First Person with Henry Greenbaum
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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 Mr. Henry Greenbaum whom we shall meet shortly.
This 2009 season of First Person is made, has been made possible through generosity of the Louis and Dora Smith Foundation, to whom we are grateful for again sponsoring First Person, and I’d like to acknowledge Mr. Louis Smith who is with us today.
[Applause]
First Person is a series of weekly conversations with survivors of the Holocaust who share with us their firsthand accounts of their experience during the Holocaust. Each First Person guest serves as a volunteer here at the Museum.
With today’s program we conclude our 2009 season of First Person. Please check the museum’s website at www.ushmm.org, that’s www.ushmm.org, for information about the 2010 season of First Person which will begin in March of next year.
This year we offered a new feature associated with First Person. Excerpts from our conversations with survivors are available as podcasts on the Museum’s website. A number for this year have already posted, and Henry’s will be posted in the coming weeks. The First Person podcasts join two other Museum podcast series; Voices on Antisemitism and Voices on Genocide Prevention. The podcast series are also available through iTunes.
Our first person today, Henry Greenbaum, will share his first person account of his experience during the Holocaust and as a survivor for about 40, 45 minutes. Depending on time, we hope to have an opportunity for you to ask a few questions of Henry. Before you are introduced to him, I have several requests of you and a couple of announcements.
First, if possible, we ask that you stay seated through out your, throughout this one hour program. That way we minimize any disruptions for Henry as he speaks, and as you can see we have a full house today, so it’s even more important if you can do that. If we do have time for questions and answers at the end of the program, and you have a question, we ask that you can make your question as brief as you can. I will repeat the question so everyone in the room hears it, and then Henry will respond to your question. If you have a cell phone or a pager and you have not yet turned it off, we ask that you do that at this time. If you have passes for the Permanent Exhibition today, please know they are good until the end of the afternoon, so you can stay with us until we finish and go to the Permanent Exhibition.
The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry between 1933 and 1945. Jews were the primary victims; six million were murdered. Roma and Sinti, or Gypsies, people with mental and physical disabilities, 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.
More than 60 Years after the Holocaust, hatred, antisemitism, and genocide still threaten our world. 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 it occurs.
What your about to hear from Henry Greenbaum is one individual’s account of the Holocaust. We have prepared a brief slide presentation to help with Henry’s introduction. We begin with this early photograph of Henry with his European name, Chuna, Chuna Grynbaum. Henry was born April 1, 1928 in a small one story house that served as both his family’s residence and a tailor shop. He was the youngest of nine children. This map shows Europe. Our second map is of Poland. The arrow indicates the approximate location of Henry’s hometown of Starachowice. Pictured here are two of Henry’s five sisters. Yita is on the left and Rozia is on the right. In this photo, we see another of Henry’s sisters Faige and her daughter Polca.
The Germans invaded Poland in 1939. Here we see a photo of the German army marching into Poland. By 1942, at the age of 13, Henry was sent with his family to do forced labor in a munitions factory. He was deported to Buna-Monowitz, a labor camp at Auschwitz, and later to the Flossenbürg camp in Germany. In this map of major Nazi camps in Europe, the first arrow points to Buna-Monowitz and the second to Flossenbürg. We close our slideshow with this contemporary photograph of Henry. At age 17 he was liberated, and one year later, he emigrated to the United States.
Henry and his wife Shirley live here in the Washington, D.C. area. In December they will celebrate their 62 wedding anniversary. The Greenbaums have four children; three sons and a daughter and 12 grandchildren. In fact, Henry will be officiating, if you will, as the senior member of his oldest grandson’s wedding this coming Saturday. Henry retired from his dry cleaning business 12 years ago and has been associated with this museum since its inception. He volunteers here on Fridays where you will find him at the Membership and Donation desk. Over the past 30 years, Henry has spoken to many groups locally and across the nation. Recent examples include speaking to a thousand people at a community event at a college in Lacrosse, Wisconsin; at a teacher’s conference at the University of Florida; and a Catholic school in Lafayette, Louisiana. He has also spoken at such places as Fort Dietrich Army Base in Maryland and to the National Guard in Arlington, Virginia. He’s been a guest on Fox radio with a live audience and on the Larry King Show. And with that, I’d like to ask you to join me in welcoming our first person, Mr. Henry Greenbaum.
[Applause]
Henry thank you so much for agreeing to join us. Henry had some major cardiac problems this, earlier this year, ending up in a triple bypass and other surgical complications, and so, recently is back on his feet and out in public and we are just so grateful to have him back with us at First Person. I’d like to mention that, I mentioned earlier this is our tenth year at First Person. When we first piloted this as an idea here at the Museum in March 2000, Henry was our, as he puts it, our guinea pig to see if this was a working concept and, so it’s just fitting to have Henry here, I think, as we close out 2009.
Henry, you were just eleven years old when the Germans invaded your country of Poland. Perhaps we could start, before we talk about the war and the Holocaust, with a little bit about what life was like for you and your family and your community in the years before the war began.
HENRY GREENBAUM:
Well, we had a normal upbringing, a little bit religious home. What does an eleven year old do? We were more inter—didn’t care nothing about the war. I didn’t understand what it means, war. I was more interested in soccer games. We were playing Jewish boys against non-Jewish boys; tried to see who can beat who; played different games, went to public school, went a religious school, Hebrew school, and I had a normal upbringing. We were nine children at home. Of course, some of the sisters were married. They didn’t live with us anymore after that. But it was just a normal upbringing. You know, not as elaborate as it was here that you have, but nevertheless, we got along pretty good. We did all right as a whole.
BILL BENSON:
Henry tell us a little bit about your father’s business, and I think some of the children were involved in his business.
HENRY GREENBAUM:
Well, yes, we had the tailor shop, and my father, of course, was running it and the oldest of the brothers was helping and the two brothers were old enough to work in the tailor shop. The girls would help along if it was ladies clothes, they would help along with the ladies. It was in our blood to be tailors. The girls knew how to sew too. And then my father, of course, passed away two months before the war. So, the oldest brother took over. He was running it.
BILL BENSON:
You mentioned that several of your sisters were married by that time. You also had at least one brother and sister who were away from home for other reasons. One had gone to the United States?
HENRY GREENBAUM:
One brother was in the Polish Army. One escaped from Poland with a Polish soldier who came by. By that time, we were already on a farm. My mom was protective of us. She says, she remembers World War I. Usually, if bombs come first, before they occupy the city. So, the only transportation we had was horse and buggy. We didn’t have—I don’t think I ever saw a car there. A bus, yes. A horse and buggy, motorcycles, bicycles, we saw. That’s all we had in there. So, before the Germans came in to our town, my mom got us on a horse and buggy. We knew this farmer. He was our customer. So, he put us up for three days in this, on his farm. It was only like ten miles away, maybe, maybe less. I can’t remember. And we were all there, and my mom, you know, brought her own pots and pans because we were very kosher at home. So, she brought her own pots and pans and the food that she needs to cook. And we got that much in, involved in.
