(dramatic music) - [Hanka] Where do I go? - [John] You're gonna go in the backseat, okay? (film projector ticking) (reflective piano music) - [Hanka reading] "When I was a little girl, my family lived in a tight Jewish community in the city of Krakow with many relatives, including 50 cousins, and many aunts and uncles and grandparents.
" - [Tosia] The Red Hat is a book my sister Hanka wrote, and it describes my sister's experiences as a small Jewish girl in Poland, and our family's struggles and miraculous escape from the ghetto and the Nazis. - I wore a red hat when we escaped from the German occupation of Krakow and went walking through snow which went up to my nose. But I had my red hat.
It was like something that kept me safe. (Hanka chuckles) So I wear a red hat now. [piano music] - [Hanka] My father's name was Herman Neiger, and my mother's name was Sara Neiger.
My parents had my older brother and sister, me, and my baby sister. I was born on a street called Wawrzenca Ulica in the Jewish part of Krakow. Since the end of the 14th century, the Jewish people came to Krakow.
- [Basia] Poland in the 15th, 16th century was a welcome place for Jews to settle, because the kings were very tolerant of the Jews, so they settled in that particular part of Krakow, in Poland, and, so that's where my family came from. - It was a very Orthodox Jewish neighborhood; there was no cars, you saw a horse once in a while, you could cross the street, there was no streetlights. It was a free life.
For me, it was a free life. I could go and do whatever I wanted, and my parents, they never bothered to worry about me. In the morning we got dressed, got some piece of bread, and we were sent out on the street.
- [Basia] My parents lived in a very small apartment. They were not well-to-do, but they were managing all right. There was family; they had sisters, and brothers, and cousins, and nephews, and it was a large family.
- We had three rooms, and a huge kitchen where everything took place, and lots of relatives around us. And the Synagogue was within a half a block from our house. It was a very tight group, not only the family, but also the community around us.
- [Ben] My parents sent me, alone, across the river to my grandparents, because she has no time to take care of me. So I would walk two hours through the streets, through the bridge, the rain, it didn't matter. I would wind up in my grandparents' house, and my grandparents said, "Well, we don't have time for you today, so go back.
" So I started to walk back, and that was about a day of excitement, going there and going back, with a stick, you know, on the street, a four or five-years-old boy. - My mother had a vegetable store. She used to get up early in the morning with my father and go to the store.
And farmers from outside the city would bring in the produce. She would come home early on Friday and cook all the meals for Shabbat, and she would bring the fruits and vegetables from the store, and so on. She was a very sociable person, and funny, and lively, chubby, she loved to eat.
(laughs) - She was a strong character, my mom. She was a very determined woman, very principled. - [Hanka] My father was a professional soccer player as a young man.
- [Basia] He played in the National Polish soccer team. He was a handsome man, and gentle, and sweet. - [Hanka] My father was a very strong, good-looking, athletic man.
My mother and father very much believed in education. Well, learning was always central. You know, schooling.
Absolutely central part of Jewish upbringing. You know? No question about it.
- [Ben] I had a older sister, Cesia. She was the authority in our family when Mother was not there. We listened to Cesia.
Whatever Cesia said, that's what we did. She took me on a streetcar, first time in my life that I got on a streetcar, and it was the most exciting that thing ever happen to me, to go one stop on a streetcar. Of course, we didn't pay, because we had no money.
- [Ben] It was a different life. It was kind of like you see in those old, old movies, sometimes. That's how it was.
Until the war started, that changed everything. (explosions booming) (dramatic music) - [Newsreel Announcer] Poland, September 1939. The German foe begins its ruthless march of conquest and sets the stage for World War II.
Poland's 34 million inhabitants crushed, scattered, and enslaved. Tens of thousands of square miles of territory shrink before the movement of lightning armored columns. Poland and the world learn the meaning of a grim new word: blitzkrieg.
The civilized world knows it as the unleashing of unparalleled military might. With little to stand in their way, the Nazi divisions roar across the Polish countryside. Only a well-devised counter blitz can stand the flanking and pincer movements of the wily Germans.
