Korzenik, Joseph_1980/07/15,Oral History, July 15, 1980

Oral History – Joseph Korzenik Interviewed by Carol D. Schulz 7/15/1980

Tape One

CS: Today is July 15th, 1980. Hello, my name is Carol Schulz and I’m interviewing Mr. Josesh Korzenik. Joseph Korzenik, a survivor of the Holocaust, was born in southern Poland and during World War II was incarcerated in the Slum Town Ghetto… slave labor and concentration camps. The end of the Holocaust found him in Germany where he was liberated by the American Army. Upon his return to Poland he found that most of his family, including both parents and a sister, had perished during the Holocaust. In 1946 he arrived in the United States, the first Jewish Displaced Person to settle in Hartford. In Hartford he attended night schools, at Hartford High and Hillyer College, now the University of Hartford. In 1950 he married the former Ruth Spann with whom he has two children. In 1960 he was approved by the Chrysler Corporation as a Dodge dealer on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts. At present he is associated with Chase Enterprises of Hartford. He is a member of Arat (sp?)

JK: Lodge

CS: Lodge #13, B’nai Brith, Fogus Club of Greater Hartford, Hartford Jewish Community Center and it’s Y’am Hashua Committee. This taped interview will be placed in the Oral History Archive of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford to be used by students who research and study and to further the purposes of the Society. Mr. Korzenik will now tell us of his experiences.

JK: Thank you, Carol. I’d like to share with you my experiences as a Jewish teenager, from the age of 12 through 18, as I lived and suffered through those cruel 68 months in which, excuse me, in Poland and Germany, in which six million of my Jewish brethren were put to death.

During the Spanish Inquisition, the Jewish population in Spain was given a choice by Queen Isabella’s government, which in collaboration with the Roman Catholic Church decreed, that every Jew must convert to Catholicism or die in the flames of the bonfire, called the “auto-de-fe”. We were not so fortunate. During the days of our ancestors’ enslavement in ancient Egypt, Pharoah decreed that only Jewish male children be drowned in the Nile. Hitler and his henchmen embarked in a program of total annihilation of every Jewish man, woman and child. Even up to the 3rd generation, which meant that many people whose parents were children of converted grandparents, were still considered Jews, according to the Nuremberg Laws, in allowing for the purification of the master race and its Third Reich.

I cannot help but continue to ask “why”. Why was this group of decent human beings selected from almost all the nations and ethnic groups for such an ignominious fate. It boggles one’s imagination. Contemporary theologians still grapple with this mystery, thirty-four years after the so-called free world was shocked by the revelations and discovery of the death camps, with its dead and dying skeletons, of what once were vibrant, active, and creative humans. We shall never forget, that to one degree or another, this event more than any other has affected every Jew wherever he may reside anywhere in this world. Never again must we allow this to happen to any people. The perpetrators of this unbelievable crime of genocide were the German people who at that time were supposed to have been the most enlightened and educated people in all of Europe. It is not an easy subject to dwell on, but as much as it pains me, it must be told and retold. We, the survivors, are the living proof that indeed the Holocaust did happen. We hear of a university professor who published a book in which he proceeds to deny history, as though the inferno never occurred. Parenthetically, for money, some people will do anything. This in itself merits the retelling of the events of the greatest tragedy that befell my people. If we should fail to constantly remind the world, it will happen again. Many of our contemporaries, who survived the Holocaust, are still tormented by the memories. Many have tried to forget. Few have succeeded. When I was liberated in 1945, I did not want to live. I had nothing going for me at the time. I was also guilt ridden, “why me?” What about all the gifted individuals who could, and did, offer so much to the world. Why did I survive; why did they have to die? To cite an example of Jewish people in Germany before the Second World War, only one percent of the total German population was Jewish, yet twenty-five percent of all German Nobel Prize winners were Jews.

Now I’d like to put together on perspective the years 1939, or something, forty-one years ago, I was twelve years old and the youngest of three children. We lived in a small town in southern Poland, population approximately 8,000 inhabitants, of which approximately 50 percent were Jewish. The Jewish community was only Orthodox. At that time, in our part of Poland, we did not know of the Conservative or Reform Movements. There were six synagogues with many small, ultra-Orthodox prayer rooms. We were not a militant people; we lived by the Book. In ’39, the whole world of Laden (sp?) commerce stopped as preparations were being made to welcome the Sabbath. On the Sabbath, the same world stood still as we dedicated ourselves to prayer, and visiting relatives and friends. The youth of our community were, more and more, joining Zionist, Revisionist and Labor organizations. We were becoming fully aware of our need for a homeland and yearning one day to join the young people who had preceded us as Halitsin (sp?) in Palestine. The British who were occupying Palestine were not very generous with permits to allow us to enter the Promised Land. Therefore, most of our people risked their lives and smuggled themselves through the various countries until reaching their goal. Many never made it and some were placed in various jails en route.

In our town, we already had electricity in 1939. However, hot and cold running water was a luxury to be found in only about two percent of the dwellings. All the rest carried water in bucket s from the communal well. Radios were still a premium and possession of guns was against the law. Jewish youngsters were not allowed to belong to the Boy or Girl Scouts. The horse was still the main method of transportation. In our town there were perhaps half a dozen cars and trucks. On September 1, 1939 Germany invaded Poland. Within one week their troops occupied our town. Our family consisted of my parents, two sisters and myself. My oldest sister evacuated to the East with her fiancé and his family. The High Holidays that came shortly after that occupation, were observed in hiding, because the synagogues were destroyed, Torahs and prayer books burned, and worship forbidden. The Jew began to feel the oppressor’s bullet. Jewish children were not allowed to attend school that fall, or any other. Soon there were ten names of Jewish citizens posted on placards all over town. They were designated as hostages. In the event any harm should come to a German, the ten hostages would be executed. By doing this they assured themselves of complete submission by the Jews. Next came the law, that all Jews over the age of twelve, must wear the Star of David on the right arm of their outer garment at all times. Failure to do so was punishable by death. A schoolmate of mine was shot to death because he forgot to wear one, as were many others.