And then later, I was out with my brother in the farm. We were, for breakfast, we were picking tomatoes. Those large tomatoes with a piece of bread—that’s how the breakfast was. And all of a sudden, we saw a Polish uniformed man, a army guy, just started running through the place where we were out in the field, and my brother stopped him and he asked him, “What are you running from?” He said, “The Germans are coming this way. They’re three kilometers here.” And he didn’t want to get captured, so he was running ahead of them in the other direction. And my brother, all of a sudden, asked him, “Can I run with you?” Of course the soldier said, “Yea, sure.” Now I’m a young boy, I’m the youngest in the family. He was the second child. I think there was a sister older than him, and he’s taking off with him, and I was chasing after him. I said, “You’re not going to leave me here, and you’re leaving.” So I was, for a couple of miles, I chased after him. And no, he had me go back. “Go back to your mother. Go back to your mother.” And eventually I saw that he didn’t want me to go, I turned around and go back to my mom. I went inside to the farmers house, told my mom the bad news. Tears came down of her eyes. That was the breadwinner in the house.
We didn’t know what’s going to happen in the future, but all she could think of was he was the breadwinner, right there. He disappeared and he told me to tell you goodbye, and that was it. I relayed the message. So, he escaped from Poland to Lithuania, and I didn’t know where he was after that. I didn’t even know where he was running to ‘til after the war. And then the other son, the other brother was in the Polish Army, so I didn’t know where he was.
BILL BENSON:
So, what did you do then? What did your mother do now that you’re at this farm?
HENRY GREENBAUM:
We—the sisters were still doing a little alteration here and there and not much and then all of a sudden later on, we all didn’t take too long, we, they came into to our town and they put us on the yellow Star of David with very short time. And maybe from five and up, we had to wear the yellow stars. Once you had the yellow star on you, if you went to the public school, the teacher would send you home. No school for, for Jewish children anymore. You had to the star on, you cannot go to school.
I went home, reported to my mom. She was—cause she knew she couldn’t do anything. But not, not only we couldn’t go to school, we couldn’t travel. You couldn’t go on a bus to go to another city. You couldn’t take the train and go to another city. You were restricted even in your own town. We started getting a restricted, course, quite a few of us, like in America, we have an Irish neighborhood. We have a German neighborhood. We had a Jewish neighborhood. We lived near the synagogue. I would say 90% of us were living close to the synagogue. It’s because of the Sabbath in those days. You were supposed to walk to the synagogue. Here we’re more Americanized. We go by bus, or by whichever way, by car. You go if you want to go to the synagogue there, you walking, and the people who lived in the outskirts of the town they had no where to go or but they had to use transportation. So, they went by bicycles. They came to the synagogue. But after a while, what they did is ordered everybody who did not live, live in the Jewish neighborhood, ordered them out from they entered the area where we lived, in the Jewish neighborhoods. Then they barbed wired us around. They didn’t put a fence or not. Different ghettos, different ways. Some ghettos had fences. Some of them had brick walls. Ours only had five-foot barbed wire circled around like three block perimeter, five foot high with an opening. Of course, they had a guard right there, sometimes two guards.
BILL BENSON:
Henry before we go on and talk about what life was like in the ghetto, before you went into the ghetto, were you already made to go to forced labor?
HENRY GREENBAUM:
We, some of us were gone to—we had jobs. My father arranged that before he died. Again, one of our clients were or a customer ran a munition factory. He asked them, “Could you give my children a job?” And they said, “Of course.” So he gave me a job and my three sisters. We worked in the munition factory then. We could leave the ghetto and go to the factory back and forth. Before from home, we went to the factory and home. Our job was to work in the munition factory.
BILL BENSON:
Mhmm. And, and you continued that once you went into the ghetto?
HENRY GREENBAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
Mhmm. When was the synagogue burned?
HENRY GREENBAUM:
Well, the synagogue was burned while were already in the ghetto area. And, we already that was before the selection. First it was in the ghetto. While we’re in there, all of a sudden, they had selection. They didn’t want to feed everybody in there. The food there, rations were meager, meager. Every day were lower and lower. So, they decided they gonna have a selection. We didn’t know what that means, a selection. What did I know about selection?
They ordered us out of our ghetto area into the marketplace, because the marketplace was sort of open, circled around. They could see everybody under one roof, so to speak. And then they decided they gonna have selection. If you walked up the front of the podium that was setting at a table and they would tell which way you go. With my mom, we walked out as a family. I was sent to one side, because I already had a little ID that I worked the factory, and my three sisters did the same. The same place, they, my two sisters—the married ones with little kids under the age of 10 went over the same place as my mom went. Pregnant women went over to the same place. Women who gave childbirth carried a little baby tots, over to the same side. We couldn’t figure out, “What are they gonna do? What are they doing?”
They separated us and all of a sudden, they took all those older people, the very young, and the handicapped and they took them away. It was a train. We saw a train from a distance, and they put them on the train, and we no longer saw them. And they turned around with, to us and they marched us out of the marketplace, and we came near the ghetto. We said, “Oh, we gonna have lots of room now, because we’re not gonna be overcrowded. They took so many people away. Maybe we won’t sleep on top of each other this way. Maybe the food situation might be a little better.”
But no, they had other ideas. They marched us past the ghetto area, up hill for six kilometers, chased us literally chased us with their German Shepherds and with the two guards and their whips, and they chased us for six kilometers up hill. And we wound up on a, on a stone quarry. On the top was a stone quarry they built for us as a slave labor camp with double fences, six-foot fences. The towers with the watch towers and we made it up there. Nobody was killed. We got beat up a little bit. If you couldn’t keep up with the, with the running, they wanted you sort of like jog up there. Some people couldn’t do it. For a young boy, I didn’t mind. You know, I could run. But some people got hit on the way there. And once we got up to the top of the stone quarry, the loud speaker came on and they said “Attention!” “Achtung,” in German. “Attention! Attention! You must empty all your pockets, all your belongings, all your valuables. You cannot come through this gate other than you and your clothes. Otherwise, we’ll kill you.” Just plain language like that. And everybody who didn’t bribe a way at the ghetto—the women would bribe the soldiers to get some food. If you had a bracelet, a necklace, or something, they would get. But some women didn’t give away everything, so that day everything was put in the box. Whatever you had left. And we made it inside and they, into this slave labor camp, and the first time I was introduced to a barrack.