(dramatic music) (guns firing) - [Tosia Narration] "On September 1st, 1939, Hitler began his assault on Europe, beginning with the invasion of Poland. The Polish army surrendered in only two weeks. " - [Ben] In 1939 the War started.
I remember the first airplanes flying over our houses from Germany. They were dropping bombs, but not explosive, it was kind of like tear gas, just to scare the people. I don't think they wanted to kill anybody at this time, because they knew they were going to come to Poland and they didn't want destruction there.
The smell was horrible, it was like a sulfur. - [Tosia Narration] "The first time German warplanes flew over the city, my aunt Hannah gathered all 50 children in our grandfather's basement and covered us in featherbeds, as if she could protect us from the bombing that way. (somber violin, viola and cello music) One dark day, Nazi soldiers came into our house.
They took everything of value and told us to prepare to leave. " - [Hanka] They came into our apartment. They went into every Jewish home, took out all the valuables.
- [Tosia Narration] "With the clothes on our back, we each packed an extra pair of shoes in a small bag as we were forced to leave our home. " - And once the ghetto was established, everybody had to leave their homes and was brought into the ghetto. (somber piano music) (boots stomping) - [Basia] I remember the boots and the sound of the boots.
The Germans came in and patrolled the ghetto, and they were all wearing these high boots. And I could hear them come, and I knew, I knew that this was not a good sound when I heard the click-clack of the boots coming. I would run and sometimes hide in a garbage can.
And I would cover the garbage can, so they wouldn't see me. (dogs barking) - [Ben] We had to move out of our apartment to a ghetto. They took a few streets, built a wall around it, and all Jews had to go to the ghetto.
If you don't go to the ghetto, you were shot. - [Tosia Narration] "We were marched to the gates of the ghetto. The ghetto had been fenced in by barbed wire to imprison all the Jewish people of the city.
(boots stomping) Nazi soldiers dressed in shiny black boots lined the gates where a huge crowd gathered. The Nazis pointed their guns and pushed the crowd of Jewish people through the gates into the ghetto. " - They told us not to feel very comfortable because we are not staying there very long.
- [Tosia Narration] "I began to cry bitterly. My mother tried to console me. She saw a pushcart vendor selling hats just at the edge of the ghetto gate.
She pulled out the change in her pocket and bought a red hat for me. As the gates of the ghetto were locked behind us, my mother put the red hat on my head, pulled it down over my ears, and dragged me behind her. I wore my red hat from that moment on.
Once inside, nobody was permitted to leave the ghetto. My family was placed in a single room in an apartment with other families we did not know. Many Jewish prisoners were taken out daily to work as laborers in a camp called Plaszow.
The people in the ghetto were starving and some tried to sneak out to find food. If they were caught by the SS guards, they were put into the ghetto jail or shot on the spot. " (mournful trumpet music) - [Hanka] I remember a boy, (chuckles) his name was Marcel.
And I used to sit in the stoop of our house and watch him on his bicycle. He had a bicycle, and he used to parade himself up and down the street and show off tricks, and he knew I was sitting there watching him. And I always used to wave, and, you know.
. . It was very nice.
And one day, he didn't come. He was gone. You knew what happened to people who disappeared.
He was deported to the camps. (crying) (somber piano music) - [Ben] In the ghetto there was like, 20,000 people, maybe more. But there were not stores or whatever, where you can go and buy food.
My mother had a food business outside the ghetto. Every day she would bring two big bags, heavy with food, and share it with some of the people in the ghetto. And there was a prison.
They would catch young people that they needed for work, so they kept them in, like, garages. There was no water there. It was a horrible situation.
My mother couldn't stand it. She had food, so she would take a big pot, she would cook whatever she had, leftover food, whatever she didn't sell, pieces of meats, whatever. At night we used to bring the food to the prison.
One day, we were dragging it, and this was making noise. So the German guard heard the noise, he took his gun and started to shoot in our direction. (gunshots firing) We left the pot and we ran home, and Mother said, "What happened?
" And we told her that they were shooting at us. And mother started to give us the business, "You are afraid of somebody shooting at you? And people are starving, and I was cooking there for so many hours, and.
. . " She put the guilt on us, that we left that food in the middle of the.
. . "The food is gonna be cold now!