The German authorities had all able-bodied men and boys over the age of twelve register for work. In the beginning, each male Jew had to work for them three days each week in order to qualify for food rations. We were always hungry because there was not enough food to go around.. Little by little, they began the systematic encirclement of the Jew from the surrounding villages, by herding them into the Jewish section of our town, eventually the closed ghetto. There the Jew could be dealt with at will. Leaving the ghetto without a guard was punishable by death. Any Jew who did not have their working papers on hand risked the death penalty. There were only four to six Gestapo agents in our town but they terrorized the entire vicinity. To illustrate the caliber of these men, every morning they would go bird hunting, and they felt that the catch was too small, they would then proceed to kill Jews.

I worked for the German authorities almost all the time, for road building, for snow removal as well for removing the bodies of Jews killed from the Gestapo building area. Eventually I became a steady worker at the wood processing factory near our town. At first they used us only for loading of the freight cars. This was a terrible experience since the German in charge was a Sadist and used to sic his German Shepherd on us. Also the foreman used a whip to make us work faster. We were loading pre-fabricated barracks and hangars for the Russian Front. One day, while working in the yard piling boards to dry, a young Polish worker was bragging to me in how he took part in the mass burial of approximately 900 Jewish people in a neighboring town. He worked in a detail, especially trained, to assist the German killers in the massacre. He made a special point of telling me how quote: “some people were still alive when we covered them with earth” unquote. Men, women and children formed three lines, undressed completely and then were machine-gunned before being dropped into the pit. This knowledge I was afraid to divulge to my parents. However, it preyed on my mind. I can still recall the fear within me, the sleepless nights and the visions of mass executions. Those days in the ghetto were much more difficult to endure in the years ahead and the seven slave labor and concentration camps.

By August 1942, the order came for the Final Solution of the Jewish Question which meant that our area was to be really dry or free of Jews. With prompt dispatch the Gestapo, reinforced by all segments of police, embarked on a door-to-door search for all Jews. All those found in hiding were shot on the spot. Our home, which was located several houses from the Gestapo Headquarters, when we saw all the trucks with police converging on the Gestapo area, I then told my parents of the information I received from the Polish fellow at work. My father made the decision, and under cover of darkness, we slipped by the guards and crossed the bridge into the non-Jewish section of town where we hid in a hayloft of a barn. And when the two days and nights of killing the Jewish people was over we were still in the hayloft without food. When the hayloft was searched we hid deep in the hay. Luckily we were not noticed. Across the street a Jewish family was found and shot. On that Sunday morning, we came down and asked the man who came down to feed the horses what happened. He told us that a small group of Jews was allowed to remain in one of the streets. We joined the Sunday morning Christian worshippers going to church and proceeded to walk to that street. There were approximately 100 families left. They were the people who were used for various German conveniences such as tailors, shoemakers, glaziers and other craftsmen, also the leaders of the Jewish community and the Jewish police. They had received a special stamp on their work papers. While there, we found out that if one member gets this stamp he may retain his whole family.

I waited until the group I worked with came back in the evening. The head guard who was part of the group knew me since I did him a favor once. He volunteered to take my work papers to the Gestapo and get me the stamp, which he did. The next day I went to work. When I returned my family was taken away. I was told by a Jewish policeman that when the group my family was with approached the staging area there were Germans killing Jews and my father took my mother and sister away and ran into a nearby village. There was nobody who would hide them in the village although there were many people in that village who knew my father well, having served with him together in the First World War. There was no room at the inn. After walking endlessly for about a week they returned to the street, broken in spirit and lacking in strength. The following day after they returned, while at work I saw a group of people herded down the main road. When I returned from work I realized that they were my people. From then on I never saw my father, my mother, my second sister again. I found out after the war that they were shipped to an extermination camp where they perished.

Soon we were permanently incarcerated behind barbed wire in a barrack within the factory limits. Living quarters were not heated, drinking water was brought in a barrel drawn by a horse, latrines were of a temporary wooden rail-type outside privy. We worked from sunrise until late into the night. Before the transport of Jewish people left town I saw Germans kill infants by tossing them into the air and shooting them. After the liquidation of our ghetto, the remaining 60 members were all that was left from our community. By December, 1942 we were moved by truck to another lumber camp highs in the mountains near the Czechoslovakian border. After we arrived they lined us up for work assignments. In my condition I was last and I wound up in the kitchen as a helper. This was a break due to a terrible cold endured by the men working in the yard. In April of 1943 they moved us into the first concentration camp located inside an aircraft factory. When we arrived the inhabitants of this camp were getting over a typhoid epidemic. Many died. The survivors looked more dead than alive. Our group was placed in a separate barrack after being deloused in a special steam room. Inside the barrack the cockroaches were waiting for us. This camp was surrounded by light wire fence. Our first job was to work a few miles to the airfield and pitch with our bodies an airplane stuck in the mud off the runway.