I didn’t know what a barrack means. It’s just a wooden shack. You saw it upstairs, with the shelves, and with the bunks. No mattress, no straw. They just gave us a small little blanket and we slept on the hard wood. That was our [inaudible]. Three people to one bunk. There was maybe 50 inches long, wide and three men had to sleep. Separated the men from the women of course, and we slept there together like that. So one turned, the next one did. Very uncomfortable. You had this little blanket to cover yourself up with. That’s all. And we stayed—
BILL BENSON:
And we, you were with several of your sisters at this point.
HENRY GREENBAUM:
At this point, I was with my three sisters.
BILL BENSON:
Your three sisters.
HENRY GREENBAUM:
The ones that were we were work. We had permits, working permits.
BILL BENSON:
So in that selection you described—
HENRY GREENBAUM:
And at the selection I lost the two sisters with the three nieces. The reason we had the three nieces, one sister had two little girls. One had two little boys, and the other one had one little girl, but she already had a job in the munition factory. Porca, the little one that was there with the red hair, big eyebrows. I mean the cutest little thing if you looked at her. I can still picture her. I mean all the nieces were pretty, but she was outstanding. Reddish hair, heavy eyebrows, big eyelashes. She was just the cutest thing. And so, my sister went and sent her with Grandma, with her moth—with my, with my mother, with her mother’s mother. And so the reason, that’s why we had three, two nieces, three nieces, two nephews with the two, with the two women. They took them right away away. We no longer saw where they went.
BILL BENSON:
Henry, at that point, when they, in the selection, when they took your mother and your sisters, did you know where they were going?
HENRY GREENBAUM:
No, I did not know where they were going and it was very, very devastating for me as at that time a young boy, 11, 12, almost 12 years old, and to see my father pass away two months before and that was enough trauma right there. You don’t want to lose a father, and all of a sudden they take your mother away too. And that sort of didn’t work too good with me.
BILL BENSON:
So here you are working in this slave labor quarry, with your three sisters. What were the conditions like for you there?
HENRY GREENBAUM:
Well, the conditions, we were rationed. We had food. We had food to eat. They gave us a piece of bread in the morning with a little black imitation coffee. I heard that’s coffee. And then we had to go work in the munition factory. I guess, eight or ten hours, I guess. We worked there. The people, the non-Jewish people were more privileged. They gave them a hot soup for lunch. We were not that privileged. We didn’t get that. We had to watch them eating, hopefully they would drop something so we can pick it up, but no, if you were able, if you were lucky, if you were able to get a hold of the containers that carried the soup, you’d make yourself a meal out of that, because on the walls of the container, the soup sticks there. And we would have a special spoon to scrape it and scrape it and that was our left over then we had to, of course, wash the, the containers too. And we stayed, this was or food. Then at night, in the evening when you come back to the barrack, we had cabbage soup, and you could not find a leaf of cabbage. We had a little container. We had a spoon with us, but there was nothing to spoon out there. There was just plain, plain water. So we’d just drink it. That was our diet.
BILL BENSON:
Were you and your sisters forced to do the same kind of work or did you have different jobs?
HENRY GREENBAUM:
We had different jobs. I was assigned to build springs in the munition factory. These huge springs needed for airplanes or locomotives. They taught me how to do that. I did that, made the springs, and there was another section where one of the guys would cut the welding off so the spring can sit evenly because it’s round on the bottom. It wouldn’t stand up, so there would cut it down a little bit and made it flat. That was another person’s job. Another person’s job was to take those springs in and take them under pressure thing where you would line them up after they were cut even and put them on the pressure thing and the whistle would go off. You have to hide literally, because sometimes the springs would be def— defective? The pieces of shrapnel would run all over, so the whistle would give every man a signal to get behind a safe place. They were testing them, the springs that way.
And the women’s job, most of them they would, the gunpowder. They were stuffing in the gunpowders into the, into the munitions stuff, anti-aircraft shells or whatever that was transferred to, anti-aircraft shells later on after the springs that’s where they taught me how to make anti-aircraft shells.
BILL BENSON:
While you were there, you were part of an attempt to escape. Will you tell us about that?
HENRY GREENBAUM:
Well it took me a little time for that. I mean we were there working. You know, and it was almost three years when we went there in the slave labor camp and helping them with the war machinery. And my sister being she knew how to sew, so she volunteered for a tailor shop that the, the high ranking officers did their, the Gestapo or the SS, they wanted some uniforms either made or fixed or taken, let out. So there was about like 50 tailors working for them, and they, all of a sudden, after three years, one of the high ranking officers walked into the tailor shop and told the tailors to hurry up with the, with the clothing. You have to have it ready by such and such date, because all of you are going be deported out of here.
So, that was a little question right there. The tailors started off. They said “If they going to ship us out after three years, now they’re probably going to kill us. They don’t need us anymore, but why would they leave us from a factory that we help them with the war machinery?” The other people, the tailors, the other ones, and so there were little questions. We were worrying about it. If we’re going to be deported, where we’re going to be deported. We didn’t hear from the others that were deported before. My sisters, my mom, or the other people’s moms and sisters, we didn’t hear anything from them.
So these tailors organized an escape. There was no way our whole camp can disappear. Whomever they could trust, a relative, a cousin, whoever was a tailor, who a good friend, and they organized an escape. They even, I understand organized it somehow with the partisans to come and help them. Partisans were the freedom fighters who stayed in the woods and they were supposed to come and help us escape or put out the guards out of commission or knock the lights out and then we would leave freely. They would not; the fences were not electric wire. They were just plain barbed wire. So somebody brought a pair of clippers from the factory, which we were able to get it there, and someone cut out a hole and then we started to run out. And then, my sister did not tell me, about the escape until one night before. I didn’t know anything about it. My shift was from three to eleven at that time. And she says, “When you come back from the factory, do not go into your barrack. Wait for me outside. It will be pitch dark, and I’ll come in and get you. We’re going to escape.” I was 15 years old already at that time. I said, “Oh, that’s good. I’m going to get out of this hell place here.”
The escape, I was looking forward to it. And my sister, all of a sudden, it was pitch black; pitch dark, and my sister came by like she said. She didn’t come by herself. She came with a Jewish policeman who she befriended, and he came, held her hand, and she grabbed my hand, and all us were running in the direction—the policeman knew where it was, where the hole was. We were running in the direction to get out, and I don’t know what happened. Hell broke loose. Out of nowhere, the lights came back on, and he started roaming around the search lights in every direction, until found this spot where we cut the hole out, and then he opened up automatic fire, started shooting.
