Korduner, Peter_1979/4/4, Oral History, April 4, 1979

Oral History – Peter Korduner

Interviewer: Neil Macy Interview Date: April 4, 1979 (Holocaust Remembrance Meeting – Open Meeting of JHSGH))

NM = Neil Macy PK = Peter Korduner

Unknown Speaker: April 4th, 1979. We are about to record a regular open meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford. Peter Korduner will be interviewed by Neil Macy on his experiences in the Holocaust and its aftermath.

NM: Good evening. The interviewee for today’s Holocaust Remembrance Meeting is Mr. Peter Korduner. Peter was born in The Ukraine in Russia in 1915, the son of jack and Raizel Gittman. He had two brothers who are no longer living but he does have two sisters who are still alive. Peter presently lives in West Hartford with his wife. He also has three children: Anita, Jack and Lori who is with us this evening.

Peter arrived in the United States after World War II in March of 1949, thirty years ago last month. He’s the owner of Pete and George’s barber Shop which is located right next to the Crown Market since 1968. And that’s where I got to know Peter.

Peter grew up in Russia during the period when the Communists under Lenin and Stalin ruled the country. He has vivid memories of the famines that occurred when the collectivization took place of the Russian farmlands. He was trained as a barber in Russia and later entered Military School during his early life. He did fight with the Russian Army during World War II, was captured and kept in a ghetto where destruction of many Jews took place. After World War II he did testify at a trial in Europe of a German concentration camp leader and he has been asked to return there to give evidence in a new trial that’ll take place.

Peter, the first thing I ask you, I asked you your parents names and you told me Jack and Raizel Gittman and I ask how did you get Korduner? Could you tell us what the genesis of your name Korduner came from?

PK: My name come to Korduner, well, I had a lot of names. There were times when I really went out of Russia and I couldn’t go under my own name. Then I took my wife’s name. And my wife’s maiden name is Korduner.

NM: So your wife’s name is Korduner. So you’re the unusual husband who took the wife’s name. And they thought women’s lib started in the United States. I don’t understand that at all. I mentioned, Peter, to the people, that you had vivid memories of your youth and growing up in Russia. Now you’re one that didn’t grow up in a shtetl but instead grew up in a community that included a lot of non-Jews as well as Jews. Could you just try to recall for us briefly something about life and your family during those early years?

PK: I was born in the Ukraine. It’s not a big city, it’s a small city called Shmerica (sp?). The city is between Kiev and Odessa. Now, the town was really a Jewish town. There’s a lot of Jewish people over there, religious people. I’m talking now when I was very little. We had over there about three synagogues. A big one, … before the Soviet Union I’m talking about time in the ‘20s. When I was little I didn’t have no education whatsoever, a Jewish education, a …, a Hebrew School was not allowed, you see. Now people used to do it, naturally. There was a rabbi, a teacher who used to come in, take a couple children over there, you teach ‘em very, very secretly.

NM: You mentioned to me that they did have a lot of Jewish clubs.

PK: Yes.

NM: They weren’t religious in nature is what you’re saying.

PK: No, no, no, no.

NM: What type of organizations did exist there?

PK: I’ll come to it. See I’m talking it was religious at that time when I was growing up. Later on, later on there was a lot of Jewish clubs, talking Jewish, talking in Jewish, and all kinds of activities, not naturally, not activities like Zionism or something like it. Everything was run by the government. The government used to tell what to do naturally, the Soviet Union and this.

NM: There was talk I know I many stories reading the books about the fact that Russia wanted to establish a separate Jewish state that would be a state where Jews would live. Are you aware of that, and if so, were any people from your community go to that state?

PK: Yeah. I remember, I was very young, I was very young. Now that time was called the …when the government was forbidden to have all private stores or factories, there were no big factories, but anyway anything private there was not. They started to take away and they with the net (sp?) you know for analyzing the whole business. They tried to establish a state they called Birobidzhan. I remember a few families went down. They went there and some come back too. And I believe that even today there are a lot of Jews in Birobidzhan.

NM: Did you get any kind of a, if not a Jewish education because of the Russian philosophy against religion, did you get any kind of a public school education at all?

PK: Yes, I did. I have a public school education. Not in Jewish. In the Ukraine there was school, the same thing like all the same thing, mathematics, arithmetic, the same thing.

NM: I asked you about the fact that you recall is whether there was any anti-Semitism that existed in your particular community. Could you tell us what, if any, anti-Semitism did take place in your town, and the type of anti-Semitism it was.