Next we were trained to do sheetmetal work in the wing department. One day a group of our workers were executed for so-called sabotage. Eventually I was transferred to an airplane body assembly. While there, we were going through a siege of no solid food, only grass soup twice a day. The only meat we found in the soup were worms. After working twelve hours in the factory we were sent out to do field work around the airfield. One night during the night shift, as we were coming to the camp area for lunch, we saw many dead bodies lying along the road. We found out that somebody escaped. Soon we were tattooed on the right forearm with “KL”. In German it means “Konzentrationslager”, or concentration camp. Should we escape this would make it easier to be detected and apprehended. There were many executions for no known reason to us. Gestapo from the nearby city would come into the camp and we were lined up in the “truppenubungplatz”or parade ground. One of them would count to ten as he walked by the ranks. Each tenth prisoner would step forward into a circle form by submachine gun-toting Gestapo men. They would be then marched into the woods nearby where a pit had been dug. They were then shot and dropped into the pit.

Tragedy struck our group when one of the German civilians from the Accounting Office was doing some research in old ledgers and came across two hidden passports. The pictures on them were those of two brothers of a respectful family from our town. The names were fictitious, hiding their true identity. One of the brothers was our leader, a professor, who was also a Major in the Polish army. After the Gestapo were through torturing the younger brother he somehow implicated seven more from our group. All nine were executed the very same day. I will never forget the scene when they were marched off. One of the men participated in digging his own grave without realizing in the morning that he would be buried in it that afternoon. We must remember this is 1944, the fifth year into the war. We were getting more Polish young workers and I heard from one of them, quote: “Why do you fellows work so hard? They will make soap out of you”, unquote. Little did we realize what he saying was a reference to the Germans using human fat from the ovens and making from it soap. That was the soap we used to shower with.

For the most part there was no contact with the outside world. No mail; there was nobody left to write to us anyway. The stories and rumors that filtered through were of the nature that our people were resettled somewhere in the East. Not until the war was over did we accept the fact that the devastation was almost complete. We did not know about any annihilation camps at which rule infractions were punished. The prisoner would be tied to a low table with his bottom naked and exposed. Two camp policemen with whips would take turns lashing twenty-five times, sometimes more. A favorite and apparently amusing trick was to make the unfortunate count as he was being lashed. When he counted to five they would correct him and start back to two, and so on.

When the German Air Force began to use the airfield as a forward base we could see something was afoot. We observed twelve planes taking off but never the same ones were returning, always less. Also, several air raids on the factory at night. Without warning a trainload of empty freight cars arrived and we were loaded like cattle. After traveling a couple of days we arrived in a Polish salt mine. Below ground level was a factory in which we were supposed to make airplane parts. We found out from Polish workers sent there that on the night after we left the last camp there was a raid by partisans to free us, only they found the camp empty. In this salt mine camp the food was very good. For the first time we got a thick soup with many grubs. I remember one prisoner commenting, quote “Look! The spoon is standing”, unquote. This honeymoon lasted only several weeks. Again we were loaded into cattle cars. When the train stopped we smelled an awful odor, not knowing that we were on a siding in Auschwitz. The smell was from human flesh being burnt in the crematoriums, which we did not even know existed anywhere. Through the slits in the cars, we could see women prisoners in long striped uniforms with their heads shorn of all hair, working in the fields. They looked like zombies. After several hours the train backed out of the siding and the journey began.

After the war we learned what had taken place at the last stop. There was a battle between the stormtroopers, who wanted us gassed, and the German War Ministry, who needed us to build airplanes for the War Effort. We left Poland and crossed into Germany. The trip took about four days and we were not given even a glass of water. Those cattle cars were unreal, the stench unbearable, the uncertainty frightening. When we arrived at a stone quarry we were impressed that a tremendous sign arching over the entrance. It read “Work makes you free”. All around the camp on the outside perimeter we could see guards manning machine guns and inside also there were several rows of electrified wire. On the parade ground we were ordered to undress and leave all our belongings such as photographs, wallets, even belts. We were ushered into a very large shower room. After getting wet with cold water only, we were sent through a different door into quarantine. This was a camp within a camp. We walked completely naked for four days and nights. During that period, we were checked out by doctors who painted numbers on our foreheads and our backs, depending on our health fitness. Also we were completely shaved, prisoner numbers assigned. We ceased to have names.

Every morning we saw dead bodies piled outside the quarantined gates where a huge grate on hinges was used to drop those lifeless bodies directly into the ovens. This was supposed to be the only way out. On the fourth day we were processed for a transport. After an overnight train ride we arrived outside Nuremburg in a camp that had no drinking water at all. I remember because we drank from rain puddles. Most of the people had diarrhea. We were taken by train to a forest where we were first to dig tunnels in a mountain where artillery was in place. By working there, we were fortunate to be lodged in a local jail. Sanitary facilities were excellent. At one point two Russian prisoners escaped. The entire work detail was rushed under heavy guard to the base camp near Nuremburg. There we were supposed to be executed; however, while we expected the worst, they began to call out certain prisoner numbers. Nine was among those chosen. They loaded our group in a freight car and we found ourselves back in the main camp.