As he started shooting, a bullet struck my back of my head. With my sister, I was holding onto her by hand, and the bullet struck me and I dropped. And I don’t know how long does it take for somebody, I was like faded and I awoke in a couple seconds, I don’t know how long it takes, and I was full of blood. And I says, “Something got me. I’m sure it was”, I didn’t know what struck me, and I started screaming for my sister, “Faye!” Faige in Yid— Jewish. And I couldn’t find her.
She was the only one I had left. I lost all my other sisters in the slave labor camp, which you didn’t ask me, to typhoid, with typhoid, my other, my other ones. I had the one sister, she was two years older than me, and she came down with typhoid and she, they let her rot away in one room barrack by herself. On the wooden shelf, rotted away there. Every morning, I would come back from night shift, I would come to her, and I said, “How you feel Yita? Yita?” She says, “Oh, I’ve got bed sores all over me.” Laying on the wood for so many days, weeks, so I thought, “I’ll bring you something.”
So, I stole her literally some cloth from that you wipe the equipment off in the factory. I took some clean ones and stuck them under my, my jacket and I smuggled them inside, and I would give it to her to put under her wounds, under her sores. And one morning, I walked in. She was not there. The same Jewish policeman—I approached him. I said, “What happened to my sister?” He says, “She died during the night, and we buried her in the bottom of the stone quarry.” She was just 17. She was 17 at that time, and so I lost her.
The other one they had, we had a typhoid epidemic broke out in our slave labor camp. Because of the dirt and the filth, no one cut their hair. We all had long hair. Women and men had long hair, and you have that and you don’t wash. All we had was a cold pump of water outside, and lice do not—you don’t kill lice with cold water and no soap. We didn’t even have that. And so the summer, you try to keep yourself a little clean, but when wintertime came, you could not go out there to wash, because you’d freeze to death. And so, we all got lice infested.
So, what happens is the typhoid epidemic broke out. They had a killing unit, Einsatzgruppen; I think it is in German. But translation a killing unit. A special unit would come everyday to the slave labor camp. If you didn’t go to work, they caught you laying down, because if you had typhoid, you had high fever, you can’t stand on your feet, and on the truck you went, and you don’t see them anymore. One sister, I came back from the night shift. I saw her on the pick up truck. Chaja, Harriet—you didn’t show, she’s not on the picture. I don’t have a picture of her. And I said, I yelled up to her Chaja, in Jewish, and we waved at each other. I no longer saw her. She disappeared.
So then, the only one I had left was Faige, Faige the one’s that I tried to escape with, and then I got struck in the back of my head with a bullet, and then I walked and I was Faige, she was like my mom, my everything. I had somebody to hang onto. I had a sister. You know you feel better. You have somebody there, and all of a sudden, I don’t see her. I started screaming, “Faye, Faye, Faye!” And I said, no answer. In the meantime they were shooting everywhere from both towers. And I was, was with my head lowered down, and I was running, and I said, maybe she changed her mind and ran into the women’s barrack. I went into the women’s barrack and the woman yelled at me, “You can’t come in here. You’re full of blood! You’re gonna get us all killed. Get out of here!” And I did not want to listen. I said, “I’m not going no where. He was shooting out there.” He was shooting into the barracks. They had to jump of their, their, their, their bunks. They had to lay on the floor, otherwise a bullet was, wood don’t stop a bullet. So they all laid on the concrete floor in the barrack and it was concrete or wood. I can’t remember that, but we were on the floor. And as I said, she kept yelling, “Get out! Get out of there!” I didn’t want to do it.
A first cousin answered, Yita. She was the same name as my sister, cousins named each other. There were two sisters, mothers, so they were naming them after their grandparents, I guess. And I, Ita showed up out of nowhere. She says, “What happened to you?” I said, “I was trying to escape with Faige and the policeman. I was injured.” And she was not even aware of the escape. She took some rags, put them in some cold water and put in on the back of my head. She took off her beret that she had. You could wear whatever you had at that camp. She had a beret and put it on top of my head, and the blood sucked into the rags in there. And the next morning, no that was, so I couldn’t get out of there, because they were shooting.
So, finally, before daylight started, I snuck out of there and I ran back into my barrack where I belonged, because had they caught me in the women’s barrack, the women was right, they would’ve killed me, not them. They would’ve definitely got me. But then, I got back into my barrack, and two hours later, they had roll call. Everybody out. They had to count to see how many escaped. And as they were counting, I saw some guys say, “Jewish people, they didn’t fight back.” I saw them running on the top of fences. They got shot, yes. They were trying to get out. As he was counting, they were on the fences. They were not electric fences, just plain barbed wire, but nevertheless, there were two sets of wires, six foot tall. And the he says, it was counting, and then he told us to turn a certain way, and we turned, and there was the hole where we cut, where someone else cutted through. And there I looked. The policeman was sitting in an upright position. Other people were there, wounded. My poor sister was right near him, laying flat. She didn’t move, so evidently, I presumed, she was dead. And then, other people were moaning. You could hear them moaning and crying and screaming, and all of a sudden, he took his weapon out and he shot every one of the wounded people. I saw the policeman tilting over. You know, once he got shot, right next to my sister. And then other people got killed too, and this is the lesson you learn. Never try to escape again, because that what we’ll do to you.
What also they did is they had this Manchurian guys on horses with the ponytails. I think they were from Manchuria. I’m not sure. And they were sending them into the wooded area. The people who did get out—some of them got out, but how fast can you run? They run, the horses can run faster than than a human being, and they brought those people back. And right in front of us, they shot them, and this is the lesson you learn; never try to escape again.
And then two weeks later, we were, the rumor was true. We are deporting us. They put us on those cattle cars. Were lined up, they were too far away. We could see them. They separated the men and women. They stuffed us in like sardines in there. I don’t know how many people were in a car like that. Close to a hundred or 75, I don’t know the exact. I know it was tight. You couldn’t breath hardly in there.
And they sealed us up, and on the way we went. We didn’t know where we were going for three days we traveled. We stopped at every station. We stopped. We was screaming in unisons, “Water!” In different languages so somebody needed, we wanted some water. I mean you send animals on a trip, you send along water. We were human beings. According to us, not to them. We were not human. We were worse than animals, I guess, and they didn’t give us anything. We finally arrived at the destination after three days. We had three dead people in my car. I don’t know how long they were dead. I don’t know that. I know it stench was smelling. They only had that little window in that cattle car. If you’ve been upstairs in the Permanent Exhibition, you can see the car. You’ll see it had a little opening there, and everybody was fighting to go over there to get a breath of fresh air. To get there, some people stubborn. We had sort of fight your way to get a little fresh air.
