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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. Haim Solomon, we shall meet Mr. Solomon shortly.
This 2009 season of First Person is made possible though the generosity of the Louis and Doris Smith Foundation, to whom we are grateful for again sponsoring First Person. And I’d like to let you know that Mr. Louis Smith is in the audience with us today. [Applause]
First Person is a series of weekly conversations with survivors of the Holocaust who share with us their first hand accounts of their experience during the Holocaust. Each First Person guest serves as a volunteer with this museum. We will conclude our First Person program for 2009, next Wednesday, August 26. Please check the Museum’s website for information about First Person in 2010. The Museum’s website is www.ushmm.org. That’s www.ushmm.org.
This year we have offered a new service associated with First Person. Excerpts from our conversations with survivors are available as podcasts on the Museum’s website. A number for this year are already posted and Haim’s will be posted in the next several weeks. The First Person podcasts join two other Museum podcast series: Voices on Antisemitism and Voices on Genocide Prevention. The podcasts are also available through iTunes.
Our first person today, Mr. Haim Solomon will share his first person account of his experience during the Holocaust and as a survivor for about 40 minutes. Depending on time, we hope that we’ll have an opportunity for you to ask a few questions of Haim. Before you are introduced to him I have several announcements and a couple of requests of you.
First we ask that, if it’s at all possible, please stay seated with us throughout our one-hour program; that way we minimize any disruptions for Haim as he speaks. Second, if we do have time for a question and answer period and you have a question, we ask that you make your question as brief as you can. I will repeat the question so everyone in the room, including Haim, hears your question and then he’ll respond to it.
If you have a cell phone or a pager I ask that you turn that off at this time if you wouldn’t mind. I would also like to let those of you, who may have passes to the Permanent Exhibition today, know that they are good until the end of the afternoon so that way you can feel comfortable with us throughout our one hour program.
The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Jews were the primary victims; six million were murdered. Roma and Sinti, 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 they occur.
What you are about to hear from Haim Solomon is one individual’s account of the Holocaust. We have prepared a brief slide presentation to help with his introduction. I am running into a slight technical problem. I can’t see the screen in front of me, so if you don’t mind I will probably have to peer over my shoulder just to make sure you are seeing what I think you are seeing.
Haim Solomon was born November 5, 1924 in Bivolari, Romania. He was the youngest of five children. This photo is of Haim's family in pre-war Romania. Haim is the little boy seated on his mother's lap. From left to right we see Haim's 4 siblings, Henry, Hanna, Esther, who is on top row between her parents, and Rueven Here we see Haim's parents Bercu Solomon and Sofie Halter Solomon. This photo was taken in 1941 or 1942.
On this map of Europe the arrow points to Romania. After Germany and the Soviets signed their nonaggression pact on August 23, 1939 and divided up Eastern Europe, the Soviets occupied Bessarabia, one kilometer from Bivolari. The Romanian authorities, suspicious of Jewish loyalties because of the close proximity of the Soviets, ordered all Jews to leave Bivolari.
The first arrow on this map of Romania points to the town of Iasi where Haim and his family moved. Later, to escape fighting and chaos that eventually erupted in the streets, Haim and his family moved to Bucharest in June of 1944. They remained there until the end of the war. The second arrow on this map points to Bucharest.
In the summer of 1947, as Haim, along with thousands of other Jews, made his way to Palestine by ship, the British captured his ship and took all passengers to Cyprus for internment. In this photograph taken in Cyprus, Haim stands behind a barbed wire fence. Finally, in December 1948, Haim escaped the British internment camp on Cyprus and succeeded in reaching Israel.
Haim came to the United States in 1952. Today Haim and his wife, Malva live here in the Washington D.C. area. He retired January 1, 2003, following a 38 year career with the United States Food and Drug Administration where he was a microbiologist and was one of the world’s experts on the micro-organism that causes botulism. He has over 30 scientific publications under his name. In this age of bio-terrorism concerns I have no doubt his name is on the short list of people to call if there is a major outbreak of botulism.
Malva, Haim’s wife, is a physician with the Veteran’s Administration. They have 2 sons, one has a Ph.D in microbiology and is with DuPont Corporation, specializing in ethanol. The other son is a producer with a sports talk radio show, the one that I tune to, to listen to Baltimore Orioles baseball games. Haim and Malva are grandparents and very proud of their nearly 4 year old grandson.
