in, they in no time—I don’t even remember, but I know it was a short time—they told all the Jews… well, first of all, they made us put a star of David on our house.
BILL BENSON:
On your house?
HELEN GOLDKIND:
On our house. And then we had to wear the stars on our hands. In no time, they said that Germany occupied most of Europe and they need people to work on the farms and we should gather in the square. All the Jews had to come and to take one suitcase, so everybody tried to put on a few sweaters, because in Europe it’s cold, especially where I was.
BILL BENSON:
So with one suitcase, you tried to pile on as many layers as you could, of clothing?
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Exactly. But my grandfather worried over his Torah scroll, so I remember my grandmother wrapped up his Torah scrolls in a white sheet and he had it, and he was happy with it. He figured he goes on a farm and people will want to pray. How do you live without any religion, without Ten Commandments that God gave us—“You shall not kill”?
We never thought that we were going to the slaughterhouse, because actually that never happened before. I mean, that wasn’t in history that you go to a place that they gas you, especially children, innocent children.
BILL BENSON:
So as far as you knew, you were going to work on a farm somewhere.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
Before you tell us more about that, you told me about an incident when you went to a little store that you had been to many, many times to get ice cream.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Well, you know, there wasn’t too much money. I knew the storekeeper and the storekeeper knew me, because I used to play with his children. So my uncle gave me a quarter and I take the quarter and I run to that store, and I want ice cream, and the storekeeper says to me, “I can’t give you ice cream because you’re a Jewish child.” Of course I went home crying. It wasn’t a big deal, but to me it was a big deal because I couldn’t understand why I am so different.
BILL BENSON:
And you’d always been able to get it there in the past.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
All the time! If I had a quarter—the problem was the quarter.
BILL BENSON:
So Helen, they’ve gathered you all the square with your suitcase and what happened then?
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Then they took us to the capitol city of Carpathia, it’s Uzhgorod, and they put us in a ghetto. When they put us in a ghetto, of course, you know, the ghetto had a roof and had no walls. And we thought we’ll stay there until they take us to the farm. We stayed there for a long time. Not too long, actually, not too long, a few weeks.
BILL BENSON:
Under basically what had been a factory or something?
HELEN GOLDKIND:
It was a brick factory.
BILL BENSON:
But it was open-air and just covered with a roof?
HELEN GOLDKIND:
With a roof, yes. But I remember a horrible thing that happened. [Crying] I’m so sorry, I’m not ready. You shouldn’t ask me to do this. [Laughs]
BILL BENSON:
Just take your time.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
One day, they told the old people they should come to the square. Most Jews, they wore a beard. So my mother went with my grandfather to that square and then they started cutting his beard and they were beating him up, and my mother had to face this.
And she couldn’t help him because probably if she would go over there, they would beat him more or beat her up. So finally, finally, they were finished with these old men. My grandfather was 86 years old. After they were done with these old Jews, they went back. My mother picked up my grandfather and he was just quiet. He was bleeding, but my mother brought him home and she washed up him from the blood.
We were sitting on the bare floor there and we were all crying. I have never, never seen my father cry and believe me, we went through plenty difficulties, and that night I remember him crying. But still my grandfather wouldn’t talk. I think he was in a shock.
BILL BENSON:
And your mother had been forced to witness that.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
It’s just, you know, he was in a shock. He couldn’t talk, but he heard what we were saying. We thought he is in pain. Excuse me. I’m sorry. But two days went and my mother took a kerchief and wrapped his face up and put his hat on and all of a sudden, he says to my mother, “You know I know you all thought that I cried from pain, which I have, but the humiliation, that I couldn’t deal with,” and that was it. And then a few days later, they put us in a railroad in cattle cars and they took us to Auschwitz.
BILL BENSON:
If you can, Helen, tell us about the trip to Auschwitz, what that trip was like, and then what happened once you got there.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Well, they gave us a bucket of water and you know there were lots of people in that cattle car. I don’t know how many because I didn’t count them.
