|
news:
Survivors recount
history
By Andres Cardenas
On-line Forty-Niner
Today, Joseph Freeman
and his wife Helen are retired and living in Pasadena.
Today, the Freemans
have eight grandchildren from their four children, Lillian,
Rene, Louis and Cece.
However, today
may not have happened for Joseph and Helen Freeman because
56 years ago both of them were Jews living in Nazi-occupied
Poland. Joseph survived a death march to Munich while Helen
was freed while working as a slave laborer in a Siemens factory
after a stay in Auschwitz.
Joseph has written
two books on his life during the Holocaust and has just finished
a third that is about Helen's experience in Auschwitz, the
notorious concentration camp that became the final stop for
many Jews in Europe during World War II. The Freemans also
speak about their experiences in the Holocaust to classrooms,
including Donald Schwartz's Holocaust history class at Cal
State Long Beach.
However, talking
about this has not been easy for the Freemans, especially
Helen.
"I never wanted
to talk about my experience, I really shut it out," Helen
said. "Even my kids did not even hear from me talk about
[my experiences]."
"My daughter
[Cece] just five years ago for the first time heard me talking
about my experiences, and she is 42."
"Remember,"
Joseph said, "it is not so easy for a Holocaust survivor
to share their life, especially sitting in front of an audience
of 200 to 300 young eyes staring at you."
While recalling
terrible memories is difficult, Joseph said it is his work.
"[Students]
have to remember what hate and bigotry can do before they
have been born," Joseph said.
The beginning
Both Joseph and Helen
grew up in Radom, Poland which is located south of Warsaw. In
his book, "Job: The Story of a Holocaust Survivor,"
he describes how his family members were taken away by Nazis.
His mother was the first to be affected as she was designated
as weak and unable to work and was transported to a camp.
Not knowing of
the severity of the situation, Joseph asked his sister Tania
to go with her to keep their mother company. It was the last
time he would see his mother and sister alive.
"Since then
I sometimes awake in the middle of the night, shaking,"
Joseph writes in "Job." "For as long as I live,
I will not forget that I sent Tania away, and I cannot forgive
myself for it."
This left only
his father and two other brothers Elek and Issac behind with
Joseph. Shortly after, Joseph would lose his father and brother
Elek. Joseph and his brother Issac were now left alone and
were sent to work in camps. Issac would not survive the Holocaust
and died shortly before the war was over, Joseph said.
Helen was kidnapped
by the Nazis in 1942 and was sent to work; she would never
see her parents again. Her brother Fishel located her and
was able to bribe a German solider and policeman to take Helen
back with him.
Joseph and Helen
soon met afterwards, and Joseph fell instantly in love with
her. However, they would soon be moved out of the camp they
were living in and be moved away to Auschwitz and Schoemberg.
An earring and
a voice
Both remember arriving
at Auschwitz and seeing a camp that was beautiful and kept in
good condition from the outside. Helen along with many other
women would get off here while Joseph would move on from camp
to camp for the rest of the war.
"When I arrived
at Auschwitz, I thought it was paradise," Helen said.
"The grass looked so beautiful, the Nazis had been very
kind." Joseph interrupts and adds, "And there was
an orchestra playing beautiful music."
Helen said she
recalls gathering her remaining possessions and walking toward
the gate where Josef Mengele, a doctor who decided whether
a Jew was fit to work or not, was waving Jews to the left
and right. Those who were waved to the right were soon executed.
She was waved to the left and proceeded to the bathhouse where
the prisoners showered.
Next, Helen had
her prisoner numbers tattooed onto her body.
"They branded
us for life," Helen said. "A-24490 was my number,
I was no longer a human being, I was just a number."
After being tattooed,
Helen said all remaining possessions would be left behind
by order of the Nazis. Any possessions found on the Jews would
be grounds for immediate execution.
Without choice,
Helen gave all the pictures and jewelry she owned except for
one earring.
"I saved a
little earring from my mother. I pushed it into the lining
of my shoe, hoping that they were not going to find it."
Helen was lucky
because she was able to sneak it past inspection. With the
earring, Helen could have used it to trade for food. But for
Helen it was her only connection left with her parents and
to her past.
"I touched
it when I found myself depressed," Helen said. "I
felt that I was close to my parents and to my mother especially."
Joseph would not
stop in Auschwitz. He would pass through and head into Germany
to a death camp called Schoemberg. While standing at roll
call one day, Joseph accidentally touched an SS officer passing
by; this would almost be a fatal mistake.
"He wrapped
me by my neck, threw me to the ground." Joseph recalls.
Afterwards a member of the Kapos, the Jewish police, cut him
in the back of his head with a bayonet, a scar that is still
there today.
He was then attacked
by the Kapos, with steel bars and thrown on top of a mountain
of corpses. For the rest of the day he laid there as more
bodies were tossed in. Later, a chemical was sprayed on top
to prepare for the burning of the bodies the next day.
Then at about ten
o'clock at night, Joseph said he heard Helen's voice.
"I was almost
dead when I heard her voice," Joseph said. "I followed
the sound of her voice and pulled myself out of the mountain
of dead people, and started to crawl in the mud."
For the next two
hours Joseph said that he crawled through the mud all the
way to the hospital where he ran into a friend he went to
school with named Wladek, who had been running the hospital
at Schoemberg.
Wladek helped Joseph
survive for the next two weeks by having Joseph stay in the
morgue.
"I was laying
between dead people for two weeks," Joseph said.
Speaking out
"I still get
nervous," Joseph said, right before he was introduced to
Schwartz's history class Thursday.
For 75 minutes
the Freemans had the entire class' attention. Students were
allowed to ask questions after Joseph and Helen both spoke
for 15 to 20 minutes about their experiences. Questions ranged
from what Jews knew about how the war was progressing to their
current feelings towards German and Polish people today.
Schwartz said he
met Joseph in 1995 after he gave a lecture to 125 high school
teachers in Los Angeles sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League.
After the presentation Schwartz said that Joseph approached
him and asked if he would be willing to review a manuscript
he wrote, which would later became "Job."
"From a historical
viewpoint, the Freemans' stories are quite important,"
Schwartz said. "They serve to corroborate what is already
known about ghettos and conditions in the camps and they provide
insight to the long-range effects of the Holocaust on survivors."
In his second book,
"The Road to Hell: Recollections of the Nazi Death March,"
Joseph talks about his experiences on the death march. "Joseph's
book on the death march is particularly valuable, since there
are very few first-person accounts on that horrendous experience,"
Schwartz said.
Joseph has been
speaking publicly since 1978 when he attended a lecture given
by Elie Wiesel, who wrote "Night," a book about
his experiences during the Holocaust. Joseph said he spoke
out and began reliving a past that up to that point he was
trying to forget.
Joseph said he
spoke with Wiesel after that speech, and he became interested
in speaking about his own experiences. "Had I not met
him, I don't know if I would be in this position today."
Since 1978, Joseph
has traveled around the world speaking about his life as a
Holocaust survivor. In October 1987, while speaking at Redlands
High School, he had a chance encounter with the U.S. solider
that found Joseph lying on the ground along the side of the
road after the death march.
The solider, Bernard
Lowry, yelled out during the presentation and said, "I'm
the solider who was with you!" Joseph recalls.
Joseph said he
is only going to give lectures for about another year. Recently
Joseph has just received a pacemaker.
Schwartz said he
does not believe him.
"This is what
keeps him going," Schwartz said. "It's what keeps
him alive."
|