Haim serves this Museum as a volunteer, translating Holocaust related documents from Romanian into English. He does this each Tuesday and Thursday for 8 hours a day. In fact, I want to share with you something he told us earlier, that he’s just completed translating 39 reels of tape of documents mostly propaganda prepared by the Romanian Department of War in the early 1940s. That effort over 3 years took over 2,000 hours of translation. With that I’d like to ask you to join me in welcoming our first person, Mr. Haim Solomon. [Applause]
BILL BENSON:
Haim, thank you very much for joining us and for you willingness to be our first person today. Haim, you described your early years, before Germany and the Soviet Union signed their nonaggression pact and divided up Eastern Europe, you described that time as almost idyllic to me. Tell us why that was so, what that time was like for you, and your family, and your community before war began in Europe
HAIM SOLOMON:
Thank you first to everybody that’s here. I’ll start my odyssey during the Holocaust in Romania, which consisted of hiding, moving, bribing, and good luck. It all started in Bivolari, a little village in northeastern Romania. On the east side of the village, ran the river Prut that separated a province called Bessarabia. It was populated by a Russian speaking population. That’s important for later history.
The village itself consisted of one unpaved long street, gravel, and one shorter one perpendicular to it and at the mid-point. Along the long street Jews had stores, one after another, and workshops for every need, like tailors, and cobblers, and butchers, and others. On the shorter street, to the west, the Jewish community built a Judeo Roman elementary school for grades, a communal bath, a matzoh factory, and a few other institutions.
We had a Rabbi, four synagogues, and a slaughter house for kosher meat. The teachers of the elementary school would teach us or prepare us advanced classes at night. Twice a year we would travel to a larger city like Iasi, to be examined and advance to the next grade. Surrounding our village were several thousand peasants who had cows, and sheep, and goats, and other animals that they could produce dairy products for us. Behind them was a big empty space, grassy knoll, where they sent their animals to pasture and where we engaged in sports activities.
On market days, on Sunday and Monday, they would bring their products to the city, sell them and with the money come to Jewish stores and buy things. On the right side on the Eastern side of that shorter street was a large space where the peasants would come in on the market days with their products. Citizens of the village would go there, purchase their items and they too would come to the stores to purchase for their needs.
BILL BENSON:
Haim, in describing that, you had described to me as, the Jewish community and the peasant community and the others in the town, in many ways you really needed each other.
HAIM SOLOMON:
Correct.
BILL BENSON:
…and generally got along. Did you experience antisemitic behavior at all during that time?
HAIM SOLOMON:
Not openly. No one ventured out of the village at night or by himself and relationship was more or less acceptable, but cautious.
BILL BENSON:
Tell us a little bit about your parents.
HAIM SOLOMON:
My father was very astute person. He knew when to be first, when to be last, when to stay, when to go, etc. And Mother was a saint, did like all mothers, protect.
BILL BENSON:
Your daily life, you said it was, you told me that it was, it was strenuous. You had to, you didn’t; have water indoors so one of your jobs, tell us what your job was.
HAIM SOLOMON:
No running water, no electricity.
BILL BENSON:
Right.
HAIM SOLOMON:
So, one of my jobs was to go to the fountain and bring water in buckets and split wood for fire and heat, and fill up the lamps with gasoline. That was some of my…
BILL BENSON:
So generally a hard life, but a good life, generally in those years. That of course, Haim, would all change for you and your family.
HAIM SOLOMON:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
Beginning August 23, 1939 when Germany and the Soviets made their deal to divide Eastern Europe. At that point the Jews in your town of Bivolari were ordered to move to Iasi.
HAIM SOLOMON:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
Tell us about the move, what that was like for your family to literally pick up roots and move elsewhere.
HAIM SOLOMON:
I am sure people in the audience saw the Fiddler on the Roof, and are familiar with Anatevka, people packing up what they could and leave the rest right there, like geese and ducks. The Romanians as you indicated, suspicious of our presence on the border with the Soviets, who brought their armies to the Prut River, to the people they said, they asked us, forced, told us, expected us to leave.
So starting with a trickle, which is mostly the merchants on the long street, about half of the village, packed up what we could, and moved to Iasi. The others stayed behind an later, a year later, were taken to Iasi in the big pogrom that we experiences in Iasi later. This was 1940, already and things were quiet except that all the rumors and all the witnesses that told about Germany bringing into Romani large numbers of, hundreds of trains of large numbers of ammunition and soldiers to get ready later in 1941 to invade the Soviet Union.