BILL BENSON:
But it was one bucket of water for the car.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
One bucket of water. And there were all people, children were crying and all the people were fainting. There was hardly a place to sit down. It was chaotic. My grandparents were coming with us in the same cattle car and my mother worried over her parents, so she would say to my older sister that when we get on the farm, she should take care of them.
You know, everybody had a job to do and we should take care of each other—that was my mother’s wish. So I don’t know how many days it was, we finally got to Auschwitz and it was still daylight and they didn’t open up these cattle cars, but we wanted to get out of them, because it was chaotic. People were…well, everything was a mess.
Well, it got darker, but as soon as we stopped with these cattle cars, we smelled a terrible smell. We figured that smell shouldn’t be on a farm. It smelled like they were burning flesh, but we figured, “Okay, they’ll open up the doors, we’ll look around, we’ll see what’s happening.”
So as they opened up the doors and they say, “Raus! Raus!” you know, they were screaming, “Get out! Get out!” and we had to take whatever, you know, this little suitcase and throw it in a ditch, and so we did that. And my grandfather came with his Torah scrolls and he wouldn’t think of parting with the Torah scrolls because, first of all, it’s a sin to throw it down.
And my mother looked around and all of a sudden, she sees that they’re beating him up. They were telling him to throw the Torah scrolls in the ditch.
BILL BENSON:
Onto the pile of the luggage in the ditch.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Yes, and he said to my mother, “They don’t understand what I’m trying to tell them, that it’s a sin, it’s a sin!” Well, these monsters…he didn’t want to throw the Torah scrolls down and he was holding onto them and so these monsters were beating him; he fell with the Torah scrolls. [Crying]
BILL BENSON:
And, Helen, you were there. You saw this.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
I saw this with my eyes. That’s why it’s so difficult for me. And they were screaming. My mother looked fairly young, but she was holding on, I had a six-year-old brother, and I don’t know, accidentally, or whatever it was, I wanted to know what was happening to him and he was already on the ground and they were still hitting him there.
And my heart cried out, “Somebody help him!” you know, this is my grandfather. Nobody came to… nobody came. And then… I’m so sorry.
BILL BENSON:
No, Helen. Everybody understands.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
My mother was still holding onto my brother and he loved books. We weren’t rich, so if we ever got a present that was a book…and he was holding on to one book and my mother saw what happened to my grandfather. She was afraid that they were going to also beat him up, so she was begging him to throw that book into the ditch and he wouldn’t do that.
Then she was negotiating it with him. Finally he took the book and gave it to my mother and he was watching my mother throwing that book into that ditch and she just cried. And then all of a sudden, one of those monsters came and they pulled my brother away from my mother and he cried.
And my mother heard him, and she ran after him, and she was telling those monsters that he’s only six years old, he will not survive without me. And they were beating her up and she fell and they kicked her around with those big boots.
And finally, you know, when they saw she had difficulties getting up, they pushed her to the left and she went with my brother. Many times, when I think about it, I say maybe if she wouldn’t run after, maybe she would survive because she was fairly young. In the other hand, I say to myself, you know, my little brother didn’t go to his death crying.
BILL BENSON:
She was there with him.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
She was there with him, and knowing my mother, she probably comforted more of these kids that were crying. Then that was the last I saw my mother and then they were finished making these selections.
They took us and I remember walking, so on both sides, it was so planned, that even the people that were going to the showers or going to the gas chamber, they would never think that is a gas chamber because they had flowerbeds and trees. Little did we know that they were burning my family there, my people. And behind these flowers and the trees, there were the gas chambers.
BILL BENSON:
And you had no idea.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
I had no idea, I had no idea. And then at the back I heard music, but I didn’t see them, but I heard music. And finally, we got to a place where they shaved our heads and they gave us showers. I was in a group where they gave us showers and they gave me one striped dress and a wooden clog and a little red bowl.