There, doing work assignments, I volunteered to do blueprint reading. I was assigned to work with a civilian German engineer. He was an ex-flier who was shot down. He was very good to me. My work consisted of selecting parts that could be reused from airplanes that were shot down. But then my engineer friend was transferred and my position of somewhat immunity was changed. The German corporal, a foreman, who was also a prisoner of war and belonged to a group of professional gangsters, he somehow relished the idea of taking jurisdiction over me. He assigned me to a penalty command. This new corporal was a deranged individual. The work consisted of all the dirty and rotten work. Not one that I know of survived this detail. I had to do something drastic in order to survive. My friend from the original sixty at that time was an orderly for a barrack leader. He intervened on my behalf. After six weeks I was relieved of this penalty command more dead than alive. One Sunday, after an air raid, we could see from the camp where, for the first time, we saw buildings blown up. The Jewish prisoners were quarantined in two barracks, not allowed to leave. After a couple of days, we were loaded into cattle cars and within a half hour the first air raid occurred on the transport. As the American planes were strafing our transport we could see parts of human bodies such as arms, legs, and the like flying with blood all over the place. Prisoners, as well as guards, were running to find hiding places. There, for the first time, I saw a dead German guard as well as several wounded ones. The Germans got another locomotive and we took off, destination unknown. During the night it became so uncomfortable that we were tossing people off our bodies because there was no room to curl up. When a German guard flashed a light and saw me pushing a man off me he made me stand the rest of the night. It was unbearable as I kept falling all over the people around me and I must have passed out. I was awakened by mans, noises of airplanes diving and firing; also the burning smoke from bullets entering the freight cars. Instinctively I threw myself into a corner until I realized that I was a sitting duck. Making my way to the door of the train, I remember a yellow nose where a firing plane heading directly at me. I must have blacked out again.

I awoke to the moans of the wounded and dying all around me. One of the critically wounded was a cousin of mine. He got a direct hit behind one leg, shattering the bone completely. He died shortly afterward from loss of blood. After we buried the dead the Germans formed us into columns of five abreast and marched us into the forest. We walked deep into the night when finally they made us lie down to rest in the isolated areas. The heat from our bodies melted the ice and we slept in water. During the march we were dropping like flies from lack of strength. Once you fell the Germans shot you as you lay. The road was strewn with bodies we left behind. We were being decimated with each passing day. We ate bark from trees and blades of grass. On the sixth day of the march, we were led to what appeared to be a churchyard, and for the first time given food which consisted of two boiled potatoes, and then marched again, in the pouring rain. And it rained all night. Our losses were staggering. The guards were shooting constantly. In the morning we noticed something was afoot because too many German officers with rucksacks on their backs were in the area. Now mind you, German officers never carried field packs. Shortly after a soldier on a motorcycle stopped in front of our our group and told the German leaders of our convoy that the woods were surrounded by the Americans. The message was quickly relayed to the rear. By now, there were more guards than prisoners and I decided to wait no longer. I ran away from the group. There was a lot of shooting but I kept on running until I reached a clearance. There was a plane circling around so I ran back, took cover and saw several of my buddies also hiding behind trees. After the pane left we ran into a field barn where plows and such were stored. There we remained until the hunger became so unbearable we decided to chance it and go to the village where we got some bread from a farmer. That night we slept in a barn with the cows. It was warm and comfortable. The following morning we saw tanks rolling by. One German exclaimed “The Americano!”, and the roads were filled with military equipment and also American soldiers. Not once did they stop to ask us who we were. We must have looked terrible in those pajama-striped outfits.

We came upon a group of American soldiers guarding a group of German prisoners of war. One of them spoke Polish. After questioning us he interpreted to other soldiers and one of the guards took off a submachine gun and handed it to me motioning to kill the Germans. I became very frightened and quickly returned it. To me the Americans were not real. I could not comprehend that the Germans, the German might, was being destroyed by a stronger power. The first three nights of liberation we spent sleeping in barns. There we felt secure. We could not fully appreciate the fact we were free. After almost six years of imprisonment our mental faculties were not human in the normal sense. I did not know right from wrong. The constant brainwashing of being told that every contact that we are subhuman, vermin, Jewish pigs, and us Jews, were at the bottom of the totem pole and every prisoner of any ethnic persuasion had the right to pick us, and they did. Survival of the fittest was a way of life. Actually, my dream was to survive the war, see Hitler and Germany destroyed, and then die.

The Holocaust deals with a human tragedy. By way of illustrating the enormity of what six million people represent I suggest the Civic Center in Hartford at an event having six thousand people attending for 600 evenings, never to come out. How much human suffering these people endured until the final human shame brought about their demise. The Holocaust deals with the final solution, or annihilation, of all the Jewish people under the German occupation. This did not happen five hundred years ago in Spain. This is contemporary history, just a short thirty-five years ago.

CS: At this point, I’d like to ask you a few questions. Uh, I’m interested in knowing what life was like before 1939.

JK: Well, I was a youngster, I was in school. We owned our own home. It was a four family home. My father was a butcher. My mother was helping my father in the store. That was our history just prior to the end of the war. Before that my mother had her own business as we children were growing up. My two older sisters who were both being educated in the gymnasium. By 1939 my older sister was already graduated with her diploma. My younger sister was still in school and I was, of course still in regular school. I was also going to three different schools prior to the outbreak of the war. I went to regular school in the morning, to … in the afternoon and in the evening I was learning Hebrew. However, my Hebrew was already advanced at that time so I was able to join which is called Yeshiva studies, from now on … to Jewish women. Basically our lives were fairly comfortable. In those days we didn’t have mortgages and we also owned a farm with some land that my aunt was living on and occupying. As far as our lifestyle I would say that, uh, it was comfortable, what you call middle class. We were not wealthy; we were not poverty stricken. As far as the environment was concerned there was a lot of anti-Semitism. You could feel this. I recall as a youngster in the very early beginnings I could remember there were always hostile acts on the part of the neighbors. There were also signs, like graffiti, on sidewalks, on fences, and the walls of houses, something to the effect “Jew, get out, Jew go to Palestine, Jew you’re not wanted”. So we were not kidding ourselves. We knew that we lived in a hostile environment but we live to, you grew to live with it and we managed very well.