So we moved to Iasi early in 1940 and moved into an apartment on a corner street of three streets corner. That was a lucky choice, later on. Iasi was quiet for awhile until June 1941.
BILL BENSON:
Before we go there, let me just ask you a couple of more questions, Haim. Why were the Romanian authorities suspicious of Jews enough to say you have to leave Bivolari? What were they suspicious about?
HAIM SOLOMON:
They used to go around telling that of the 24 politburo members in the Soviet Union, 16 were Jews. So, by implication we were all…
BILL BENSON:
You were loyal to the Soviets…
HAIM SOLOMON:
…Communists or Bolsheviks. The book like Pearl Buck’s books was suspicious.
BILL BENSON:
Pearl Buck’s books?
HAIM SOLOMON:
Yes. For something like that you could spend days under arrest.
BILL BENSON:
Haim, when you picked up you alluded to Fiddler on the Roof…when your family, you took everything you could from the store.
HAIM SOLOMON:
…and the household.
BILL BENSON:
And the house, and you left some things with a person that had been a nanny helping you out.
HAIM SOLOMON:
Correct.
BILL BENSON:
Will you say just a little bit about that?
HAIM SOLOMON:
Well, Valitza raised me. She didn’t want to. She lived with the peasants, lived around the village. But, when this happened, we gave her the keys and asked her to move in, which she didn’t want but she did.
BILL BENSON:
So essentially was able to take over her household, what you had left behind.
HAIM SOLOMON:
She was very familiar with it.
BILL BENSON:
Once you got to Iasi, was the family able to go back to work? What happened once you got there?
HAIM SOLOMON:
Just like in Bivolari, father and all the brothers, moved into the business area, opened a yard good store. This is before the ready-made stuff, and he wanted, needed pants, or shirt, had to buy garment, then take it to a tailor and a tailor produced or prepared the item. Iasi was a larger city, about 100,000 people, of which Jews were 50,000 plus all the new immigrants that was from the villages, on the border villages. The Jewish population was 60,000 or 70,000. But Iasi was also the center of virulent antisemitism, the center of the Iron Guard, very vicious.
BILL BENSON:
The Iron Guard was the fascist party there?
HAIM SOLOMON:
Correct.
BILL BENSON:
Haim, tell us a little bit about your family, your brothers…there were 5 children.
HAIM SOLOMON:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
…and your parents. All 7 of you were together, living in Iasi at this time, so the whole family was able to move.
HAIM SOLOMON:
Correct. In fact, the boys we, came with a truck and the parents came by bus.
BILL BENSON:
Of course, all of that would just change dramatically. Even though you’ve already had one major change of being forced to move to Iasi, once the Germans, as they were amassing to do, invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the Jews in Iasi, thousands and thousands of them as you described, were subjected to a vicious pogrom. Would you tell us what happened and what a pogrom is.
HAIM SOLOMON:
1941, June 21, Germany invaded the Soviet Union and German tanks, singing soldiers were marching all over the city. We stayed indoors and watched them from windows. On June 26th the Soviet Union Air Force bombed the train station in Iasi and many victims they suffered but the Germans, or the Romanians insisted that Jewish Communists signaled the Soviets where to bomb, drop the bombs. So, they initiated a vicious, barbaric, animalic, pogrom in Iasi with the scenario that they utilized in many other occasions, they asked the Jews to come to the city hall and exchange their old identification cards with new ones.
Once they got there and because soldiers and policemen kept bringing waves of more and more Jews, they as they cross the street, the police center had a big yard surrounded by a stone wall. And as they entered from the police, from the city hall to that stone yard, stone wall yard, aligned on both sides were Romanians, Germans, Romanian, German, etc. That was for the Germans to teach the Romanians what to do and as the Jews passed by, they split their heads or shot them in their temple because the Jews were holding their hands up.
So that the yard, the courtyard of that police station filled up with dead or dying Jews. My two brothers Reuven and Henry they slept in the store, about 10 blocks away from the house. They decided to go to the city hall to get their new identification cards. Reuven lost his card, old ID card and went into a relative to inquire and they convinced him not to go any place, but Henry kept going. As he entered and passed through all these Germans and Romanian guards he found himself next to the back wall and as night started, they jumped over the wall and look for a nice place, or a good place, to hide. They found a house with a big cross painted on it, which tells us that the whole thing was scheduled, prepared and not immediately orchestrated. So they went into the yard…
BILL BENSON:
So it was a cross painted on it saying, “Leave this one alone.”