It took a long time because we were so many girls. And finally, they were finished with us and they matched us to a barrack. And it just so happened that I was on the third floor sort of, of the bunk bed.
BILL BENSON:
The third level of the bunk bed?
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Yes, and I couldn’t sleep and I looked out—there was a crack. So I say to my sister, “Listen, this is not a farm. Look at this!” People were hanging from the electric fences. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. So my sister says, “Well, maybe in the morning, we’ll figure this out.” In the morning they took us to Zählappell. It was 5:00. I think it was 5:00. We didn’t have no watches. And they let us stay there for an hour. We saw there were a lot of people hanging on these fences.
BILL BENSON:
This is when you were lined up in the morning?
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Yes, for Zählappell —they called it Zählappell. And they were just hanging. I think that what the Germans did—they didn’t take them off right away because they were telling people you’re not going no place.
BILL BENSON:
These were people that are on electric fences and had been electrocuted.
HELEN GOLKDIND:
Yeah. And so after a while, a group came with pitchforks and they were pulling these people off and that’s what it was. Nobody got out of there. Nobody got out of there. We were in Auschwitz not too long, maybe six weeks, you know, but I’m not so sure. When you don’t know, you don’t have time.
They made selections every day. There was always a truck on the platform and in case Mengele made a mistake, you know let through an older person or a sickly looking person, they would pull them out and they would put them on the truck, and this truck took the people to the gas chamber.
BILL BENSON:
So this was happening each day of the weeks that you were there.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Each day. Each day. So finally, I remember my sister used to be…you know, if I couldn’t stand up, she would hit me in the back to stand up because she was afraid they were going to take me away. And so it wasn’t long. All of a sudden, they lined us up and they take us to the train again. The train—they put us again in cattle cars—and the only thing in these cattle cars, they gave us some bread and again, a bucket of water.
BILL BENSON:
This is you and your sister Sylvia?
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Sylvia, yeah, you saw.
BILL BENSON:
Just the two of you, yes.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Yeah. So we figured you know this is better because they gave us a slice of bread. I remember, it was a piece of bread. And they locked us up. All of a sudden, while we were waiting for the train to go, all of a sudden, we heard noise. “Voo! Voo!” you know, like they’re bombing, the bombs are falling.
We were kind of glad when the bombs were falling because we were, we thought that they were going to bomb the tracks or bomb us, it didn’t matter. But I still have a lot of relatives there. We were 89 people and we didn’t all go with one transport to Auschwitz.
So we were hoping this is what’s going to happen, but we stayed there for maybe an hour, I don’t know, and all of a sudden, the trains left, so noting happened to the railroads. Nothing happened. So we got into Germany and they took us first to the factory. They took us to the factory and they told us, you know, everybody a station. I was at a station that I had to fill the bombs.
BILL BENSON:
So this was a bomb-making factory, a munitions factory.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Yes. Believe me, it wasn’t my choice. Believe me, because I knew already that this is to kill innocent people. I had to pick up from this wagon, the empty shell, which was okay, and put it onto that machine and had to fill it in with spring stuff—the Germans called it “spring stuff.” It was yellow, it was very hot. And then I filled it in and I had to carry it with my whole body.
BILL BENSON:
This filled bomb.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Yeah. I couldn’t just manage it with my hand. And that’s what I did. It was a very hard job for me. Then you hardly got anything to eat. In the morning, soup with a slice of bread. At night, we got soup that was made out of potato peels. Occasionally, occasionally, there was a potato.
And it was cold, and we had to march. Somehow, I don’t know why, but the barrack was away from this factory so we had to march through the snow and the cold.
BILL BENSON:
To get to the place where they made you do your labor.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Right.
BILL BENSON:
Helen, you mentioned that the spring stuff burned and you would get burned from it because it would spill on you.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Absolutely. My hands were all burned because I had to fill them up.