As a youngster, I remember, that for me to get caught say on the street where there were mostly non-Jewish boys, I was in constant fear that I would get beaten up, which I was, on many occasions. But it was not just myself. Most of the Jewish boys had that to contend with. The Polish people in our area, by and large, I would say were unfriendly disposed to us. For me it was very difficult to strike up a true friendship with a Polish boy although our next door neighbors were not Jewish and we got along well but I would never consider them friends. They’re just neighbors and that’s that. I would say that we used to extend the courtesies of saying good morning, and hello and goodbye but that’s as far, I would say, as it went. Those were nice people. In school the Jewish boys always had to more or less defend themselves because they were being picked on by the non-Jewish boys. And that was a style of living that we were used to. I mentioned in my prepared text about the Boy Scout situation.

CS: Hmm.

JK: I never realized that Boy Scout was international. I always thought it was a Polish movement and it’s strictly for Polish, Christian boys and girls but not for Jews. We were also aware of the institutions of higher learning that had the bench ghetto instituted and most of our Jewish students who went for professional study, as a rule, got their degrees and diplomas outside of Poland. My own brother-in-law studied medicine in Italy and a cousin of mine studied law in Austria. So all around me, if I remember correctly, the majority of the professionals were actually educated outside of Poland.

CS: Can I ask why they stayed in Poland?

JK: That always reminds you of the answer by “Fiddler on the Roof”. Because we were comfortable, in spite of all of these outward appearances of discrimination, we felt comfortable. It was our home, we developed a certain style of life and we had a large family which lived in that area. In fact my mother had seven or eight sisters and brothers living right there in the same town. My father had a like number. But then my father’s family the majority had moved to the United States. That included my father’s mother, three of his sisters and two of his brothers.

CS: He didn’t want to come here?

JK: No, no, my father did not want to come. At one time my father did have papers to come to America and he went to Warsaw, where the consulate was, and when he went to synagogue that evening he heard some people talk about the life in America. And he was a very religious man and he learned from those people that life in America that religion somehow takes a back seat and he felt that he would not like to trade his life. He came back home and gave the papers to an uncle of his and I understand that this uncle lived in Chicago for quite a long time and, in 1939, came home to visit his children and he was caught in the war. And on January 3, 1942 he was shot in front of my eyes as he was coming to our home on the Sabbath, to eat the Sabbath meal with whatever little we had.

CS: Did you see yourself, or did your family see itself as Polish people, or part of the nationality of that country?

JK: I would say yes. Yes, that we considered ourselves Polish citizens. Both my parents spoke Polish, both read and wrote and read in Polish. We all went to Polish schools, and, uh, I would say that we considered ourselves very much as Polish citizens. However, there was always the pre-eminence of being very much aware of being Jewish. First of all, through our own belief and dedication, and we were totally Orthodox, all our holidays were observed and I would say that most of the tenets were adhered to quite strictly.

CS: Was the orthodoxy Hassidic or was it different?

JK: Well, there is five degrees of orthodoxy. Hassidism is the ultimate orthodoxy which bars almost on the fanatic. Now even though my father’s garb on the holidays and the Sabbath were similar to those of the Hassidim, I don’t think that my father was a natural Hassid. Understand that he was not as fanatic. He was studying the Bible continuously and I recall when we were travelling on the road when the evening would come around he would stop the horse and wagon, get off the wagon to pray, and both prayers the … So regardless where he was he always prayed. And this is the kind of background I grew up in and I felt very comfortable in it. Of course, because I was getting a little bit older I joined the Zionist organization because both of my sisters belonged. However, in my case, I did it surreptitiously because my parents would not have allowed me to join the Zionist organization. And there I learned quite a bit about the new movement and about Palestine and about our answer to the contemporary problem that prevailed, that even though our parents were used to it, we somehow were being indoctrinated this is not the ultimate and that the ultimate goal really is to go to Palestine and build a homeland.

CS: Why did your parents disapprove?

JK: Because our parents were believers of the Bible and as far as I can deduce they did not really approve of the free traveling to Palestine to settle. It was the Messianic vision somehow was in back of their minds, I guess.

CS: Isn’t that a Hassidic view?

JK: It is too, yes but it’s the Orthodox.

CS: Uh

JK: So I would imagine this would be one of the reasons that they would perhaps not approve that, you know, that I would join this Zionist movement. I was a kid really and yet I was being imbued with a tremendous heritage.

CS: Do you think that they were afraid you might run away?

JK: Possibly, since I was the only boy in the family. Now in a Jewish family, you have to have a boy to say Kaddish and being Orthodox only boys are allowed to say the prayer for the dead. Yes, this might be one of the reasons.

CS: You talked about the fact that you couldn’t join the Boy Scouts. Was that a government law or Boy Scout law, and my second question, were there laws against, were there anti-Semitic laws or was this just a feeling of the people?

JK: No, this was actually in our area. I can’t speak for the entire Poland. So therefore when you ask me this question in such a way I do not really know if this was an edict from the government, which I doubt. I would say it was more a regional ruling that they did not accept Jewish kids to join the regular Boy or Girl Scouts. However, I would get quite a bit of this similar type of education within the Zionist organization. So I used to go through most of the …To this day I remember the Morse code, by heart.

CS: (chuckle)

JK: This is strange because I was just a youngster and here I am fifty-one years old and I still remember the Morse code. That is how it was embedded in me, that we had to excel, that we had to be even better, let’s say, than the other, so-called regular Boy Scouts.