" And. . .
We went back for the pot and we dragged the pot back to the prison. And that was our last trip to the prison. That was about the time where things started to change in ghetto.
They started to slowly deport people from ghetto to the concentration camp. (dire piano music) - [Hanka] We always knew to run and hide when we saw those shiny black boots coming. We knew that they wanted to kill the Jews.
(hooves clopping) They would march in, and if they felt like that, they would shoot people, you know, just at random. I remember looking at the orphanage. We had an orphanage in the ghetto, and they were throwing children out the window, infants, throwing them out the window.
Before they loaded them up on to trucks to transport them out. They were already dead by the time they fell off the windows. - [Ben] In the ghetto there was a hospital, kept there about 20, 30 old men, because the International Red Cross would come and check.
That was the Germans' show, that they very humane, they keep old people in the hospital. That's how my grandfather stayed alive. One day, my mother got a call from the doctor that was friend of the family, "Come over.
" She took me with her. My mother told me, "Your Grandfather is very, very sick, he might not live 'til tomorrow. " I went with her to the hospital and I saw her doctor.
She was crying so bitterly. And she told me, "Go to your grandfather, say goodbye, in case he doesn't survive. " And I went to my grandfather, I hold his hand, and we were talking, and.
. . And he told me, "Take care of your mother," and all that.
And he was sitting on a bed, smoking a cigarette. And I said, "This man is not sick to a point where he is going to die tomorrow. " But something was not kosher there.
I never saw my grandfather again after that. But years later, my mother told me the story, that the Germans came and said they going to eliminate the hospital. The old people will be shot.
And the doctors negotiated with the Germans that they will take care of it, that they will give them an injection. They told them that, "Look, you have a choice of to be shot by the Germans or just go to sleep. " And so he decided just to go to sleep.
- My Mother was telling me she was walking through the ghetto, walking past a pile of corpses and seeing her sister's two-year-old daughter on top of the pile with a bullet wound through her forehead. So there was no question of what was going on. It was there.
It was there. (somber piano music) - [Tosia Narration] "At the beginning of the. .
German occupation, there were 60,000 Jews in Krakow. There were schools, markets, temples. There was life.
And now, only a few thousand starving and suffering Jews remained. " (somber piano music) (engine rumbling) (dramatic music) - [Ben] A truck came to the front of our house and some soldiers jumped out, and there was the Butcher of Krakow among them. His speciality, shoots little children.
He was a murderer-incredible. He was the guy who was in charge of eliminating everybody who was not in an age of employment, of working. We were warned not to leave the house, because on the street, if they would find some children, they would kill them.
So, they came. We heard the truck stopping in front of our house, and the door was closed, we shut off the light, we were sitting quietly. There was nothing we could do.
This building had, like, four stories. And these apartments was one on top of the other. They started to run up the stairs.
We heard the boots, you know, one after the other. The soldiers would break the doors with the rifles and he would go in there, he was the shooter. (gunshots firing) And whoever was alive, he would just shoot.
And we could hear it, because they were screaming from fear! So we hear the screaming and screaming, and shooting, then quiet. And that would go like that from floor to floor to floor.
Above us, there was my friends, I used to play with them. We heard that they broke the door there, and we heard these children screaming, but they were shot. (gun fires) And it was quiet.
And we were the last one, because we were on the bottom floor. And he got in, his uniform was full of blood, like a butcher, and he had a gun in his hand. And he stood there, like, very calmly, he put his hand into his pocket, he press it and the magazine of the bullet came out.
And he put one bullet after the other, one, two, three, four, eight of them, or six, I don't remember. And we were standing and watching him doing it. Then he put the magazine in, and he pointed the gun.
I was so scared, I didn't want to die. I was thinking, "I am 12 years old. " And I knew that the bullet is going to come to my head any second.
My mother said, "Close your eyes. " (door clatters) And the door opened, and a soldier got in. He said to him something in German.
And he looked, I remember he looked, and then he put the gun in the holster and walked out. (door closes) I don't know what the soldier told him. I cannot imagine what he told him that he didn't shoot us.
He shoot everybody. This man killed hundred of people, why would he stop at us? We don't know.