BILL BENSON:
You told me that it was better to be on the day shift than the night shift. Say a little bit about that.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Sure. Okay, well, we had a night shift and a day shift, so one week we worked during the day, which is okay because they kept the windows open and there was some circulation. But at night, they closed the windows so they shouldn’t be seen from their enemies, so there was no circulation.
BILL BENSON:
And you had the fumes and the heat.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
And I was working on top of it. So our eyes got yellow and we had a little bit of hair already by that time and it got orangey. The girls were fainting left and right. They got poisoned from that poison. And of course, when you’re hungry and cold and don’t get enough to eat, you don’t last that long… and work hard. So that’s what happened.
So we worked there in that factory for some times. I don’t remember for how long, but one of these days, I just didn’t think I can make this, going to that factory. I was just so weak and I was so cold and I gave up.
When these people went, they were telling, “If somebody is going to survive, tell the world,” because they felt nobody knew what was happening, because how can the world know what was happening when they were killing people, they’re gassing people.
So my sister kept this in her mind and emotionally she was fighting, so I couldn’t do it. So what happened was these girls that couldn’t make it to go to the factory, they stayed in the barrack and by the time [we] came home, they weren’t there anymore.
I don’t know that they did with them but they weren’t there. I said to myself, ‘I don’t know how to kill myself and I’m not dying and I just can’t do it.’ So I was laying there in the morning and I didn’t go out.
My sister was looking for me and I’m not there, so she ran into the barrack and she saw me laying there and she was so, I think, I don’t know, but she lifted me up and she shook me and she was crying, “I’m not leaving her alone here.” I looked at her and I says, ‘Oh, my God, she got crazy and I’m dying.’ That’s what it was.
BILL BENSON:
But she forced you to get up.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
She pulled me out and we both cried and she says to me, “I know you’re hungry. I know you’re cold. I’m going to give you a piece of my bread.” She was bribing me, I should just live. So I took it a few times but then I was afraid she’s going to die.
Like she would tell me in the morning, “Save a piece of bread,” and I says, “Sylvia, I already ate it and I’m so hungry.” They gave us nothing for lunch. And working that hard all day without a let-down, without a break.
So then I wasn’t taking it because I was afraid she’s going to die. But at night, if somebody got a potato, which was seldom, we did share it. After a while, after a while, the factory was bombed. The factory was bombed. The SS left the place.
BILL BENSON:
Helen, before you go on about that, I’d like to just ask you about one thing that you told me that I’d like you to share, and that was, the SS lived there at the camp and you described seeing where they lived. Would you say a little bit about that? They had children there.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
That was in Auschwitz. A lot of people don’t know that in Auschwitz, the SS people, the SS people, had their families there, and after they were done with their jobs, they went home and played with their own kids. And I’ll tell you how it came out. Do I have…I’ll make it very short. A lady came in I once spoke to children. I only spoke maybe eight, ten minutes. I spoke about my little brother, and I really didn’t tell such horrible things to children.
That lady came in. She was a chaperone, but she was also a mother for these children, and she says to me, “You know my father was an SS man and he never told me such horrible stories.” I says, “Oh, really?” “Well, he told me he was taking care of some people there,” you know, whatever. So I said to her, I pulled her over because I didn’t want her children to hear what I had to say and I didn’t have enough time.
I say to her, “Did you ever ask your father what his job was? I was in Auschwitz, and these SS were taking children like yours to the gas chamber and then they went to play with their own children.” She got taken aback and she says, “Oh, I’ll never forget you.” I says, “Good. If you ever see children’s life being threatened, you better speak up, because your father didn’t.”
And of course, they left, so that’s what it was. I don’t blame her father for not telling her and I was kinda, you know, glad she came forward with it so I could really tell her what an SS man did, what their jobs were. So I’m hoping she speaks up for some children if their life is threatened.
BILL BENSON:
Glad you had that opportunity to talk to her.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
I really do. I mean I have nothing against her. It’s just that a lot of people are not informed.
BILL BENSON:
So, Helen, after the Allies were advancing and they moved you out of the munitions factory where you were slave labor, then where do they take you? The SS are gone now?