PK: Well, the anti-Semitism was just in the public. I mean, I don’t think at that time the government didn’t show any kind of anti-Semitism, at that time. The anti-Semitism started really after the war, the Second War. There was naturally, there was always, the Ukrainian people are anti-Semitic, very anti-Semitic. They call you dirty Jew or whatever, you know. It wasn’t a serious thing.

NM: There were no pogroms?

PK: No, not for my time, not for my time, not for the Soviet Union.

NM: After your left school I think you told that about the age 13 you started to study to be a barber, was that accurate?

PK: You see, my cousin was a barber, and I really did, I helped him a little bit, and then took a job. I was managing a barber shop for the military, military outfit.. And somehow this general liked me very much. He sent me to a school and I went to the school. And somehow I don’t know how they took me out. I wasn’t a sick man and they put me in a

NM: Until World War II. After you left this military school, how old were about then? About 15?

PK: Oh no, no, no, I was older than that. I was in the twenties.

NM: At that time. You didn’t go back to barbering however. What did you try then?

PK: No. Well I had positions like, after I was out of this, they call it, I forget the name for it, it’s a manger of food, special food for the horses. And I worked over there and I worked ‘til really 1939, when they called me back into the Army. I went back into the Army. I went into the Western side of Ukraine then when they made a pact, when Hitler made a pact

NM: Pact.

PK: With Stalin, that was the pact, they attacked, they attacked homes. When the Germans attacked the Russians come in and took away. The eastern side was Poland, the Western side was the Ukraine. I and come in 1939.

NM: And you.

PK: I was there in the service a few months. I went out of service and I took a job in the petroleum industry. It was the country of …

NM: That is the town, by the way

PK: That is the town where I would come in, and I lived there, worked there in this kind of jobs.

NM: Now that was 1941. What happened.

PK: That was 1939.

NM: ’39.

PK: 1939 to 1941.

NM: What happened when Hitler attacked Russia? Where were you at that time?

PK: That time I was in … naturally. I worked in this place. Now, I had a letter. It was sealed, completely sealed. Nobody could open the letter, not even myself. But I like to say I was the boss of this place. Then when the war started I opened the letter and there were all kinds of directions over there, directives. And the letter was telling you to whom to give the rations, you know, all this was rationing. The petroleum whatever, the kerosene, the colmasene (sp?), the gasolines and all kinds of stuff was rationing. You never could get, you come in and buy it. There was rations for this organization, for that organization. At that time there was special for the military. Now in this letter was saying in times of war to get right away with the draft board. Then I called the draft board and they say wait ‘til we give you orders and tell you what to do. Gotta wait ‘til today. (Laughing)

NM: That’s familiar. Well, how long did it take the Germans to conquer the town, Peter?

PK: Limawalinsk (sp?) is located. Debuk (sp?) is ten kilometers away from Limawalinsk (sp?). It took the Germans not more than about 24 hours when they come into the city. They started out the war in 1941, the 22nd of June. The Germans started to attack the Russians. Now the Russians tried to beat them back but they couldn’t do it and on the second day, they started up on a Sunday and Monday we had the Germans already.

NM: What happened to the Jews when the Germans got there? As best you recall.

PK: When the Germans come in they not particular right away started with the Jews. Not to scare the public, the public of the city. They took out the first young people with Ukrainians, Poles and Jews. They took ‘em out, took ‘em away a couple of kilometers away from the city and they shot them there. And then they started. And then there was the Feld (sp?) marshall or whatever you call it. They was there for two weeks and after two weeks they took over the … police, and they started it. After two months after the Germans come in they called out people, you know, like a Rabbi, what was his name, let me take a look, Rabbi Morgenstern. Morgenstern took over with other people like doctors, lawyers and something like it, and they became the Judenrat. Judenrat means they were like you say they really have connections with the Germans. The Germans didn’t come in directly to talk to any Jew, you know. Morgenstern, Rabbi Morgenstern, he was a very, very nice gentleman, and he could see all the killings, and all the sufferings of his people, and two months later he died. Just for that – aggravation. It’s the truth.

NM: Did they establish at that time a ghetto for the Jews?

PK: Not yet, not yet. They were there, the ghetto they started out this month, in 1942. In 1942 the ghetto started out. All the Jews, there was two ghettos really. When they started out the ghettos there was two ghettos. One ghetto was …people. The other ghetto was for the trades people, all kinds of shoemakers and tailors and blacksmiths. Everything was in a smaller ghetto. They were called … They thought these people wouldn’t be touched, in other words. But that wasn’t true. Well, the first program when they started out was the 1st of September, 1942. They attacked at twelve o’clock or 1:00 o’clock in the afternoon they attacked the first ghetto and then they surrounded the other ghetto and killed them. Now what happened is, the police, most of the Ukrainian police, you have to have in mind the chairmen, the Ukraine was more anti-Semitic than the Germans themselves. NM: Were the Jews, Peter, during that time required to wear any special clothing to identify themselves as Jews?