Then the German decided to eliminate the ghetto altogether. It was the end of Jewish life in Krakow. (haunting choir singing "Durme, Durme") - They had reached a stage in the ghetto where they were making families dig their graves, strip naked, the family got into the hole, and then the Germans would throw grenades in.
- [Hanka] My mother said, "That's it, we are going. What can we lose? Either we'll survive.
. . But we don't want to end up like that.
" - My father, from what I've been told, said that, "We're going to die, but I'm not going to just stand by and wait for us all to be killed and shot, I'm gonna go for it and try to get out. " - [Ben] My father used to be a quite famous soccer player. There was a Christian team, and he had Christian friends who lived in Krakow, outside the ghetto.
My mother had a food business outside the ghetto. People who had the business of food, they got a special permit to get out of the ghetto in the morning, they had to come back at night. The German soldier at the gate of the ghetto knew my mother well because she would leave and come, and she would bribe him very well with food and other things.
So my mother took all her savings, and because the permit was to leave the ghetto, she contacted the Christian team where my father used to play, and she told them that our survival depends on them. So we got Christian papers. When we run away from ghetto, we're going to be Christian.
And as Christian, we would have more chance to survive, because as Jewish, it was zero. - [Hanka] My mother said, "Don't ever, ever say you're Jewish. Don't ever.
They will kill you on the spot. " [Tosia Narration] "My parents spoke to a Polish farmer who delivered his vegetables into the ghetto in a horse-drawn cart every week. He used to deliver his goods to my parents' store before we were locked in the ghetto.
My parents approached him about helping our family escape. " - [Hanka] One dark night, they came in, and we were all ready. They built a kind of a platform underneath the wagon, and one by one, we slipped into the wagon, and hid like we were told.
My younger sister was ill at that time. She had pneumonia, or a very bad cough, and my Mother warned us, "Not a sound, not a breathing sound, not a crying sound. " - A wagon came for refuse, to take refuse out of ghetto.
They put us into barrels, all our children, all my sisters, my parents, he covered us with garbage. - And we got out of the ghetto without being stopped, asked, questioned. They assumed he had delivered his foods and he's going home.
And we were out of the ghetto. He really risked his life doing it. It was amazing.
[somber cello music] - Nobody expected to survive. That wasn't even the motivation behind making the decision to get out of the ghetto. My father, in fact, had pistols with them.
And the agreement was, that if they were being stopped by Germans on the way, they would kill the family and each other. It really was a question of how they were choosing to die, rather than survive. [Tosia Narration] "We stayed in a vacated apartment in the city until false identification papers were prepared for us, saying that we were Poles, not Jews.
When we had our papers, we went to the railroad station to take a train to the Czech border. It had been snowing for days and the train was two hours behind schedule. " [Hanka] - We arrived, and it was snowing, and policemen, and the Nazi guards, waiting, waiting, waiting for the train to arrive.
The train was late because it was snowing for days. And the train didn't come and they got fed up after two hours and left. We stayed, and the train came, and we boarded the train, and we got to the Czech border.
- [Ben] In Czechoslovakia there were no Germans, so for us to cross the border meant freedom. - And we started walking, on foot, across the whole mountains, in snowy fields, in little villages. - [Tosia Narration] "My father carried my baby sister in his knapsack, and I carried my doll in mine.
I wore my red hat on the long walk in the snow, while my shoes fell apart on my feet. " - I had thrown out my second pair of shoes and put my doll in there, so after a short while, tramping around in the snow, I had no shoes, they fell apart. And, my father took his shirt and wrapped it around my feet, other people gave me other rags to wear around my feet, and that's how I walked till we got to Czechoslovakia.
- [Hanka] We walked at night, and tried to sleep in little hunting huts during the night, or bury ourselves under the snow when we heard dogs, because the German guards (dogs barking) used to come with their German Shepherds. They frightened me more than anything. - [Ben] We walked through the border and that was the first breath of free air.
- [Hanka] We got to the border, to the Czech border, and a peasant family took us in. (piano and recorder music) - [Ben] Two days later, we went by train to Hungary. (train whistle tooting) (cars clattering) - [Hanka] Finally we got across the border to Hungary.