HAIM SOLOMON:
Correct. They went into the yard and found a shed with fire wood, stacked all the way to the ceiling. They removed the top layer and crawled into it and replaced the layers so that guards, Germans, came to look then they saw the wood up to the ceiling and left. So they lay there, lie there quietly for 5-6 days. Back to the yard, the police and the Germans shooting people or wounding them. For a day before the 29th between 1 o’clock and 6, 7 o’clock in the evening they killed 4.000 people coming into that yard.
The next day they brought in the trash disposal, garbage removal, carts. Those were horse drawn carts to remove the dead and take them to the Jewish cemetery. The rest of the Jews they walked them to the train station and there they filled up train cars, that would hold 50-60 people they put 120 in each car and started them on a long travel, a long trip that went back and forth and June 29th, July 1st, under the heat and without water, half of them were dead when they arrived in the first village, Podul Iloaei. They removed the dead but then did not leave the 60 or so people by themselves, no they brought in more from back, guards to again fill up the train with 100, 120 people.
Things quieted down after 5, 6 days and we started getting out of the house.
BILL BENSON:
Tell us Haim, over 6 or 7 days somewhere around 11,000 Jews were murdered.
HAIM SOLOMON:
To be exact 13,260.
BILL BENSON:
13,260. Haim, tell us how you and the others in your family managed to not get caught up in that.
HAIM SOLOMON:
Yes, as I said brothers were away from the house and from our father and so they decided to go. The house where my father…he indicated no one is going and none of the neighbors would go. So this corner house that we had with three streets had three entrances so that when they came to look for us, Mother would stand with the daughters, would stay out, indicate, tell them that we already went. And that was good for them. Because among the dead there were 40 women and over 100 children. Those were families that would not separate. They would all go together. So, there were 40 women and 110 children among the victims.
BILL BENSON:
So the vast majority were Jewish men…males?
HAIM SOLOMON:
Correct, mostly Jewish men.
BILL BENSON:
And while the Germans or Romanians came to look for you, because you had multiple exits, you were going out the back exits.
HAIM SOLOMON:
Correct. We were out one another exit when they came to one of them. That basement also had small windows and we could look out and see Jews being marched and kicked and shot if they couldn’t move faster. The Rabbi of the nearby temple was killed on the street and left there. Some neighbors went to take him and bring him in. After 5, 6 days we started moving out of the hiding.
Streets were still empty, and really scary. Cats, dogs were licking blood from puddles. Somehow order was established soon after the Romanian authorities asked that every Jewish family send, or submit one volunteer so to speak, to do forced labor. At such a meeting, when the officer asked for someone that can do bookkeeping I raised my hand and he took me to his office, which was in a formerly Jewish hospital but now occupied by Romanian and German troops, wounded. It was already 10 days of war and they kept bringing wounded people.
It was a little scary in that job buy the officer needed my expertise. He would come and pick me up under the curfew and bring me home late at night. After a year or so, June 1942, July ’42 he stopped coming for him and I stopped going.
BILL BENSON:
When you first told me about this, this German Officer just eventually didn’t come for you anymore and you stopped going and you told me the fact that you weren’t doing the forced labor you were supposed to be doing, didn’t go…wasn’t noticed. You thought that was due to just bureaucracy, right? You were lost somehow?
HAIM SOLOMON:
No, I guess he learned the trick that his choices were well bribed and arranged so, he must have found another volunteer.
BILL BENSON:
The rest of your family is still intact at this point and no one else was forced at that time to do forced labor, right?
HAIM SOLOMON:
Not yet.
BILL BENSON:
And you would spend then, several years under these circumstances living in Iasi.
HAIM SOLOMON:
Yes, right. My father and all the boys, all the brothers were able to open the store and continue business as in the little village with the same customers who now became merchants themselves, so they would drive another 50 kilometers to Iasi to come to us.
BILL BENSON:
Is this when you were forced to start wearing yellow stars?
HAIM SOLOMON:
Yes, the star started…wearing yellow stars. To avoid going out or encountering military people, the Germans. It was natural if you saw Germans in front of you, coming, you would cross the street and they would do the same and come to you, scare you.
BILL BENSON:
Just intimidation, harassment, things like that? You would stay living under these circumstances, in Iasi for almost five years.