PK: Yes, before even the ghetto. Before the ghetto was the Jew had to have. It was white and blue. Later on they put on a yellow star in the front and the back to recognize the Jew if he was in the city. Before they got even started they know the difference between the Jew and the non-Jew.

NM: You had mentioned that the pogrom took place in Vladimir in 1942. They didn’t kill the people right in the town. Did they take them out ?

PK: I’ll explain how this happen. Now like I said, like I mention before the first pogrom started out the 1st of September, 1942. They surrounded the ghetto with the police, with the Ukrainian police. There was the Russian … the Russians that really went over to the Germans, worked together with the Germans, and the Gestapo surrounded the ghettoes. They went in, took these people out, took these people on trucks, brought them out of the city, I don’t know exactly how many kilometers away from the city. The ditches was already prepared, they undressed them, shoot ‘em and went back. That was going on for two weeks. In the two weeks they killed 18,000 people. In two weeks they slaughtered 18,000 people. Young, old, whatever.

NM: You had mentioned a Rabbi Morgenstern. I think you told me that the Jews had an organized government in the ghetto at that time. Do you recall telling me that?

PK: That’s what I meant. In the ghetto that was the Judenrat.

NM: Those were the ones that cooperated with the Germans.

PK: What do you mean cooperated?

NM: To stay alive.

PK: They tried to hold on, you know, to the whole thing, not to kill other people, but they couldn’t do it.

NM: How did you manage to escape when this killing went on?

PK: Well, after the first pogrom I and another 18 young people, we organized ourselves into … We run away to the forest. We were there, we made it …or something like it. We were there I would say approximately 6 weeks. We were attacked somehow, I don’t how they knew, and they killed about a half of us. Half run away, half kill of us. Really, if they would listen to the command, I was like you say the commander. The ... there he was editor of the paper ….was a very educated man, young fella, and he was the second one to me. Then we decided after that to just separate ourselves and everybody in his own way. I went away, I went away to the villages.

NM: What happened after these, when you said you went off by yourself, did you go back to the city again?

PK: Yes. I used to come in, I used to come in. After the first pogrom, the Germans come out and they say it never gonna happen again. That’s it, we’re finished. And they brought these people here to the smaller ghetto where it was really the working people were there, the trades people, and there was left over maybe about 4,000 people. NM: That was in 1943, right?

PK: 1942.

NM: Still in ’42.

PK: They have another pogrom. The first pogrom like I said before was in September ’42 and the next one, the 10th of November, see, another one, another one. And they killed approximately at that time another 3,000 people. You see, Beautiful community of a nice Jewish city. The city was counting between 17,000 and 18,000 people, and the ghetto was started and they was planning to kill all the Jews. They took the rest of all the people from the villages. I lot of people lived in small towns and villages and they brought all of them to the ghetto. A week, or really not even a week, a few days before that and the ghetto was counting at that time 24,000 Jews. The first action they killed 18,000 people. The second one they killed another 3,000 people. That left a few, maybe 500 people. A lot of people run away, other people like me, and other people would have some other Christian people who they know, they make some places for themselves. Later on they organize the last ghetto, the third ghetto and people started to come back. The ghetto was counting already before the third one, the last one.

NM: When did the Russians get back there? Did they get back there the following year in 1943?

PK: The Russians come in 1944.

NM: In ’44. Were you still around there when the Russians took over?

PK: Yep, I was myself hidden. I couldn’t. I had a lady, she know me before, I did some favors for her and I stayed there for nine months before the Russians come in. When the Russians come in they recognize me and they gave me back, not the same job but they gave me a job that was the Director, what you call it, District Manager of the food industry, all the meals. We were making flour, anything that goes into food was under my hand. And I worked that time ‘til I sneaked out of Russia.

NM: And that’s when you went to Poland? To live?

PK: That’s right, that’s right.

NM: What did you do there?

PK: In Poland I do nothing. I mean, I stayed, I was afraid, I was a little bit scared. Later on, you know how it is, you did a little bit of business.

NM: What is you said that you, I can imagine what kind of business, how were you able to get out of Poland and get to the United States?

PK: See, that time already these people, a lot of people would quit the concentration camps. People that’s left over from the ghetto start to come a little bit to Poland. And there was already at that time talking to Israel. You heard about the Americans having displaced camps.

NM: D.P. Camps.

PK: At that time I was in Poland I think a little better than a year, and then we made up some papers. It’s not real papers whatever, like Germans.