CS: (laughing). Were there Polish laws that prevented Jews from entering certain professions?

JK: Directly no, indirectly yes. And I say that, indirectly, and that is because the various universities they had, they owned edicts.

CS: Um, hmm

JK: Now officially Poland was a democracy but unofficially it was the furthest from a democracy. I mentioned to you earlier the bench ghetto. The bench ghetto is one of the most cruel ways of educating for the student who happens to be sitting in that last bench and for the other students who are privileged to sit up front.

CS: Could you explain what “bench ghetto” means? I have an idea, but

JK: The bench ghetto, the way I understood it, or still understand it, is that the Jewish student to begin with he would have to be excelling in most of the subjects. He’d have to be above and beyond, head-and-shoulder over the so-called admittance norm and then once he was accepted and admitted to a university he or she would then sit against the wall at the back of the lecture room. Now, there could be several hundred chairs between the last student and the Jewish student sitting at the back against the wall. When in effect what it was, it’s a mocking or ridiculing way of segregating this student within a learning facility. I feel this is extremely cruel.

CS: Hmm. I have another question. Anti-Semitism was prevalent and I’ve heard, in other interviews, people from Eastern Europe say that their parents, that this was just one more phase of the anti-Semitism when the Nazis came in and that perhaps this just, would end just as the others had and things wouldn’t be too terrible. Do you think that that’s partly why people didn’t leave earlier or panic earlier, or do something to stop it?

JK: I can speak as it relates to our own experience and I recall when the war broke out on that September 1, that people started to panic and the evacuation began to the East. The East was away from the oncoming Germans from the West, and my father felt at that time, that should we leave our home, get caught in the panic evacuation feeling, we would have nothing to come back home to, because he was equating it with his own experiences during the First World War when he was with the Austrian Army, and when ever they invaded an area, they conquered an area, the homes that were occupied they left the people alone, the homes that were empty naturally they were occupied by the soldiers. They would ransack it and vandalize it and the people had nothing to come home to after that. So my father felt that somehow it would be folly to try to outrun an organized, mechanized army and if it had to be, he wanted to be in his own home. He did not want to be in somebody else’s field or somebody else’s backyard.

CS: Um, hmm.

JK: He did not want to expose us to this kind of a discomfort. Now, as far as anti-Semitism is concerned, my father felt quite comfortable and quite secure among the non-Jewish peasants where he grew up, in the village that I talked about before. Now this was quite a shock to my father that when he needed them at that particular time they would not offer him shelter. Not only in their own homes, which I can understand, too, because they feared that should for some reason my family be found, they themselves would be at risk for their lives because the Germans had an edict that anybody who harbors Jews is subject to the death penalty.

CS: Um, hmm.

JK: However, they could have allowed my family to hide in the fields. This was around harvest time.

CS: Um, hmm.

JK: So, my people could have hidden out in the fields during that time or in the small forest, and perhaps have gotten some food from these people. But it wasn’t forthcoming, these people were just, they didn’t turn my parents in, but they just pleaded for them to go away. And that was traumatic, I would say to say the least, for my father in particular because he grew up with these people, and in the First World War when they served together in the Austrian Army that they had a system that people from the same area would stay in the same company. So this way they would be familiar with each other in their own ways and customs. And my father has developed tremendous friendships with these people though the years because I remember, as a youngster, as I was growing up in that area, and if I for some reason if I had been caught in the rain or the snow or whatever the elements were, these people always welcomed me, take me in their homes, dried my clothes, feed me and treat as though I were part of their own family.

CS: Um, hmm.

JK: So, in that particular area, I did not find anti-Semitism directly affecting me, even though I knew that most of these people were not friendly-disposed to the Jews. Now this is an area, that again, is for, an American in particular it is difficult, I think, to understand. I couldn’t understand it myself for the longest time either but people who lived in our area were predominantly Roman Catholic, and in the peasant stock, by and large, was illiterate. Most of their religious upbringing, religious education came from the Church. Whatever they heard that was preached in the pulpit that was their belief. There was no source of knowledge, and the Church was not friendly-disposed to the Jews. As a matter of fact, they looked at us as though we were the Infidels because we never recognized Christ and, I imagine this had something to do with the Roman Catholics not willing to help the Jew because somehow when they saw the liquidation of the Jew perhaps in his own interpretation he was doing, helping doing God’s work

CS: Uh, German Jews that I’ve interviewed said that they felt non-Jews didn’t do anything to help because of apathy. It sounds to me like more fear, too, of the Germans.

JK: Yes.

CS: Do you think that in addition to

JK: Yes.

CS: Thinking that it wasn’t really a bad thing, that they were really afraid.

JK: Yes, yes, the Germans did have the Polish population very much in fear as well. However, I do know of instances where people, in spite of living under the same edict, under the same threat, for economic remunerations did hide people. Now we have people who survived, Jewish people survived in hiding in Poland, I would say the majority who did survive were kept because of promises of payment, I think, property turned over to them, or a better future after the war.

CS: Um, hmm.

JK: That these Jewish people would provide for them if they seem them through, which, in many cases, that’s, that is what happened. Now myself, as I look back, I find, that where I found myself in, I could not find people who would help me for the sake of saving a life. I honestly cannot say that I have come across people who would. Of course, some of it was fear, as you said but I’m almost immediately saying that some of the people, for money, risked that fear.

CS: Yeah, right. Um, now my last question involving the Holocaust is, it’s kind of a difficult question I guess, I want to know who you blame. Is it the Germans, is it the Polish who let it happen, or how about American Jews who, I find, did nothing?