And we ended up in a small town on the border. Normal life was going on, people were going about their business. Synagogues, churches, stores, everything functioned.
And we walked into a synagogue, and there were people praying, and my parents told them, "You know, you have to make provisions to escape, because they are gonna come and get you. They're gonna come here, too. " And they looked at my parents as if they were crazy.
We couldn't convince them. Finally we got to the railroad station and boarded a train for Budapest. - [Tosia Narration] "The family dispersed so that we would not be noticed.
My mother told me to stand still and look out the window and not make any noise. As the train traveled across the countryside, a man in uniform approached me. He seemed very friendly and began to chat, but he spoke in Hungarian, which I did not understand.
- [Hanka] I just shook my head. He went to my mama, she couldn't speak Hungarian either, so we were all gathered up, taken off the train. And in Budapest, we were put into a penitentiary.
- We were taken to jail, because we crossed the border illegally. - [Hanka] We had false papers. We started out from Krakow with false papers, said we were Catholic and Polish, not Jewish.
So if the Germans come, you know, we have to keep up that pretense. - [Tosia Narration] "My three-year-old sister and I were allowed to to roam around the female prison outside our cells. Occasionally, while we were playing, we were stopped by prison guards and pulled into an office for interrogation.
In the office, the guard took a pistol from his belt and pointed it at us. He asked for our names, saying he would shoot us if we did not tell the truth. " - "What's your name?
" "Our name is Nosal. " My sister says, "Nosal! " (laughs) And they let us go back into our cell.
They couldn't break us. And finally, we were released. And the Jewish community in Hungary, in Budapest, started taking care of Jewish refugees.
And my parents tried to warn them, "Do anything that's possible to escape, because the Germans will come and get you. " Lo and behold, they came. - [Tosia Narration] "Then the German army invaded Hungary, and we were sent to a German work camp for Polish laborers in the village of Marcali.
In the camp, my father played chess with the village priest every day, and they became good friends. The priest protected our family by assuring the SS guards that we were Catholic. " - The priest was a very good friend of my father and my mother.
He knew that we are Jewish, but, he just did not say anything. - [Hanka] We were told the Germans are coming, they would evacuate everybody and inspect all the male members of that work camp in that village. He says, "They are not gonna ask you, because I say you are a friend of mine," and so on.
"But you have to hide your little boy, because they may look and they may find out that he's circumcised. " - My father is circumcised, and I am circumcised. He said, "Look, I can vouch for your father, that he was sick, or whatever, he had to have it, but when they see a son and a father, they're not going to believe me.
So you have to get rid of your son. " - [Hanka] So my father took him and hid him in a cabin in the woods. And we stayed in the village.
- So my parents decided to bring me to a big forest. Soponya Puszta, it was called, in Hungary, completely deserted. The Germans were on one side, the Russians on the other side.
They keep shooting at each other but none of them went into the forest. It was such a thick woods that they couldn't, with the tanks, get in there. There were, in the forest, there was a barn there.
This barn was a good place to hide. There were a couple of Jewish gentlemen, they were in their 20s, who were waiting for the Russians to liberate us. Well, my father left me there, with these people, and said he will come next day, or day thereafter, with the whole family and we will wait there for the Russians to liberate us.
Few days later, the Russians really came, and the young Jewish men decided to join the Russians. But I was waiting for my father to come, so I did not join them. They all left, and I was all alone, left in this barn.
Every day I would sit outside and wait and wait, and look if my father is coming. I was alone in a gigantic forest because everybody left. (wind blowing) (somber violin and cello music) (bell ringing) - [Tosia Narration] "My brother was still hiding in the forest when we were transported from the village.
As Russian troops approached the village, the Nazis began to prepare the prisoners to move further west. " - [Hanka] And we were all packed up, like a bunch of animals, and driven west, away from the Russians. My father had a sled, so he took my younger sister and me on the sled, and, we were driven on foot to Austria.
- [Tosia Narration] "My father pulled us along on a sled. Whenever he heard gunshots, he would throw his body over us to protect us from the bullets. " - [Hanka] After a couple of days, we got on a train.