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Yes. So the civilians came with an open truck, I don’t know what to call it—a little, open truck. We were 2,000 girls maybe, there were left 400, I don’t know how many that were left. And they put us on this truck and they took us to Bergen-Belsen.
In Bergen-Belsen, it was, you know, like, almost the end of the war and they didn’t open up the barracks there for the people that were in the barracks, so there were a lot of people. And they opened up the barracks and they let us in there.
We didn’t even have anywhere to sit because the people, you know everything happened in these barracks. Some of them were dead, some of them were crazy. So I looked at my sister and she says, “You know, there are some dead people near this wall. Let’s make like a little wall and we’re going to be sitting there near the wall,” and that’s what we did.
We sat down near the wall and we were waiting for our death to come, or whatever will come first. But the lice and the insects were so big that whatever there was under that people came to us, you know, and they were eating us up alive there.
It wasn’t that long. I mean, you know, I don’t remember exactly to say how many days or weeks. It wasn’t weeks. The English came in and occupied Bergen-Belsen. And they opened up these barracks. They had never seen anything like that. They didn’t know what it was. Was it a crazy house? What is this place?
BILL BENSON:
So you’re locked in these barracks.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
We were locked in these barracks. We couldn’t go out anymore. So they went and called Eisenhower. I remember Eisenhower came and whenever Eisenhower comes, the newsmen run after him and they took these pictures to show what was there.
BILL BENSON:
Some of like what we saw in the slide show.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Yeah. So anyway, my sister got sick first. She wanted to live and she got sick first.
BILL BENSON:
So now you’re liberated and she becomes very ill.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Very ill, and so the English took her away. I thought, ‘They took her away. She’ll be away for a day or two, she’ll come back,’ you know, all of a sudden, she’s not back. So I went to look for her. I thought I’ll find her because there was a lot of dead people, you know.
Matter of fact, I remember walking and I saw like a mountains moving, a little mountain, and I knew that a mountain doesn’t move. So I went closer to this place and I saw the lice and the insects were moving and I was already sick by that time.
It wasn’t that the mountain was moving, but the insects and the lice were moving and made me think that the mountain was moving. So I fell. I must have fallen and I just…
BILL BENSON:
Just collapsed.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
I don’t know how much time I have.
BILL BENSON:
Can you tell about your cousin?
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Yes. I was going to let him out.
BILL BENSON:
No no, Please.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Because I talked so much.
BILL BENSON:
No No No. Please share that with us.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
While I’m looking for my sister, I look down on the ground and I saw an SS was pulling, like a body by his ankles with a string and it looked like my cousin. He like scared me and I screamed, “Freddie!” and he opened up his eyes. He opened up his eyes! And this German got scared or something, so he pulled off the ropes from his ankles.
BILL BENSON:
Just to interrupt for a second, the British were forcing the Germans to remove bodies and bury them and clean things up, and so he was pulling away this body and then you realize it’s your cousin.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
It was my cousin. I remember, he was so skinny, but I remember his long, big ears. So the SS left and he was left and evidently, shortly after this I must have fainted on the street. I looked like a skeleton but I had a heartbeat. My heart wouldn’t give up. So the English evidently took me to a makeshift hospital.
They were going around and if they saw somebody is maybe moving their hand or whatever, that they’re still alive, so they took me to this makeshift hospital. I was very, very sick and they kept me there. And then the Swedish Red Cross came and took out 600 kids. But while I was in Bergen-Belsen, I was looking for my sister’s face.
When I could lift my head up, with the help of my elbows, I looked around and I looked around and I didn’t see my sister’s face, and I just cried. The nurse comes over to me and says, “Why are you crying? You’re feeling better.” They thought I’m crying to feel better. I says, “No, no. I know my sister came here and she died.”
She says, “How do you know she died?” I said, “Because she’s not here.” And I says, “My life is not worth living.” I just wanted to give up again. You know, I’m alone in this world. So she says, “What’s her name?” so I told her what her name was.