Anyway, we finally arrived at the destination and that was Auschwitz-Birkenau, and to me, after they opened the doors up and they started screaming, “Raus! Raus!” The uniformed man was standing there. I mean like dressed nicely with a uniform with little whips and they told you as you came off where you go. Left, right, left, right. They told you which way. Why did they, why did they separate us already again? Well, we found out that after that, we found out the next morning that half of our transport went right through the crematorium. They either had an order how many did they to murder that day or they didn’t have any room for us. I can’t figure that til today. I cannot figure out, because we were all in the same shape. We were not like you look stronger than me. We all looked alike. We were on the same diet; that piece of bread with the soup. So, you didn’t look any different, and they separated us at the, they took those people away. We no longer saw them. Next day, we found out they already in heaven. We didn’t know that. We were the lucky ones. We went over to the good side.
All of us were tattooed. We had a number on our arm. I became prisoner number A18991, and all you had left when you came to Auschwitz. You didn’t have any belongings. You didn’t have any nothing on your except the clothes with full of lice that you were wore. And all of a sudden, they give you a number. They took away your name. You, instead of calling you by your name, they addressed you by your number. Amongst each other, we called each other by name, of course. The prisoners, we all called each other by name, but we became a number to them, and they ordered us finally after four years, I think it was, I didn’t get a hair cut.
I finally, after the number on the arm, we sent over to a section where we got a haircut. And the guy that cut the hair questioned me. He said, “What’s the wound on top of your head?” I said, “I don’t know.” I said, “We got in a fight in the the car.” I didn’t know who the guy was. I said he might have been German. I didn’t know. After that, I found out that he was, that he was Jewish. I said, “Well I still didn’t want to tell him, because maybe he’s working with the Germans. Who knows?” So I didn’t tell, but said I got hurt in the car. In the cattle car when they would knock me against a wall. I didn’t want to tell him that. So we got a hair cut.
Our third spot was finally, finally after four years together, a shower. We finally lined up to get a shower. We got into the shower room. It said shower. The water, I think the water was warm. We got soap, and we scrubbed and scrubbed. My two inch gash in the back of my head was already with scabs, infected already, but I had to hide it from them, because number one, we had long hair, so they couldn’t see what I had in there. And then once they gave me the haircut, they saw it already, but they I had then they gave me, a stripped cap after that. So we cleaned up, washed ourselves out, and we finally got some water to drink. I finally in the shower room, we got enough water to drink. You almost drowned, you drinked all, trying make up for three days.
BILL BENSON:
And Henry, I think you told me that that was your first bath in at least four years.
HENRY GREENBAUM:
The shower.
BILL BENSON:
First shower in these four years.
HENRY GREENBAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
And the wound that you had would continue to be an open wound.
HENRY GREENBAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
For the duration of the war.
HENRY GREENBAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
You had to deal with that. Tell us what they then made you do once you got through the tattoo, shave. You knew you were, then selected for slave labor.
HENRY GREENBAUM:
Well then they put us back in. They ordered us into the barrack. The barracks didn’t change; the same wooden shelves, the same little blanket. We slept three people to a bunk, an luckily I was only there for three months, because in Auschwitz, I understand, if you stayed longer than that, because there was not a working camp there, unless some German come in looking for free labor, and they get you outta there, then you saved a little bit. And that’s what happened with us. All of a sudden, after the three months we were in there, all our jobs is to actually was not that much. We helped along the guys that pushed carts around picking up dead bodies that were dying of starvation and exhaustion. And they would put them on the little cart and take them over to the crematorium. And some time we would help the guys put them on for them. That was our job. Not much. They didn’t order us to do that, but we did it ourselves. Just to help the guy. He couldn’t lift the bodies sometimes. And they piled up like—to me it looked like a lumberyard. They could not, they could not exterminate so many people as many as they murdered and died of their own, maybe some of them. They would pile up like, like you look in a lumberyard, like a woodpile up. This way, that way, that way, this way. And at my age, what I saw, I said, that got me to look at and say, “How in the world? What happened here? What’s happening?” And I was scared to death of Auschwitz. I said, I’m not gonna leave this place alive. I knew that. I said, I’m not gonna leave this alive there.
And we stayed there, and all of a sudden, a man comes into the, to the camp in Birkenau and ordered us out of our barrack. And he checked us over. He looked you over. Whomever he liked, he would call you over to him. Just a man, and I was one of them that he picked. I went over to his side. I don’t remember how many he picked. Maybe 40, 50, I don’t know the exact amount, but he didn’t, he got us out of Birkenau and he put us into another camp called Buna-Monowitz, which was a sub camp of Auschwitz. And that man happened to be either an owner or a manager of a chemical company called IG Farben Company. They produced a zyklon gas. They made all kind of other spray things for bugs. They made automobile tires. So, it was a big factory there.
All our job that he chose was to build the road in the compound of the factory, with the cobblestone, with the sidewalk. And not only did you have to do that, but you had to unload the freight cars with sand or gravel or cement bags. The cement bags were two guys would take one end. On the other end, and threw it on top of your shoulder. You were so weak that your knees buckled. I don’t remember, was it 25 or 50 lbs. That I don’t remember, but then they were standing with the whips. They’re not going to let you just walk with that bag over there and tell them where you want it piled up. They would hit you on the feet with the whips, so you had to run to get that over so faster. And then we did that. The other job was hard was the gravel. Once you, in the beginning, you shovel it out into the wheelbarrows, somebody wheelbarrows it away. But once you work yourself into that car, it’s shovel-by-shovel, and no gloves. You had all blisters here, because we didn’t have any meat on our hands. All we had was bones and skin. So you were on the hands were full of blisters to carry the shovel and they didn’t give you a whole day to unload either. They put two people to a car and they had, I don’t remember what the time limit was, but we had to really not stop for a second and do it. And that was our job in, in the, in the IG Farben company.
BILL BENSON:
Henry, weren’t there British prisoners of war there with you?
HENRY GREENBAUM:
There were 10 British war prisoners. I think it was ten. I believe. But they were well dressed. Their shoes were shined. They didn’t look like they were mistreated. They looked—their job was with little sticks to pick up some paper in the factory. Little jobs. They had very easy jobs, and they gave us encouragement. Maybe somebody spoke English in my group; that I don’t know, but they, the United States Air Force started to bomb IG rail, the rail leading into IG Farben.