The train stopped, and my mother told me to get off the train. And I went down, and I stood there, and I couldn't budge. I was paralyzed.
I was terrified. I was, like, I couldn't believe that I was alone in that snow that went up to my nose. And she told me to run and I couldn't budge, I couldn't move.
And my father went down and got me and put me back on the train, and he said to her, "How can you do that? How can you do that, she's a little girl! " She tried to save one child at least.
- [Tosia] Always the most haunting image was that of Hanka standing on that train platform, with the train pulling out. That's the most horrifying image to me. It says everything that was horrific about that time.
Who knows what the decision making was? They were going to put her out of the train, out of desperation, right? Who knows if that wasn't, "Well, maybe separately somebody will survive?
" My father said to me, when he saw her, out there by herself, on that train platform, he decided, if they were going to die, they were going to die together. (sullen violin music) (birds chirping) - [Ben] I was alone for three months. And everyday when I decided, "That's it, I don't want to.
. . " Said, "Maybe my father will come tomorrow.
And where is he going to find me, if I leave? " There were a little food leftover by the people, because they didn't know how long it would take the liberation, so they prepared some food and a barrel with water. They had some cooked fruit, so I had something to eat.
But when my father did not show up, the food ended. I used to go to a pond and catch fish, and cook the fish when I had some matches. And I used up my matches.
Later, I didn't have with what to cook the fish. But, you know, hunger is something so strong that I used to eat raw fish, or whatever I found, some eggs from some birds. There was a dog which would come to the barn, used to keep me company.
Sometimes, when it was very cold, he would stay with me and keep warm. One day, middle of the night, there was a big explosion. (explosion booms) Some kind of a rocket flew into the barn, the whole roof collapsed.
But I realized I cannot stay there anymore. And I said, "If my father didn't come in so many months, he's not going to come. " And I knew that if I stay there, I would die.
I don't know if my body was 50 pounds, was just bones. So I decided to leave, just packed up all my stuff and the dog, and we left. Before I went to the forest, my mother, she bought for me a pair of boots, but they were one size too small, she couldn't get my size, so I had to cut a part of them so my feet can go in them.
But later, even this didn't work. So I took some rags and I made myself shoes out of rags. And we started to walk into the forest, in the direction that I never walk.
Down, down the path, about maybe half a mile past the barn, there was abandoned village. There were piglets running there, and chicken running there, but no people. People run in such a hurry that they left everything.
And I started to search through the village, and I smelled sauerkraut, a strong smell of cabbage. I started to follow it, and there was a factory there of pickled cabbage. There was a big, maybe 12-feet barrel and there was a ladder there.
And I walked up the ladder, and I jumped inside the barrel, and I started to eat the cabbage. I was so hungry, I ate until I had stomach ache, but it didn't matter, I just ate, ate the cabbage. And then suddenly I realized I did not pull the ladder with me.
And there is a wall like that, there is nothing in sight, just the cabbage. I said, "I'm going to die here. My father is never going to find me.
" My worst thing was not the dying, but my father will not find me. I was desperate. The dog was outside barking.
But there are no people, with miles and miles, there's no. . .
Screaming wouldn't help, because there was nobody there. So I started to touch the bottom of the barrel. There was a peg there, where they used to pick it up to let the water out of the cabbage, or whatever, a big wooden thing.
And I took the shovel and I started to bang it. And the water came out, but the cabbage stayed. I fell asleep.
When I woke up in the morning, the cabbage was dry. And I started to pile up the cabbage, as much as I could, with the shovel. I piled enough of the cabbage, I put the shovel on top of it, I stepped on the shovel, I jumped up, and I grabbed the edge of the barrel.
You know, it must be something for people who are in desperation of dying that give you the strength which you don't think you have. I pulled myself up, and I got out of the. .
. I jumped out. I didn't even go to the ladder, I just jumped out.
And I started to walk back to the barn. I decided I am going to wait for my father anyway. (gloomy piano music) - [Hanka] There was a transit camp in Austria which was a horror of horrors.
We had to go for inspection as we arrived, take all our clothes off, stand naked, while men were walking by, looking at us with, you know, disdain and hatred. And finally we went to a more permanent work camp, Strasshof. We were given a kind of a little area in a barrack for the family.