JK: Through the years I have gotten myself very much immersed in trying to figure out this dilemma. I somehow go back to the first Pope, Constantine, who had a problem. First of all, he was a Roman and his headquarters was in Rome. The people who killed Jesus were Romans. He had to find a scapegoat so he blamed the Jews of killing Jesus. Yet the whole world and history knows that Judea was occupied by the Romans at that time. Crucifixion was a Roman method of killing because Pontius Pilate, who was the emperor, and yet for Constantine it was convenient to blame the Jews because they did not accept Jesus as the Messiah. This continued on into Spain, that I mentioned before, with The Inquisition, when Isabella was a Roman Catholic, she was very much influenced by the Church, and we had the Crusaders, and as I look back, Hitler to me was a coward. Nowhere has it been written or documented he killed anybody but yet through his flaming oratory he was able to really inflame the dormant passions of hatred amongst the people, the Christians. But, I’m also found in a quandary. In Denmark, the Christians were Protestants, from what I understand, under King Christian, saved something like twenty-five percent of the Jewish population. Yet, several hundred kilometers to the East the opposite was true.

CS: Um, hmm.

JK: Over ninety-five thousand, over ninety-five percent were destroyed. So, why would one group of Christians think of Jewish People one way and the other group in a different way. Of course, in Denmark the king was the one who led the way. Poland did not have a king to set the tone. But, I’ve been trying to question it that whatever king did have some kind of patriarch or some leader or some great goal that the people would follow would take it upon himself to speak on behalf of the Jews. I doubt that very much.

CS: Um, hmm.

JK: So, my feeling is, that it was the Church that I blame for having fed the poisonous venom into the people, pushing into the people’s veins. Now this is ironic. I still am in contact with Polish people who come to this country, less so now than in previous years. But I find that these people still hate and when I start to make an analogy I say to my self they were taught to hate as children. Now hatred you cannot turn it off, on and off, like a radio. Once it courses through your veins, it becomes part of the person’s makeup.

CS: Um, hmm.

JK: But there are no more Jews to hate in Poland, so they hate each other.

CS: Hmm.

JK: That’s strange. It’s just an observation on my part and I can’t help but. This, these people live in a way of life where a child could turn in a parent, a neighbor, a relative, it’s just unbelievable. That’s the way of life these people have continued.

CS: Hmm. Uh, I still have one more question. Are you still a religious man?

JK: No. I do have a Kosher home but that’s primarily due to my wife’s, my wife is religious, my children are. I go to the synagogue on the High Holidays but that’s more out of nostalgia than actual commitment. Strange, after attending Talmud class every week.

CS: (Chuckle)

JK: I would say that I like to adhere to the Ten Commandments in most of my, uh, conduct, I would say I’m pretty close to observing all ten. But to say that I’m enamored with god as I learned as a youngster, I can’t. There is something that happened to me that day I saw the infants being killed. That’s something that stays with me. I’ve questioned and I’ve never been able to get the answer. I also ask the question: we as youngsters were taught that the Messiah would come and there would be good people believing in God, worshipping God, being good to one another and I live in a society that, through a child’s eyes, I felt was really getting close to achieving at their level and that real life those kind of people were destroyed. Yet I see people who live in this world, lead good lives the furthest away from God, couldn’t care whether they learn anything about the Bible, or rituals, the goodness that religion offers. I truly believe in God yet these other people who were spared, these are the people who are given an opportunity to enjoy the earthly blessings, in a society that wrapped itself in worshipping God and believing and trying to do God’s bidding and His will, it’s terribly destroying us, just terrible.

CS: Um, hmm. How did you get to the United States?

JK: Well, after the, uh, after I was liberated, I used to have nightmares and my older sister would come in my dreams. She was the only one that I would see in my dreams. And one day I realized that I had to go back to my hometown in Poland. This was in Germany, by the way.

CS: Um, hmm.

JK: And, uh, I felt I had to go back to Poland to find out once and for all who survived. In those days they were very, at normal times, there was no communication, lines were altered really, Germany was just conquered and it was a very abnormal life. And so I decided one day to go back to Poland.

Tape Two

CS: You were saying that, uh, you decided to go back to Poland.

JK: Yeah, when I arrived in my home town there was a letter from my sister waiting there which is addressed to the Jewish community, some Jewish community there, there were about eight or nine people there. And in that letter it stated, more or less, to whom it may concern, whoever survived, to know that she has survived and that she lives now in Palestine, having also giving her address. So, at least I knew that my mission was worthwhile and I accomplished what I set out to do, at least this one sister was alive. And, uh, while there, I also found out that my brother-in-law, that same sister’s husband, also survived and he was in Germany. As I mentioned earlier he is a doctor and he was already working in a hospital in Munich at that time. So when I came back home, oh, yeah, something else also took place. Prior to my leaving, while I was working for the American Army, my job was working in a club waiting on tables, and one evening one of the soldiers asked me if I had any relatives in America. And I told him yes, as far as I can remember, there were some relatives living in a town by the name of Hartford. And he said to me that’s very interesting ‘cause he is from Springfield which is a nearby city and he’d like very much to write to the Hartford Red Cross, which he did, and I forgot all about it.