So they went around asking if there is a name or something like that, and they found her, actually. But two days later, she came to tell me they found her but she’s very ill and they couldn’t move us. So I looked at her and I says, “Ooh, she’s not telling me a story.” I couldn’t believe that she would say a thing like that to me. But then, two weeks later, they brought her.
BILL BENSON:
And you were reunited.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
We were, we were reunited. So I told her the story about Freddie. She says, “Oh, you were probably delirious.”
BILL BENSON:
And you thought that was probably true.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Yeah! But, you know, he did survive but he doesn’t remember anything. He just doesn’t remember either.
BILL BENSON:
But you found each other later.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Later, and it was because probably we didn’t want to get separated so he took our name, Lebowitz. To make the story short, his name was Milbauer and they found him, and he had an uncle here and his name was Lebowitz, so he could come to the United States because he was Lebowitz.
BILL BENSON:
Because he took your name.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Because he took our name! So he had to stay in Sweden the next three years until this whole thing…
BILL BENSON:
So the Red Cross from Sweden actually took you to Sweden, you and your sister, and you were able to recuperate over there.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Yes, I was two months in a sanitarium and then they sent me to a school and my sister went to work in Göteborg. I’ll never forget the sweets.
BILL BENSON:
They took good care of you, didn’t they?
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Oh, they did. I’ll tell you, you know, the way I looked, burned up from the spring stuff, eaten up with lice, I don’t know if I would take care of myself. The way I looked, you know.
BILL BENSON:
Well how did you…what made you then come to the United States? How did you get to the United States?
HELEN GOLDKIND:
I had a sister that came out in ’38 and they put our names in a paper.
BILL BENSON:
So she was living in the United States since 1938?
HELEN GOLDKIND:
[Yes.] So they found our names, but she couldn’t connect because we were never in Sweden, so she wrote to the Red Cross in Sweden and they said, “Yes, they found two girls. They come from Czechoslovakia and their name is that.” So she knew already. Then she sent us an affidavit and four months later, we were here.
They wanted to unite us because we had nobody in Europe anymore. So that’s what happened. I’ll tell you the truth. I bonded with these girls in school. I told my sister, you know, I don’t know, because we became like sisters in that school. We were ten girls in a group there. So my sister says, “Look, from America, you can go anyplace you want to and if you don’t like it. But this is a real sister,” so that’s how I came.
BILL BENSON:
You told me a cute story about how your sister was in Brooklyn. If I remember right, you were saying “Brook-leen” so the various officials were trying to figure out where you were talking about.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
They had a problem because there was no “Brook-leen.” I told them she lived in “Brook-leen.” But in the meantime, they had difficulty because she got married and had a different name already, but they did bring us together.
BILL BENSON:
Helen, we have a few more minutes. Why don’t we turn to our audience for a few questions and then we’ll close and Helen will have a few more remarks for us. The gentleman here in the yellow shirt, the question is, “Do you have a tattoo?”
HELEN GOLDKIND:
When we came, the Czechoslovakian people came to Auschwitz, you know, almost like the end and they were dire for people to work, so instead of them bothering us, tattooing us, they sent us to Germany into the munitions factory. But there were factories near Auschwitz and these people were tattooed—a lot of the Polish people were tattooed. They had more time with them than with the Czech people.
BILL BENSON: Right. The round-ups of the Jews in Czechoslovakia came late in the war, I think, 1944 for you.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
All they wanted us to help them out, to work.
BILL BENSON:
Okay, do we…young man right here.The next question is: “Given your experience and then being liberated, what’s your view of what America’s role should be in the world with these kinds of circumstances?”
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Do you mean to say today sweetheart?
BILL BENSON:
Today.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Today.You know, I don’t know what to say except I just want to tell you my feelings, okay? Well, I think America is the greatest country in this world. There isn’t a better country. Not to say that everything is perfect, but it is the greatest place. We try to [right the wrong] and the freedom that you have is indescribable.