My sister and mother were working in the kitchen, and I, mainly, was stealing food. I was very good at it. One day, my mother took me, there was a train stopped and it was full of food and stuff.
So I went with her, and climbed up and was throwing potatoes to her when the guard saw us. He came with the butt of the gun and hit her as hard as he could. Blood was flowing down her face.
And because he saw me, he saw that she had a child, otherwise he might have killed her. You know, it was nothing, killing somebody. My father got ill when we were in that camp.
He had a kidney attack, had to be hospitalized, and we were in terror that they would find out that he is circumcised and a Jew. And the doctor treating him said, "Don't worry, no one will know. " (somber violin music) (bird cawing) - [Ben] On the way back to the barn, we started to walk down the path, and I didn't think, I just followed the dog.
The way to the barn was to the left, but there was a little walkway to the right, and the dog went there. Suddenly I see a house, and I went there, and a lady opened the door, a young lady, very beautiful. .
. I remember her, she was very beautiful. She must have been 25 years old.
Near her was a little boy, she was holding the boy by the hand. And I thought, "I probably died, I am in heaven. No, it cannot be.
" She kind of became a mother to me. Her husband was taken to the army, he never came back. So she was alone there with the boy.
And then the Russians came. I used to go at night and look if my father came to the barn. I used to check, maybe my father is there.
I mean. . .
You know, I was thirteen years old and I missed my parents, and missed my family. So I used to go there with the dog, and when I come back, this high officer came over, whom we never saw before. And, well, to make a long story short, he raped the woman.
[dramatic piano music] After what happened, it was she became very depressed. She wouldn't talk to us anymore. They provided us with a wagon and a driver, and we went to her family.
We drove many hours, and they took us out of the forest. I lived with her family there. I would sleep in the barn and chop wood.
She said she would not feed me unless I do some work. After living there for a while, I decided to go look for my parents. I didn't want to go through the forest where I lived, but there was a road around the forest.
This road and the fields, because there were Russians there, and Germans there, and Russians there, and Germans there, they keep changing and putting mines. I went through the minefield. And at the beginning of the minefield, I smelled something very strong.
When I came close, there were big craters full of dead soldiers, never covered, horses, dead horses, dead soldiers, German, all German. The Russians probably threw them in there, but they never covered them. I said, "Well, I'm not going to go where the grass is, I will go where the craters are.
Over there, there are no mines, because people are dead already. " There was crater by crater, but. .
. And there were million of flies. (flies buzzing) Sometimes I had to walk, literally, on the dead people, on the dead soldiers.
The smell was incredible, horrible. You couldn't breathe. And I walked, and I hear the mines exploding where the people trying to clear the fields, because they needed to plow.
Finally, when I arrived in the village, a friend that I knew, because I lived there for a year or so, I asked him, "What happened to my parents? " He said, "They were shot. They were killed by the Germans.
" Well, then I realized I am an orphan. So I walked back to Kaposvar. After a few months, a man who was in the same village that my parents were, he moved to Kaposvar.
And the lady that I was with her, she knew him. And somehow, this way, she said, "Look, take the boy, because there is no future for him. Here, he is going to chop wood for the rest of his life.
" In Budapest, there was a orphanage for Jewish children, and they gave him some money to bring me to Budapest to the orphanage. (somber violin, viola and cello music) - [Tosia Narration] "One morning we woke up very early and the camp was eerily quiet. There were no commands or shooting in the courtyard.
Not a sound could be heard. It was as if the whole town had died. " - [Hanka] We saw Russian tanks parked right in our view.
All around our camp, there were Russian tanks. And we didn't dare to go out. We didn't think it was real, or that it was safe.
We were waiting and waiting. All the Austrians had fled, and the prisoners started crawling out of their barracks and looking. And finally, at last, the war was over.
(somber trumpet, violin, piano and cello music) - [Tosia Narration] "The war was over. We had survived. But we did not know where my brother was.
My parents decided to go look for my brother in the town of Marcali, where we had all last been together. My father stole a horse and cart which was loaded with bags of brown sugar. We used the bags of sugar to barter for food along the way.