HAIM SOLOMON:
‘40-‘44
BILL BENSON:
June of ’44, then you picked up again and moved to Bucharest?
HAIM SOLOMON:
Yes, the Russians advanced from Stalingrad. They advanced in their offensive and came up to the river Prut and stopped there for a long time. We don’t know why but, they kept sending or starting rumors that Iasi would be fought street by street and they will decide when to do it, so we decided, or my father decided it’s time to leave. Again, we filled up a truck with everything and moved to, this time 600 kilometers, southwest, and moved to Bucharest.
BILL BENSON:
With the whole family again?
HAIM SOLOMON:
Yes, with the whole family in one truck. Bucharest was full of activity. The Russians were at the Prut and they expected them every day. So, Germans were retreating. Romanian soldiers were running away, running home. Everybody was expecting the Russians, day minute. Early in 1945 they did arrive and liquidated the government, opened the prisons and brought out all the communists, and socialists and formed a new government, where they insisted to have representation from every ethnic minority.
We Jews were represented by Rabbi Shafran, who protected us but also advised everybody to start thinking of emigrating. Soon enough when the Russians came they were friendly and nice to be with. They liked to sing and to drink and so one.
BILL BENSON:
They sort of just liked to sing and drink and left you generally along?
HAIM SOLOMON:
Yes. But, the Rabbi advised…I had 2 years ’45-’47 where I could continue my education and finish high school and graduate and by 1947 I was ready for taking off.
BILL BENSON:
Before we go past the war, the Soviets came into Bucharest, but the war was still going on elsewhere in Europe.
HAIM SOLOMON:
Absolutely.
BILL BENSON::
So you are liberated, but everyone else isn’t everywhere else. Describe for me what you told me about the American waves of bombers that were passing over head.
HAIM SOLOMON:
Oh yes, the Americans were already in Italy and Romania’s main source of oil was in a city north of Bucharest, Ploiesti. So the American bombers had to pass Bucharest and we’d lie on the ceiling, on the roofs and wave. They didn’t see us.
BILL BENSON:
You described them as beautiful formations, the American planes going over.
HAIM SOLOMON:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
And you’d wave at them.
HAIM SOLOMON:
Yes, of course. They always came on a triangle and at some point they spread out.
BILL BENSON::
The raids on Ploiesti were really important weren’t they in the whole war effort?
HAIM SOLOMON:
Absolutely. All the tanks, all the vehicles were dependant on that oil, but the Germans took most of it.
BILL BENSON:
When the Russians came in, were you pretty well…I think you were pretty well free of any heavy fighting in there. You didn’t...you weren’t at terrible risk of war around you once the Soviet came in.
HAIM SOLOMON:
Yes. No, they moved towards Hungary and Yugoslavia.
BILL BENSON:
When did…at that time your under the Soviets, the war is still going on, did you begin to really know what had happened to Jews elsewhere in Europe at that time?
HAIM SOLOMON:
Not really, not yet. Just whatever the western…Paris, would send to us…
BILL BENSON:
As you started to tell us, once the war was over for you and then once the war as completely over, you were able to resume your education and prepare for your own departure for Palestine. Tell us about that time for you as you thought about emigrating, and leaving, and picking up stakes and going.
HAIM SOLOMON:
It was a real relaxation and you could roam the streets and during the evenings the Russians were not to be seen, but Romanian patrols keeping order. Restaurants were open late, move house, so on.
BILL BENSON:
Tell us about the Soviet soldiers and watches.
HAIM SOLOMON:
Oh! The Soviets were brought up to not know the time of day, what the day, the month, they didn’t know where they were.
BILL BENSON:
By their superiors, by their officers to keep them in the dark?
HAIM SOLOMON:
Exactly. So, their first attraction were watches and they would ask in Russian or Romanian what time it is. No matter what you told them he wanted to see it and the minute he saw it he took it and kept some conversation. So what to do with that watch, he wants to put it on a jacket and the jacket is full of other watches. So, that was one of the specialties that they…They liked watches.
BILL BENSON:
Haim, tell us about your departure when you finally were ready to go and made your trip. Tell us about your trip.
HAIM SOLOMON:
In the middle of 1947 a huge Aliyah, which means immigration, illegal immigration to Palestine at the time was starting to be organized in Romania for mostly Romanian Jews but also many that came from Poland, and Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. So slowly, slowly they fixed up two large boats that were bought here and were shelving, like people could not sit or, stand, only lie down. And in the meantime they divided, or gave out passage for various organizations, Zionist organizations. I was one of, in the organization, the General Zionist, ready to prepare for immigration.