When I came back from Poland there was a letter waiting for me from a cousin of mine from Hartford. In it she wrote that she’d like very much to adopt me so I’d be able to come to America. I did not want to go to America. I did not want to go anywhere really. At that time I was still very much bewildered and, uh, and very much discouraged with life and discouraged with being alive or I said nothing, nothing of interest that would motivate me to want to really to want to live, or to establish myself in any way. Once I established communication with my sister, she in turn also had communicated that I had relatives in America, and she advised me I should go to America the first opportunity I had so in order to further my education. She felt that in Palestine at that time it would have been very difficult to get any kind of an education and she felt that the war years were enough; it was time for me to start a new life. And this cousin in America had a friend who was working with the U.S. military government and he came to visit me in Frankfurt and he introduced me to the Vice Consul although at that time I was still pretty mature but we set, more or less, the stage for should there be any kind of change in American law, because as far as the quota was concerned it was totally over-subscribed. And shortly thereafter there was a special law passed in the United States under President Truman which allowed 500,000 so-called DPs to enter the United States outside of the quota. And that is the way I came. I came on the 3rd boat that left Germany and I arrived in the United States on June 24, 1946.

CS: Did you have any problems when you got here?

JK: Yes. I would say that the first year was very difficult, a very difficult year to get adjusted and acclimated. I felt very uncomfortable in this so-called normal society. It was just too good to be true and I just couldn’t understand it. I also felt that people, in the beginning, did not believe me, what I was saying that what happened to us in Europe. And, uh, I was very fortunate. My uncle took me to the beach for an entire summer, to Sound View, which is now Old Colony (?) and, uh, while there, I find that the people who talked behind my back, saying that I’m trying to impress them with stories of horror and this could have never happened, that’s not so. But this was a very strange phenomenon because there were already articles that had been written by Generals Eisenhower and, uh, Marshall and, uh, Bradley and the others who were leaders of the Allied Forces that conquered Europe. They themselves have liberated some of the concentration camps and they witnessed it with their own eyes and they wrote about their experiences. So at first, people asked me “was it really as bad as all that?”, and once I understood what they were saying I’d tell them “yes”. And some of them were really naïve and they would say to me “you think you had it bad, we had rations in this country who had butter like two times a week, and meat two times a week. And it was very difficult for me to converse with these people on the same level, on the same plane. How do you explain to people that for so many years you haven’t seen milk, or an egg, or butter?

CS: Um, hmm.

JK: So, that was really a very difficult period from the standpoint of trying to get used to a people that are supposed to be educated, supposed to be enlightened and yet very primitive.

CS: Yes.

JK: as far as knowledge, world knowledge. But after that first year things began to be easier. And as you see I’ve made a quite a nice life for myself and a nice family. And of course my wife has been the greatest thing that happened to me.

CS: (Chuckle)

JK: It really gave me an opportunity to become a human being. I’m grateful to her for it.

CS: It’s nice to hear things like that. Well, thank you very much for an incredible interview.

JK: Thank you very much for coming.

CS: I’m sure that the historical society will “kagheda” (sp?) _____

CS: This is Carol Schultz, it’s, uh, July 15, 1980. I have just completed an interview with Joseph Korzenik for the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford. Okay, um, I have one more question I’d like to ask you. I asked you about your feelings toward the Germans and basically who you felt was responsible for all this but I’d like to know how you feel about the Germans today.

JK: Well, first of all, I do not hate the Germans. But for this matter I don’t hate anybody. I don’t believe in hate. I feel that hate is a counterproductive emotion. A person does the hating is the one who really suffers much more so than the hated. So I feel it would be foolish for me to hate the Germans. I find that the new generation of Germans is quite aware of what their ancestors have done. From what I understand in Germany, more German students have learned about the Holocaust than students in any other country. For quite a while there, there was a law in Germany, from what I understand, that sixty-five hours of Holocaust education was compulsory. I think only recently they have reduced it, I don’t know exactly to how many hours but if you look at Israel, Israel did not have compulsory Holocaust education at all. It was only recently that the Begin government, from what I understand, is instituting a change in the educational processes for the Israeli students. I think, uh, compelled to go to Yad Vashem and listen to lectures by Israelis on the topic of the Holocaust. And for the longest time, I would say until, I’m digressing a little bit.

CS: Um, hmm.

JK: until the picture of the Holocaust came about, it was not very fashionable to discuss about the Holocaust. Once the Holocaust movie came about, and the Holocaust movie really is not the story of the Holocaust. It is the story of one German Jewish family. It’s the history of the Weiss’, and that’s what the Weiss family. However, it is done very poignantly. So much so that an individual, that the free world, can relate. And because of the relating to this particular event many people were asking for additional information and because of that there are many schools that are allowing now courses on the Holocaust to be taught. And, this may be off the record, though, or whatever, in Hartford they are trying to, we have already set up a committee on Holocaust Awareness and hopefully we will start a center for study on Holocaust Awareness at the University of Hartford. What our aim really is, is to educate teachers who will in turn will educate their students. Now there are many inhumanities of man to man that will become part of this course. Now the Holocaust deals primarily with the annihilation of a people which were Jews but that this can happen to any group. In fact, since 1945, it has happened, in Biafra, in Angola, Cambodia, in the Soviet Union, you know, many other areas, in Uganda. So the world really has not learned. And in most of these uh, abominations that I’m discussing right now, Jews were not involved. Which means that we have to learn from the Holocaust, but unless we are vigilant and we try to prevent the Nazi Parties or the like from blossoming, we cannot disregard them. The cross-burning in the neighborhood may be an isolated incident but unless you address yourself to that and you show the people that this is wrong and you make sure that the youngsters primarily are aware that this is an evil deed, this way you’ll prevent it from mushrooming into something more evil.

CS: Um, hmm.

JK: But this is very important. We have to teach. We have to constantly make the world aware of what type of depravity man can really stoop to. This we have to stop.

CS: Um.