NM: And you then were in the D.P. Camp?

PK: D.P. Camp. Yes.

NM: By the way, where along that line did you meet your lovely wife?

PK: In the …

NM: In the … One of the things you told me considerably while in the barbershop was your testimony later on at the trials that took place in Europe. Would you tell us a little about how you, the Germans contacted you to give testimony, is that it?

PK: Yes. I got a letter, it wasn’t a letter, it was really a summons for me and my lovely wife, as you say, we had a summons to go to a tribunal, it was called a tribunal. The tribunal was really for ten people. What happened is, they tried these people not for the old pogroms that happened, just for the last ghetto, for the last ghetto. These people called it a Zobikommandur (sp?), it’s a special commander, a special group, they used to when the Russians started to push them back, to kill all the Jews up, whatever left over to kill them up. Now, these people were doing the last pogrom, I think he was named. Gunther, his name was Gunther Hillman. He was the commander of these people and they were trialed in Germany.

NM: How did they know that you knew him? I think one of the things you told me that very few of the Jews got to see who the German officers were.

PK: This already down by the German …Somehow they find out what I understand, what somebody told me, somebody, the chauffeur himself, who used to drive him around, come into the police, tell them all the stories and somehow they find out and they arrested him. And they made a trial, you know. It was terrible.

NM: You testified at that trial. Could you tell us what they tried to do. You explained to me that they made it seem as if the Germans were really defending themselves against the Jewish attackers in the ghetto. Would you tell us a little about that, Peter?

PK: That’s naturally as a lawyer like to protect his client like you say. He would try to make witnesses like they liars, or they don’t remember. What did people talk about. It was a long time ago, it was taking maybe twenty five years in this last pogrom when the Germans were there. One thing, he ask me a question, he says to me “Mr. Korduner, there was all kinds of radios. I didn’t know if it was their radios or transmitters. Then he asks me another question, he said to me “Did you have any weapons?” Now I realize that what he thought, what he really wants to do is to prove that the Jew were really didn’t behave themselves, they just wanted to fight the Germans, that’s why they killed out the ghetto, the lawyer tried to do that. I said to him “No, not for my knowledge, that I remember people would have weapons in the ghetto. He said “Mr. Korduner, you had two pistols yourself. How come you said there’s no weapons in the ghetto?” Then I said with the permission of the court I would like to explain what weapons means to me. Weapons, like machine guns, grenads

NM: Grenades.

PK: Grenades. Big stuff. The lawyer didn’t ask me a question if I had pistols. He asked me if it was in the ghetto. He said “What you try to do, to fight the Germans?” I said (chuckling) “To fight the Germans? The Germans was all over the whole world with the German Army, and I had two pistols that could barely kill a fly on the wall, you want me to fight the Germans?” So there was a laugh over there. No, they were trying, naturally trying, a lawyer tries to protect his client.

NM: Were you able to still identify that commander of the troops even after that period?

PK: I don’t think so, I don’t think so. I point at him, I thought I know, I told them in court that I cannot recognize him, if my memory’s good enough, well I remember this man, well really I didn’t remember him, I say him once walking by in the ghetto before the pogrom. I point to this guy and I say “It looks to me it’s the man.” I really didn’t recognize him.

NM: Was he found guilty, do you know at all?

PK: No, I don’t know what happened that time. I think somebody told me later on that he got ten, twenty years jail.

NM: You had mentioned to me also that you had been asked to go back again. Is that also to the same place to testify?

PK: No, I was not asked. The witnesses that were in the first trial had a letter, a different letter…I mean, he was the Commissar. Now he was caught. They know about him. I think he’s in jail, and they’re gonna try him. And I have idea they gonna call me, you see.

NM: Well, did you know him at all?

PK: Yup…Him I know more than Gunther.

NM: As you know there’s a lot of discussion going on in Germany relative to letting the statue of limitations run out regarding the Nazis who perpetrated these things. You have any particular feelings on this matter? Do you think it should be allowed to?

PK: Well, my opinion, I think it should go in. I think it should go on. A man did some things, murdering and things like that, you should be tried. That’s my opinion.

NM: And one last question. As you probably know they played the movie “Holocaust in Germany” as a TV program, and it created a lot of anxiety among the Germans, many of whom wanted to forget whatever happened, others who felt that they should see it. Do you think that a parent should discuss things like this with his children? Or is it so bad that you feel it shouldn’t be discussed?

PK: You mean here in the United States, you mean?

NM: Regardless of where.

