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Wilek, as I already said earlier, was a bad rascal as a young boy, and used to hang around with coachmen, which turned out useful when he got to the camp. He worked as a coachman. He also got help from friends from the sports club Hasmonea that we both had belonged to. People were trying to talk him into escaping from the camp. In the end he decided to do that, and began preparing documents and looking for a place for himself and for the youngest one – Michas. When everything was almost ready, one day he came home from work and the youngest brother was gone. And then he decided to stay in the camp.
I learned about all that from that Richter. Because throughout the entire war I had no news, Soviets told us that the Germans were murdering, burning, setting up camps. We couldn’t imagine that a civilized nation could murder an entire society in cold blood. My father spent a lot of time in Vienna, he had surgery there, and he was full of admiration for the German culture. We had German books at home, and so on. I understood that it could have been some onslaught, dissolute mob murdering people, pogroms, but to murder people in such a planned way? We thought it was Russian propaganda. Because they told us things like that on talks.
I also went to the house where Ania, my girlfriend, used to live. They told me they had taken her and her entire family away, only one sister, some younger one, escaped. Her house was near the hill called Execution Hill. That sister hid in the bushes there, lived there. Sometimes she would come to houses, and they gave her a piece of bread or something… and then she disappeared. She either died somewhere there, or they took her. So, everyone died.
I learned about all that from that Richter. Because throughout the entire war I had no news, Soviets told us that the Germans were murdering, burning, setting up camps. We couldn’t imagine that a civilized nation could murder an entire society in cold blood. My father spent a lot of time in Vienna, he had surgery there, and he was full of admiration for the German culture. We had German books at home, and so on. I understood that it could have been some onslaught, dissolute mob murdering people, pogroms, but to murder people in such a planned way? We thought it was Russian propaganda. Because they told us things like that on talks.
I also went to the house where Ania, my girlfriend, used to live. They told me they had taken her and her entire family away, only one sister, some younger one, escaped. Her house was near the hill called Execution Hill. That sister hid in the bushes there, lived there. Sometimes she would come to houses, and they gave her a piece of bread or something… and then she disappeared. She either died somewhere there, or they took her. So, everyone died.
Period
Interview
Michal Nadel
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