And then the British soldiers would tell us what to do. When you hear the whistle, dive like your dive into a swimming pool. Then down you go and we laid there until the bombing stopped over. But then the factory also had a bunker in there, but not for us. The bunker was for the non-Jews and the guards were in there. They ran for the bunker when the alarm got off, and then they had some kind of things, some containers with…They would unscrew them and they would smog up the whole, the whole factory was smogged up. You couldn’t see the sky, but the bombs were still coming down.
And our, in fact he was my bunkmate, he decided he said, “If ever the guards are in the bunker, the non-Jews in the bunker, nobody is around. Why don’t I go look for food?” And we told him, “Don’t do it. Don’t do it.” He wouldn’t listen. Hunger drives you to do everything, as we were all hungry. But anyway, maybe he was a little bit more hungry. I don’t know what the reason was, but he ran and found the kitchen somewhere in the area, and he never made it into the kitchen, right. Trust me. Whatever they were throwing out as trash into the back of the kitchen, he would pick it up, because when you’re hungry there’s no such thing mildew or sour, it doesn’t taste good. You will eat it. You come to a point you will eat anything. Trust me. Take my word for it. You will eat anything. And this boy would do that for a few times, and we started to warn him not to do it, and he got caught.
The soldiers, they got out the one soldier got a hold of him, and they arrested him. And then one Saturday or Sunday when we didn’t go to work…must have been Sunday. They hung three people, four people, three others and him. I don’t know what the other three were hung for, but I know what he paid for, because of the food that they were throwing out the trash. They hung them right in front of our faces.
BILL BENSON:
Henry, from Buna you would then be moved to Flossenbürg.
HENRY GREENBAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
Tell us about Flossenbürg and then tell us about being forced on a death march after that.
HENRY GREENBAUM:
Well, to Flossenbürg was we tried on trains again. Of course, we were bombarded by the United States Air Force on the way. They mostly, the rail was knocked out, so we one place or two times or three times, they knocked out the rail. We had to walk across the bombed area into another place and they sent another train in, and we were going. But, we made it partially on foot and partially on train to Flossenbürg. That was near the Czechoslovakian border. I think it was six kilometers from the Czech border. And we made it there.
At the camp, the camps didn’t change. The food didn’t change. The barracks didn’t change. It’s the same thing, the same beds. We had the same thing…three people per bed. The food situation was the same with exception, one time only. We had the food. They ordered in the Red Cross one time, and they made us clean the place up, really. They gave us a soccer ball. They forced—we couldn’t even lift our feet, let alone to kick a soccer ball, but while the Red Cross were there, they made us. Says, “We treat them good in here. Look, we gave them a ball to play. They happy here.” You know, they couldn’t come talk to us, no. They didn’t talk to us. They spoke to the German SS there. They were talking to them, and that day, we didn’t—when they were there, we did not get the cabbage soup. We got cream of wheat. Now, cream of wheat, I didn’t have it since I left my house. My mom used to make that sometimes.
I said, something, maybe they changed the diet now. Maybe we get—soon as those, the Red Cross left, back into the cabbage we went. We only got by maybe one day, two day that we got just to, to show them that we are not mistreated here. All they had to look and look at out faces and how we looked. They knew that we’re not on a diet with, with cream of wheat. We wouldn’t look like we looked with the cream of wheat.
BILL BENSON:
And no conversation with you?
HENRY GREENBAUM:
No. That were, none of them to talk to us at all. And—excuse me—our job in there, Flossenbürg were mainly, there was a heap of clothes like three stories high from the Jewish that they murdered. Most of them, I guess were Jews, murdered, they were piled up, and they made us packaging bundle them up—coats to coats, pants with pants. That was our job out there. I never saw more clothes. Got wet, soggy, we never let it—we bundled them up and then they sent them back into Germany for recycling. They hated us, but the full of lice clothes, maybe there were not lice. Clothes because the people were still in that time in good condition before they killed them. So they sent they sent back into Germany for recycling. That was our job in Flossenbürg.
BILL BENSON:
And this would’ve been in early 1945.
HENRY GREENBAUM:
In ’40, early 194—and then the Russians attacked from the east. And we—while we were in Flossenbürg we heard the heavy artillery pounding all night long. “Woof. Woof.” Louder and louder, so we knew go closer, but we thought maybe somebody is gonna get us out of here. Maybe they found us where we are, because we thought we were abandoned. Nobody, we were marching through the streets and somebody had to see us, but the Germans say they didn’t know. They didn’t know anything about it, but we were marching through their neighborhoods. I am sure they did.
And then we were walking, walking in—I lost myself already.
BILL BENSON:
So, they did—Flossenbürg then.
HENRY GREENBAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
So, the Russians got closer.
HENRY GREENBAUM:
Right, okay, so they got closer. So what would, what would happen is, so what would happen, one, one day they blockältester, he was in charge of the barracks. He gave us speeches everyday. He said, “Don’t let that noise fool you. The Russians before they get here, we’ll kill you before.” So we said, “Ah so that means the Russians are coming this way!” See? We didn’t—he gave us away the secret himself. We didn’t know.
And sure enough, they put us on trains again, and shipped us out of Flossenbürg, but guess on the way to the train, we found our some blockältester dead. Somebody killed him that preacher we gonna kill us. But somebody in the group somehow killed him. I don’t know how they did it, but we saw him laying in the gutter there on the way to our train.
And they shipped us out of there again, on the cattle cars and they would take us deeper into German, into Germany. We were travelling towards Bavaria, Germany. And on the way, we got bombarded and the United States Air Force started really speeding it up, and they didn’t let up one point. They didn’t let the trains move, period. So they wound up walking, marching us. February, March and April, we marched for three months. That means you didn’t get that little piece of bread. That means you didn’t get the cabbage soup at night. You had to eat greenery from the woods. Remember when you’re hungry like I told you, you’ll eat anything. And then again, when the—
BILL BENSON:
Henry, this was a particularly horrible winter too.
HENRY GREENBAUM:
Yes it was.
BILL BENSON:
Especially brutal.
HENRY GREENBAUM:
And how didn’t we get frostbitten? I pay for it now. I get plenty of aches and pains now. Find it in the bones, in the knees, in the shoul—I can’t lift my shoulders above my head. I mean we got, other people had worse, but anyway, some of them got frostbitten and the dead, they died from the cold too. Not everybody made it and we were marching like for three months.
And then after that, we, the guards if they were they saw that sometimes when they were hungry—I’m sure they got hungry too. And the dogs got hungry. They’d come through a farm. When they saw a farm, they ordered us into the farm. They went straight for the kitchen into the farmers with their dog’s I’m sure. They fixed them up a good meal. The loud speaker came on for us to get whatever he ordered, I guess the Kapo, whoever said that only we allowed is one raw potato per person, and if you come and get two, you’ll get killed. If you get in line twice. So either you want to die going over get in the line twice or once. I only went once. That’s why I’m here, and I only at one raw potato. I followed the instruction, whatever they said, and sometimes there, after they were finished eating, we marched again.