" - [Hanka] My father stole a horse and a wagon. We were going to go back to Hungary to find my brother. It took a long time, but we got there.
Got to the village and nobody knew where he was. - [Tosia Narration] "My father took a train to Budapest, where the Red Cross was working to reunite families who had been separated during the war. Nobody there had seen my brother either.
On his way back to the railroad station to return to Marcali, my father spotted a group of orphan children walking on a road. There, among them, was my brother. " - [Ben] Well, I stayed in the orphanage, and I started to learn how to write and read, because I never went to school.
So I had a book, A-B-C-D, you know, would walk on the street, and I pick up my head and my father is there. My father knew that I am alive. He found out in the village that I was there looking for them.
So he knew that I'm alive; he went to look for me in this orphanage. I didn't know he is alive. So when I saw him, it was.
. . I thought, "I'm dreaming.
" I said, "It cannot be true. " I mean. .
. - Well the joy of joys, unheard of. (laughs) He was just besides himself.
He grabbed him and ran, ran to the train to bring him to us. And the commotion, that, you can imagine. Screaming and crying, it was unbelievable, unbelievable joy.
How can he be so lucky? - [Ben] I found my father. And my father and my family survived the war.
Of course, I hugged him, and. . .
But, to be honest with you, I never forgive. I never forgive my parents for leaving me in this forest. As a 13-years-old boy, to be abandoned in a forest by parents, it's painful.
- He never forgave anybody, that we had left him, to the very day. - [ Ben] They made a very painful decision: me or the family If I would go back, the Germans would find us, send us to concentration camp, that would be the end. So the only way for them to survive was without me.
- [Tosia] He always felt thought that he had been deliberately abandoned. It doesn't matter if he was or wasn't, what matters is that he thinks he was, and he believes he was. - To tell you the honest truth, with years, I mean, the war is over 60, 70 years already, I thought that time would take care of it.
And it's true, I don't think about it everyday anymore. I go about my life. But at night, sometimes I wake up, or I have nightmares, and I dream about these times.
My brain just doesn't let go. - [Basia] What the Holocaust does, it makes you lose your home, your language, your background, your family. (crying) You're never at home again.
All your life, you look for it somewhere, someplace, with somebody, but. . .
This is what it's been like for me. And, I think, for my family, when I speak to my sisters, they pretty much feel the same way, homeless. - When you listen to the whole story, it's incredibly heroic, and, it's kind of a reminder of what, you know, very regular people are capable of under horrendous circumstance.
- [Basia] When I really think about them being young people in their 30s with four small children, going through something that cannot be described, it is death on every corner. Wherever you go, wherever you turn, you could be killed, shot, gassed, or found out who you are. It's a sense of awe that I have.
My parents, I think they were the ones who performed miracles, we're here. (Ben playing piano) - [Ben] I attribute our being together to the war. Because of the war, the constant fear that we're going to die tomorrow, that you have only one week to live, or maybe a month, maybe, because everybody around us is dying, being killed, being shot, so we knew that our lifespan is just counted by months or weeks or days, so that kept us maybe more together than it would be if this would not exist.
- [Basia] If I would have to think of a reason, it's a very obvious one, it's what we went through. And we have those parents and we have those experiences, and no one else in the whole world has these experiences. That is one aspect of it.
We also have fun together. We have the best time together when we get together. - [Ben] Yes!
- {Basia] Like no one else! We can laugh and we can carry on and we can tell jokes like no one else, we-- - [Cesia] We can also cry. - And we can also cry together.
(family laughing) And we really take care of each other, and this is what Mother always taught us, to take care of each other. - [Tosia] We were not allowed not to take care of each other or not to be there for each other. - [Basia] I think the sense of humor, when you think about it, it may not be totally conscious, but what else can happen to us?
(laughs) You know, what terrible thing can happen to us? So this is always looked at with a humorless. .
. You know, we went through the worst, so at least let's have a little fun! - [Hanka] That's what bound us, I think, that tightly for life.
We always tended to congregate in one place where we lived, whether we were married, had children, or changed our lives very dramatically, it still ended up that we were in one spot, all of us. I really feel very unafraid because there they are, they will come come and help. It was always the case, one could count on them.