So today, look what we were doing, you know, in Afghanistan. We tried to liberate people, but maybe we are extending ourselves. We can’t be the police over the world. I mean, I don’t want to be political here, believe me—that’s not my subject—but as far as I’m concerned, to grade America by numbers, they’re number one in my heart.
BILL BENSON:
Okay, do we…we have time for one, maybe two more. The next question is: “What happened to the rest of Helen’s family?”
HELEN GOLDKIND:
They were all wiped out. Nobody came back.
MUSEUM GUEST:
Were they on the train with you?
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Yeah. They were all gassed, don’t forget. Six million is six million.
BILL BENSON:
Helen, did you say that I think you said that almost 90 family members went to Auschwitz?
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Yeah, and just me and my sister survived because my other sister lived. She died since then, but she was in the United States. So they all perished in the gas chambers, and it was easy for the Germans to get rid of all these people. Matter of fact, when we came, they were capable of gassing 10,000 people a day.
So, they couldn’t get rid of the corpses, so they had an open pit and that’s what we smelled, even though we were in the cattle cars. That’s what we couldn’t make out, because it was an open pit and they were just throwing people in this fire on the outside.
BILL BENSON:
I think we have time for one more question over here. Yes ma’am. The question is, “How old were you during the war years, Helen?”
HELEN GOLDKIND:
When I got to Auschwitz, I was 13. And let me tell you something: that was my luck because if I would be 12, I wouldn’t be sitting here.
BILL BENSON:
Right. And 14 when the war ended for you.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Yeah.
BILL BENSON:
I want to thank all of you for being here today with us for First Person and of course, I very much want to thank Helen for her willingness to share with us just a glimpse. That’s all we could do, was just touch on her experience during the Holocaust and during World War II, and of course we were not able to talk about her life after the war, getting herself settled in the United States and building a new life.
We’d like to remind you that we have a First Person program every Wednesday until August 27th. We’re also doing them on Tuesdays in June and July. We have another First Person program tomorrow, June 18th, when our First Person will be Mr. William Luksenburg, who is from Poland. He will tell us about his survival from a ghetto, forced labor camps in Germany and Poland, and then being sent on a death march.
So we hope that you can come back and join us for another First Person program, if not this year, put us on your schedule for next year. It’s our tradition at First Person that our First Person has the last word, so with that, I’m going to turn back to Helen to close the program. Before I do, Helen, will you be able to be available for a short while afterwards?
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Yeah.
BILL BENSON:
So if you want to come down and talk to her, ask her another question or just meet her, she’ll be over here by the podium, so please feel free to do that. Thank you again and, Helen?
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Can I talk to the young people first?
BILL BENSON:
Absolutely, in any order you want.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
Because this young man, he had a question for me.
BILL BENSON:
He asked a great question.
HELEN GOLDKIND:
It is very, very hard for me to talk about what happened, even though it was so many years ago, but I’m putting my hope in you young people that you’re going to make a better world for everybody. Some people would like to take [the view that] this is God’s will. I don’t want to be religious, but I feel when God gave us this earth, he also gave us a free will, and everything that we do is our decisions. You know, we can choose evil or we can choose goodness, and I’m hoping, through this experience, being here, hearing me, that you will make wise choices and wise decisions so nobody would get hurt like, you know, the generation I had to live in.
Now shall I…I want to thank you for coming and listening to me because this is not an easy thing, even to listen to, but I’m hoping you’re learning that hate, hate is cancer. Eventually it gets to everybody and the end is death. So I hope we can learn not to hate, not to be prejudiced, and just caring. Caring, you know caring. Pick the right choices.
That’s what I’m hoping that you the older generation can do, to drop the hate and we will see we’re going to have a better world… if you have any hate in you… I’m hoping no, no, you haven’t. I hope nobody has it. I think once they come, they look for something better if they come here to learn. That’s it. Thanks for coming.