On December 22 we ordered large train to take us to Constanta, a port city on the Black Sea, on the eastern side of Romania. The train was supposed to travel there with 16,000 immigrants for 2 ships. Then the British government insisted and pressed the Romanians to not participate or facilitate such an illegal and dangerous Aliyah or trip.
They threatened the Romanians so the Romanian Foreign Minister told them that, “No illegal immigration is departing from Romanian ports.” Accordingly the train instead of going East started out going South to Bulgaria and the boats in the Black Sea traveled to a port called Burgas in Southern Bulgaria. We arrived there after 12 hours and within 10 hours 16,000 people boarded the two ships and we started the slow, arduous trip.
That Burgas port is near the Bosphorus straight. We crossed the Bosphorus into the Marmara Sea and then from there by the Dardanelles, passed into the Aegean. After the Aegean straight came the Mediterranean and there the British Navy was waiting for us. They followed us until we got near Haifa, 5 or 6 miles from there. There, having received the orders from Israel not to put up any defense, because an earlier ship they battled with the British, and so they took us to Cyprus.
BILL BENSON:
And before you go on about Cyprus there were 16,000 of you on two ships. 8,000 per ship and during the day you were not allowed to go on top, right?
HAIM SOLOMON:
No just lie…
BILL BENSON:
…lie because there is no room to stand, just crowded in the holds of these ships.
HAIM SOLOMON:
Correct. But luckily the ships were bought from Panama, one of the countries here. And they were ships where fruit were transported and they were well aerated and refrigerated. 8,000 people could roam around but…
BILL BENSON:
But survived it…So the British force you to Cyprus now and now you’re a prisoner.
HAIM SOLOMON:
Now we are prisoners in Cyprus. The proverbial from the frying pan into the fire. Cyprus is a beautiful island, 80% Greek, 20% Turkish. If you see it on a map it looks like a gun pointing at Syria. On arrival I joined the Haganah in Cyprus, where all the feuding Zionist groups could integrate as equals. The camps were surrounded by two barbed wired fences with roles of barbed wire in between them. Those roles are called concertina because if you split them they start running like and making noise, or music.
Every 200 yards they had post guards and the British would not come into the camps. We were housed, our camps were called “the summer camps” even though they were in the north part of the island, because we were housed in tents and 20 miles south were “the winter camps” because they were housed in quonset houses.
The British soldiers would not come into the camps, but the Greek laborers would service them on a daily basis. The camps were managed by the Joint Committee and plus a select number of internees, locally selected, but we in the Haganah were conducted, managed by emissaries from Israel who were allowed into the camps as doctors or teachers, etc. In reality they were well trained military experts. They divided our days into three activities; paramilitary exercises, hand to hand battle, Hebrew studies, bible literature, and the third activity, the most important one was to study or to prepare how to escape the camps. During the nights we would study the movements of the guards, when they eat, when they sleep, so on, and observed the size of the moon and places where such escapes could be possible.
At night, first of all I trained as a partner in a pair that would approach the fence and cut opening, crawl into that concertina so that when you split it, it doesn’t [inaudible] and opened the other part, the other fence and start bringing out youngsters. By this time the camps held about 40,000-50,000 prisoners. So the British would allow women, pregnant women, sick people, elder people, young children, out. But, not military age youngsters. So, our direction, our intent was to bring out military age youngsters. So, when we approached the fences and opened we would bring out 8, 9, 10 youngsters, then tie up the fences and retreat to wait for developments.
If the British were alerted, they discovered it, the arrangement was that the youngsters would raise their hands and surrender and the guard they take them to their command post and interrogate them for how do you organize and how do you prepare for this escape. The final punishment was to take you to “the winter camps” if this happened in “the summer camps” and vice versa.
If the action succeeded the youngsters were to crawl some distance, then get up and walk for half a mile for the rest of the trip to the road that passed in front of the camps about a mile away. Then they would lie in the grass in between one and two at night a truck would pass by. All these exits, all these escapes were guided to correspond to the entrance of the camp. So the truck would stop and turn off the lights. Then the passenger would come out and whistle an Israeli song so the youngsters would run into the truck and the truck would drive them to a warehouse, huge warehouse in an orange grove, with some other kids from previous nights or from another camp would be there. When 80 or 90 youngsters were gathered together, Israeli fishing boats with licenses to fish in Turkish waters…because the northern part of Cyprus faces Turkey, and by pre-arranged light signs, flash lights or other lights, they would send us out rubber boats, rubber rafts to pick up the kids into the fishing boat.