PK: They should. Anyone like myself, my children know about it. I always tell them about it. The whole story, what happened. And I think other parents, parents were they see movies, or they read about it, they should explain to the children. It could happen again, it could happen again. Do not kid ourselves. You live in nice country and a thin like that, thank God for that. I don’t where it could happen, it could happen.

NM: Peter, I want to thank you very much. There may be some people who have questions they’d like to ask Peter. Rabbi V… Rabbi V: I have no questions but I wondered

PK: Make a statement? Rabbi V: Where to Peter Korduner’s life story? In the synagogue we had guests from Russia, amongst them his sister who has come to visit peter and his wife, a very nice lady, Yiddish-speaking. I think she’s much older than you are.

PK: She’s younger. Rabbi V: Younger!

(General laughter)

NM: Life isn’t as pleasant over there, Rabbi

Rabbi V: What?

NM: The life isn’t as pleasant over there.

Rabbi V: She speaks a good Yiddish, real, literally Yiddish. She called over on the to the side after we have the processional and the celebration for with the Torah and she says “I’d like to have a word with you”. She calls me over to the side and says “I have a son here that has come and has lived here in Hartford for about a year or so, at that time, right? Married, with two children. And I’d love to ask you a favor.” I didn’t know what she wanted. I couldn’t imagine what she would ask of me. She said she would like to have her son married in Yiddish with his wife with whom, he’d lived fifteen years, married in Russia, have two children, would like to have in Yiddish with a chuppah. I said “Why not, of course!” And the Korduners plus their family prepared the wedding at our synagogue and we officiated according to the Jewish Law with minute details but by a short message to the couple I said, two things I said. First of all, “not only a marriage to each other but a marriage to the Jewish people from which they were separated, divorced for so many years”. It was a very emotional wedding. There was a bout a hundred people there, most of the Russian colony there. Secondly, I said “I t is unique to see a couple after fifteen years of married life with two children to want to be married to each other again. I don’t know anyone nowadays if after fifteen or twenty years whether like they would each other again or they would do it again, that the answer would be positive. And they said “Yes” to their children. It was a very real experience in my own life as a rabbi, and an experience of our historical times where Jews come from Russia without … without any education whatsoever, but some spark, some kind of voice in their blood demands, the couple themselves were crying, they wanted it. Why? But this is the Jewish people, it repeats again and again. This is not the first time. It happened in the time of the Moranos (sp?) during The Inquisition in Spain, … and in other periods of Jewish history, and we are living in unusual times. This is one of our experiences and it was a joy and a pleasure of Peter Korduner and his wife to see his nephew married by the rabbi, break a glass, the whole thing. PK: My nephew was raised by my mother and my mother was a very, very religious woman. He remembers some things…like the observance of all Jewish holidays. Naturally he didn’t have no Hebrew education. He couldn’t.

NM: I tell you one of the things Peter’s store seems to the headquarters, one of the headquarters for the Russian community because every time I’m up there, there are other Russians just come to the United States that are up there. One of the things I wanted to point out, this book that Mr. Korduner brought in was a memorial book of Ladimir Wallinsk (sp?), the city that he’s talking about published in Tel Aviv in Israel in 1962 to commemorate the town and it’s both in Hebrew and in Yiddish with a number of pictures of the people who lived there. Not just at the time of the war but prior to World War II and then into the period of the Holocuast. So they put it on record. I don’t know how many of the towns have done it, but at least this town has.

PK: This book goes back a couple of years back, how Ladimir Wallinsk (sp?) was built…Chassiddikim (sp?), you know what I mean, really religious people, and so forth and so forth..’til the destruction of the village.

NM: Does anybody else have any questions? Yes. Female Audience Member: When you, in that segment, when you pointed to us that it could happen again, I am a senior citizen. What can we do to tell the generation in back of me or that followed me, how to avoid it? What do we Jews do?

PK: What I think, I think by explaining to the young people, to explain to the young people, we do a lot of good if God forbid, if God forbid something like that would come to it, you see. The people would know what to do. When we were in the ghetto that time we were, I would say, we couldn’t understand how a thing like that could happen. You see, we couldn’t understand, nobody understood that the Germans could come in and kill innocent people like that. NM: One of the ways is by what Rabbi V… showed before, by getting into t he schools, and not just into the Jewish schools, getting into the public schools, books on this. It’s very important that they study this period. Any other questions or comments? Peter, on behalf of the Jewish Historical Society I want to thank you for coming here and sharing this hour with us. Thank you again.

(Applause)

#200 2t, 2s, 60mins Interviewee: Kordunner, Peter Interviewer: Neil Macy Date: 4/4/1979 Place: HJCC JHSGH Holocaust commemorative meeting See publicity, Newsletter, etc. File