And then one, sometimes in the evenings, early evenings, they didn’t want to march us at night. So, they put us into the silo. We were scared of the silo. That one was nice in there, you were sheltered. You had no bed, but it was warm. The hay produces heat and we…was really like a five star hotel for us. You know it was really nice, but we were worried, can they burn us up? Can they lock us up? Which they did in some cases. I understand they did that.
But they didn’t, what I’m trying to say, while you were sleeping in there, you were chewing on hay. You were hungry. You don’t swallow it, because you’d, you’ll choke. So at least you got the juice out of it. You swallowed that and then you take your clothes off. You ring them out; lay them down on the hay. Hopefully they would be dry by next morning. Most of the time they were not. We wet clothes, now how didn’t we get cold? How did we didn’t get sickness? I don’t know. We had some made out of iron, I guess. We were very strong. If they wouldn’t kill you, then they, we would have been more survivors alive than here now I’m sure, because the human being is very strong and their wits and plenty of punishment. But the beating and the killing, that’s what caused it.
Anyway, we kept marching. One day we marched in the evening. We slept over to the silo. In the morning they ordered us one per raw potatoes and we only marched for two hours that day. There was nearby woods, near the farm. He told us to sit there in a circle, and then we looked on the highway, and the highway had a lot of equipment coming through. There were tanks. There were jeeps. There were motorcycles. We didn’t know whose they, were they English or were they Americans? Were they Germans? Or were they Russians? We didn’t know who was coming there.
BILL BENSON:
Were your guards still there with you?
HENRY GREENBAUM:
They were still with us there. And all of a sudden while we were in this circle, we saw the two guards taking off. They took the dogs with them, and they ran away. We thought they were hiding behind a tree, trying to see if you want to escape they kill you. They could pick you off in a second. But they were looking out for their own skin. They knew this was Americans, and they didn’t want to get captured. So, they were running in the opposite direction, away from the, from the United States Armed Forces.
And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, we’re in a circle; we wondered what happened to the guards. We still thought they were behind the trees. A tank takes off from the main column from the highway, and they come towards us, and we said the, “Germans are sure gonna kill all of us now. Now they gonna kill us.” We still thought it was the Germans, but then God sent us down an angel, an American tank, believe it or not. American tank come about five, six feet away from us. This beautiful soldier squeezed himself out of the hatch like a genie out of a bottle. He couldn’t get out of it. He couldn’t get out. He finally got out. All I saw was blond, curly, blond, the crew, crew cut, and he squeezed himself. He yelled up to his partner. All of a sudden got off on the other end. Squeezed himself out and he asked him does he has any rations, and he, whatever he had, he was throwing rations at us, and we almost killed each other to grab some. When you’re hungry, and I couldn’t even get that, so he saw what happened. He told us to line up behind him. He stopped with the rations. “Line up behind my tank. I take you across the road. Many of you there already liberated, free. You got lots of food.” And all we could hear is “food” in our ears. There’s food, my God. We were sometimes praying, “Before you kill me, give me a meal.” You know. So we finally got food for see, and once we got up there, it looked mighty appetizing when you came to the farmer’s house, three big pails of potato peelings with white flour. Trust me, they didn’t need to wash those trays anymore. We got on our hands and knees and cleaned out our potato peelings with their white flour. It was clean. The soldiers, we couldn’t speak English, so the soldiers—one would hold the door open to the farmer, and the other one would say, “Go in” like, “Go in there.” No, we didn’t move until we finished the peelings.
Once we finished the peelings, we got in there. We looked, I said, “My God, why did we eat that?” Bread, big breads. It was boiled potatoes, hard-boiled eggs. I don’t know what they had. They had all kind of food. Why did we eat that? Then two seconds later, we thought, “Eh, maybe we did a good job being they’re all sick.” Everyone was sick who was in that.
The same angel soldier who liberated us—I call him an angel, he was an angel. He liberated us…had to call for reinforcement. He had to call in the medics. They came and the medics came, I don’t know how long it took them to get there, but they got there within hours before I’d say couple hours. He must have called them that they were there, telephone that they use. I don’t know remember how, but the medics came, and they gave everybody medicine. And the soldiers—we were warned not to eat too much, because we saw what happens. Well, all that we do is to look at the food, but we know, maybe by tomorrow we’ll eat it, not before then. You know we waited and then these medics came and they gave everyone medicine. I walked up to one of them with sign language and showed them my wound in the back of my head, and I sign languaged, you know, somebody shot me, you know.
So, he sees the cut, he told me, what, don’t worry, sign language. He cleaned it off, shaved that off. He put medicine on that, and within three months it was all healed up. I was in a human being’s hands, not these animals. These animals, if they would have seen it, they would have killed me, definitely. So, no there’s compassion with those Germans, and then the others with their, the Ukrainians. Believe me, some of the Lithuanians who joined. They all joined the Nazi regime. They were just as bad or not—they were trying to prove that they could do a better job. Most, a lot of killings were done with the, with the Ukrainians. Very mean, very mean to us. And then we were saved.
BILL BENSON:
Henry, now that you were liberated and getting your wound taken care of and beginning to get food and, and healing, you would then end up being going to a displaced persons camp.
HENRY GREENBAUM:
Well, first, we were put into German families for about I would say a week, maybe.
BILL BENSON:
With a German family?
HENRY GREENBAUM:
Yea, and we were lucky we found one that had a grocery store downstairs. And he had empty rooms upstairs. Maybe his children were in the war. They never made it back. Maybe he was a widower, but he had a housekeeper. So the question was, he says, “Which one is coming in here?” I said, “No which one, it’s three.” We didn’t want to separate. We were sleeping together, and we stay together. The one that got hung, we replaced us with another one. So, we had three. We said, "You have to put up three here. One is no good.” So he gave us let us in, three, but it shows you once you belly is full, you’re easy start to complaining again. You know, very easily. Once you’re not hungry. Every evening for dinner, he put bowls, round bowls, what I would’ve given when I was incarcerated in camp, mashed potatoes with a few slices like American cheese with slices. What was wrong with that? We had to say—so we started complaining to the guy. He said this every night, the same thing? Say, can’t you change something? I mean, you know that’s what we ate, but luckily we only stayed there for about, I’d say a week, and then the United States organized a displaced person camp for us near Frankfurt, Germany. It was called Zeilsheim. It was organized by I’m sure the United States, because the abbreviation was UNRRA, U-N-R-R-A. That was the abbreviation. And there we finally got our weight back, because we had three meals a day, good meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Each one of us had our own bed with a straw mattress of course, but it was covered with nice, clean linen. I mean we slept back to civilization like a human being, and then once you got everything squared away, you, you feel better.