BILL BENSON:
Haim, if you don’t mind, in the interest of time, you yourself would end up trying to escape. It would take your third attempt before you were successful.
HAIM SOLOMON:
Correct.
BILL BENSON:
And I want you to tell us about your…the time when you were interrogated and you began to sing your song, but before we get to that, Haim escaped, got out through the fence and then they were to hide as he described and they found during the day a deep hole in the ground to hide in but it just so happened some passing British soldiers were playing soccer with a tin can and one of them made an errant kick that landed in the hole. They went to retrieve it and got a sound beating out of that and put back into camp, but tell us about your…
HAIM SOLOMON:
Well, two soldiers found us. They were scared themselves. So they were shooting in the air, they were shouting. They took us out. We were 10 youngsters and they took us to their command post, this time interrogating a little harsher, with some beatings and so on. I was on my second part of the escapes and when I arrived in the other camps they dressed me up nicely so they thought I am the leader. So, after a good beating they put me in a room with, a cold, dark room, December 28, 1948 and that’s it.
I shivered, but I started feeling better and started to sing. When the British Captain comes in and yells at me, “You bloody Jew. You love life.” I liked that. So he threw me my clothes, dress up and wait outside, wait next room. The others were already there and they took us to “the summer camps” from where we originally escaped. This time the third time, when I escaped, I was already…one of the escapees made arrangements with my superiors, I am not coming back. So the third time the escape was successful and an Israeli fishing boat, Karish took us to Israel. It was already Israel. That was our main anger because Israel had declared independence in May and here we were in December they were still holding us on Cyprus. I was singing a song known to many, Am Israel Chai, “The People of Israel Lives.” To this day I don’t know why that captain was so interested in my singing.
BILL BENSON:
Haim, of course as you said you would make it to Israel and you would be very active in the Haganah, the Jewish Armed Forces, and ended up working in a hospital dealing with wounded…
HAIM SOLOMON:
Yes, military hospital.
BILL BENSON:
…and injured and then some time later would make it to the United States after Israel got its independence.
HAIM SOLOMON:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
Haim, I think we’re close to our 2 o’clock time so I’d like to, one we won’t have time to ask Haim questions here, but when he finishes if you want to ask him a question or meet him, he’ll step down off the stage over here so absolutely please feel free to do that.
I want to thank Haim for spending, and before I turn back to him to close our program, thank him for being here today. I want to thank all of you for joining us. I want to remind you that we will resume First Person program, our final program is next week, the 26th and I’ll come back to that in just a moment, but we will begin a new season of First Person next March, lasting until the end of August so if your travels bring you back to Washington we hope you will join us.
Our final First Person program for 2009 will be next Wednesday, August 26 when our first person will be Mr. Henry Greenbaum. Henry, who is from Poland survived living in a ghetto, being in slave labor, Auschwitz, and eventually survived a death march. I’d like to remind you that you can access excerpts of our First Person programs as podcasts on the Museum website or through iTunes. It’s our tradition at First Person that our first person gets the last word and so with that I’d like to turn back to Haim to close today’s program.
HAIM SOLOMON:
Alright, I would like to thank you for bringing us back and I’d like to thank Ellen Blalock and Rachel Wagner in charge of Survivors Affairs and Carly who is here today. I am not trying to name her last name because she just got married and I can’t pronounce it. I like the audience to be very thankful for choosing to come here. There are so many beautiful museums on this National Mall for every endeavor, human endeavor but you picked, you choose to come here. And, whether you know it or not you become witnesses now and you’re children, and your children’s children because under the surface of so called quiet there are again globalized antisemitism that leads to disaster. The Germans say “Yes there was a Holocaust. We did it. We know. “The Iranians say, “No there was no Holocaust. It’s just a rumor.” So antisemitism is going now global and there is no remedy, they say, for it. But, for groups like you come here and experience, see it, hear it, first hand, we won’t be here too long. I am talking about survivors, so it’s in your hands to publicize it, to prevent it, to bring about a reasonable acceptable lifestyle for people of different religions, different colors, different orientations. So thank you very much for coming.
[Applause]