We started saying, “Let’s go look for maybe some family.” Maybe we’ll go to different camps. Me and my friend decided to go to Bergen-Belsen, because we saw that a lot, that was a women’s camp, and most of them, that those were liberated by the British. So it wasn’t, they let you go across the train. They didn’t care, but they told you, you can’t stay but three days here in Bergen-Belsen. So, I was there, and we were looking around for my sisters. I said, “Maybe they killed the two, the three little children, five actually, two girls, three girls and two boys, five.” I said, “Maybe they killed the children. Maybe they saved the women to go to work”, but that was not.
Who did I run across in there in the street? I’m out walking in the camp, that same Yita who helped me with the wound on top of my head when I made it into the women’s barrack. And she set me right away with my friend up in the, her little room that she had. We were sleeping on the floor on some mattress or something she threw on the floor. We didn’t care, but we stayed there, and all of a sudden she said, “I am going to Poland. Do you want to go with me?” I said, “No, not me. I don’t go nowhere. I’m even afraid to be here with the British. I want over into the American side.”
In my mind, see I had a sister living in the United States who came here in 1937, so I was thinking if I get involved with the British, maybe I’ll have a heck of a time getting to this country. So, I said, “No, I’d rather be with the, with the Americans.” And I did, Ita laughed, and I said, “Ita if you go there…” She was looking for her brother. Her brother got caught up with the Russians. They put him in Siberia and somehow he got back into, to Poland somehow. He wound up there and they had, in Lodz, Poland they had a displaced person camp, I’m sure organized by the United States, and she went to look for her brother. As she looked for her brother, she was asking about my brother, which was their first cousin, “Is Zachary here?” She say, he told her yes, but he’s in the same displaced person camp. So she finally met up with him and told him that I was alive and in Zeilsheim, Germany, near Frankfurt, Germany and for him to come to see me. Within a week he came to see me. He was ten years older than I was, so he knew where my sister lives. Excuse me. Let me take a drink of water since he knows I didn’t drink any, [be]cause I’m used to it.
So, he came and I said to Zachary, “Do you know where Diana lives?” He says, “She’s in the United States.” I said, “I know she’s in the United States.” That’s what I told every soldier. They all wanted to write for me or put the paper in, but I didn’t know where and America is big. I can see that now. How would you find it? He knew that she was in the Washington area. So, somehow he sent a telegram off to my sister in America and within one year, we were in New York.
BILL BENSON:
And Henry, we are just about out of time. Tell us, tell us about your brother who, who is still alive.
HENRY GREENBAUM:
The one is still alive. He’s the one—excuse me, but we came to New York. I was expecting my sister to be there. Me and my brother, the one who was in the Polish Army, we came there. We were expecting my sister there to bring all of sudden, I see this man coming up and looking for a Greenbaum, and I said, “Who are you?” I didn’t recognize him, and that was the same brother I tried to escape with.
BILL BENSON:
The one who sent you back home?
HENRY GREENBAUM:
He sent me run, “Go back to your mother.” He escaped from Poland to Lithuania. In somewhere in Lithuania, and maybe you all heard of it. It was a Japanese Ambassador who helped Hasidic Jews—false passports—to come to this country. His name was Sugihara I think, and my brother was very Hasidic. He was very religious, and he got involved with him, and through my sister he made it to this country in 1941, just two months before Pearl Harbor, I understand. He came to this country. So had, he had, he didn’t suffer. He’s only 98 now, February the 18th, he was 98. February, this coming February, he’ll be 99. He’s the only one alive. I’m the youngest and he’s the second oldest, and we’re still alive. So, I was surprised to see David come instead of my sister who was pregnant. She couldn’t travel.
BILL BENSON:
Henry, I think the crowd our audience feels probably what I’m feeling which is; you know we wish we could spend the rest of the afternoon. We know that we’ve only just scratched the surface.
HENRY GREENBAUM:
I did. I had more to talk.
BILL BENSON:
But we, and, and we don’t have time for the question and answers. Before we conclude the program, and I’m gonna turn back to Henry in just a moment. Henry will after he steps off the stage be available if anybody would like to come up and ask him a question or just, you know say hi to him. So please, absolutely feel free to do that. You don’t mind at all, do you Henry?
HENRY GREENBAUM:
No, indeed, no I love it.
BILL BENSON:
And a chance, a chance to share a little bit more.
HENRY GREENBAUM:
Ellen is already laughing. She knows it.
BILL BENSON:
So, Henry, I want to first thank you, thank our audience, thank you for joining us today. I’d like to invite you to come back to a First Person program in 2010 if you live locally or if your travels bring you back to Washington. Check the Museum’s website to see when the pro—what days we’re doing the program. It’ll undoubtedly be on Wednesdays and possibly Tuesdays from March through August. I’d like to remind you that you’ll be able to get the excerpts from our conversations on the web site as podcasts as well as through iTunes. So, please listen, hear some of the other accounts from survivors. I think you’ll find them all absolutely educational, informative, and amazing truly. It’s our tradition at First Person that our first person has the last word, and so with that, I’d like to turn back to Henry to conclude our program today and our program for 2009.
HENRY GREENBAUM:
As I was laying in the hospital, I didn’t think I’m gonna make it out. So, I had a direct line to God. I said, “Dear God, I got so much more to tell. Don’t kill me now. Let me still stay alive for a while so I can speak to the audiences. I have so much to tell.” And, as you can see, the world is broken in pieces now. Killing each other for we thought, we went through hell. We thought we did it already. The world would be more peaceful, more friendly, but you see the hate and the discrimination, antisemitism is still going on.
So, before I leave this world, I hope, I hope, that you all can take over, and don’t let it happen to anyone. Don’t discriminate against anybody. Don’t hate anybody. You saw what hatred can do. We lost one of those guards. Helped an 80 year old man, to open the door for him, because he thought maybe the man can’t open the door. Nice man and he killed him for no reason, but the reason was that because of hatred, and it’s all start with children, because children do not get born, do not get born with hate or discriminate against anybody. So they must be learning it through their friends or they must learn it from their parents, maybe. I don’t know, but I hope this should stop, and I hope before I leave this world. I know it’s not gonna happen by the survivors time, because we getting older. All we can do is tell you our story, and maybe, perhaps one day it will stop. So thank you so much for listening to me. God bless all of you.
[Applause]
