Silberman,Leo_1987/12/09,Oral History, December 9, 1987

Oral History - Leo Silberman Interviewer: Gloria Bein 12/9/87

GB: It is December 9th, 1987. This is Gloria Bein interviewing Leo Silberman at his home at 3 Nolan Drive in Bloomfield, Connecticut. Leo is a native of Poland who came to the United States in 1947 after spending some time in Germany and Canada. He subsequently was inducted into the United States Army serving in the Korean War Conflict.

Thank you, Leo Silberman, for sharing your life. This taped interview will be placed in the archives, the oral history archives, of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford to be used by students for research and study and to further the purposes of the Society. So now Leo, tell us first where you were born and a little about your childhood.

LS: My mother. It was terrible. It’s very hard to remind myself, you know. Even when I took out this week I start getting’ very upset, you know. I knew I going get upset.

GB: Well, you came from Poland.

LS: Yeah. I came from … in Poland and I lived there until the Germans come in.

GB: When were you

LS: The Russians came into Poland.

GB: When were you born, 19?

LS: Nineteen twenty eight. December 1928.

GB: December what?

LS: The thirteenth.

GB: The thirteenth. And you had how many sisters?

LS: Two sisters and four brothers. We were seven kids.

GB: Four brothers. And you want to give me their names, just for the record?

LS: Well, I, I

GB: Alright.

LS: I can give you the names but in Yiddish would be Moses, the oldest brother, and then would be Israel, and …

GB: Alright.

LS: See, I can’t talk. It’s gonna be tough, it’s gonna to be very tough.

GB: Unh, hunh. What did your parents do, your father did?

LS: He had a dairy mart, a dairy. He used to have like a small farm plus they used to bring in the milk.

GB: You had cows.

LS: Yeah, but we didn’t live from our cows. We have other farmers bring in more milk

GB: Oh, oh, oh.

LS: We had our own cows and the barn and, you know, whatever

GB: And where in Poland was this?

LS: It was in a small town outside of Shamish (sp?), Korzenice (Kor-je-neet-za) the place was.

GB: Korzenice

LS: K-o-r-z-e-n-i-c-e, Korzenice (Kor-je-neet-za)

GB: Um, hmm.

LS: But later, ‘cause we start getting older, my father didn’t want to live in a small town so we moved to the big city for the education.

GB: Oh, which

LS: Shamish (sp?)

GB: Oh, Shamish (sp?). And you went to school in Shamish (sp?)?

LS: Yeah, we went to school.

GB: What kind?

LS: We went to public school and then afternoons we went to … you know, this was the Jewish. From 8:00 to 2:00 to public school, from 3:00 to 6:00 or 7:00 to …, you know. And then everybody, so the father was like in the grocery business.

GB: Oh, your father went to grocery.

LS: Yeah, from the dairy to grocery, wholesale grocery, mixed wholesale and retail so he could give the kids a good education. And we lived there until 1939. Everybody was starting, everybody was going to school, you know. And in ’39 the war broke out and the Russians came in. So half of my city was occupied and there was a river, like East Hartford and Hartford, and one side the Russians took over and one side the Germans. We were on the Russian side so we got two more years freedom, you know? And we went to school also, but the school was also, the Russians they made school that any language you could have your own languages. If you were Jewish you could have Jewish school. If you were Polish, Ukraine. The first time in my life I could have the Jewish language for a main, what do you say,

GB: Primary language.

LS: Primary language. The teachers taught everything in Jewish, and these teachers came from Russia but some were taught in Poland. Like Math was taught in Jewish, would you believe it?

GB: That’s wonderful.

LS: Yeah, but the Russians, that’s the kind of system the Russians had at that time. For the Jews were very good except the very rich, the capitalist, they didn’t like that. So my grandparents and some of my uncles they were rich, they sent them out from Poland. They were sent like to Romania, they say. I mean that’s what we heard after the war, I mean during the war. Some of my grandparents and some of my uncles and aunts, you know. And in Romania we heard that the Romanians, the …, when the Germans come in they kill them automatically, all of them. All the Jews in Romania. On second thought, you see, when it comes to this, I get very mad.

GB: Mm, hmm. Mm, hmm. You’re doing fine. Alright, so what do you remember about being Jewish there? You were able to go to … Do you remember anything? Were the other people

LS: There was anti-Semitism.

GB: There was? Tell us. What do you remember about it?

LS: Well they treated Jew like a second class citizen. Even in school they make fun of the Jews. Everything you now was, we stood up for our rights, you know. Especially us, we were a big family of brothers. We had to fight for our rights.

GB: What do you mean by standing up and fighting?

LS: Well, they could call you Jew or whatever, you know. So we had to fight for it. Otherwise you just gave in and they didn’t have respect for you, so we stood up for our rights. We played with them, they were nice people, we lived together with the Polish and Ukrainians. But some were nice, just like all over the world; some were not so nice, you know? Some were anti-Semites and a Jew was a different breed or whatever, you know. And I remember, all this after religion because in public schools, where Jews and Polish together, you know, we had religion. So the Jews had to go to one side in one class and the Polish people another class. Always after the religion classes there was a lot of anti-Semitism, was always bad feeling, you know. I don’t know if they were taught something bad in the religion class but it was always bad feelings between the Christian kids, the Polish kids, and the Jewish kids. But we went to school and we play together. We play soccer, whatever. We were kids. And we spoke Polish outside and in the home we spoke Jewish, you know. That was our language. And in the … whatever we needed, you know, daven, whatever, you know.

GB: How did you observe the Judaism?

LS: We were very, very religious. We didn’t ride, we didn’t smoke, we observed all the holidays. We were not Hassidim but we were religious Jews, my father, you know.

GB: What kind of a person was your mother?

LS: …

GB: Um, hmm. What did she do, she raided her children?

LS: She raised seven children. She helped out. The dairy, you know, and the store.

GB: What happened in 1939, what changes came?

LS: When the Germans occupied Poland, the Germans took half Poland and the Russians took the other half Poland. It was not too bad under the Russians. Jews were respected, just like everybody else, you know. It was even wrong to be prejudiced one against the other. Everybody was equal. That was the Russian system at that time. We had a good two years. No more private business, everybody had to work for the government, the government. The government liquidated private business, private sectors. So my father was the only supporter of the family because my oldest brother stop working and my sister finished a technical school. So she did something. My brother finished high school, the eldest brother, and he was running a government store, a government grocery. He was the oldest brother, he directed the store. And he went to school. He just had the regular public school. The Jewish writing. We learned a different kind of writing, a Russian type of Jewish, you know, because the Yiddish writing was a completely different writing than the Russian type of Yiddish. The way they say, the way they write.

GB: Oh.

LS: You know, so we learned, and that’s the kind of Yiddish I’m writing now because those two years gave me a good experience in Jewish, you know.

GB: Um, hmm.

LS: And two years we were under the Russians and then the war broke out in 1941 and the Germans occupied the whole country of Poland plus they fought their way deep into Russia. Then we were occupied by the Germans. The first time when they come in they start grabbing young Jewish men. They grabbed my brother, my oldest brother, they send him to, we found out later they sent him to Limbek (sp?). It was a working camp. We had to go to work all of us: my father, my mother, my brother, my sister. And after a while they made a ghetto. And the ghetto leaves a little different ghetto than they talk about, barbed wires. They took us into one section of the town, they barbed wired, they painted the windows. We couldn’t look outside. The Gestapo, Polish police, Ukrainian police they watched us and we had to put on the armband and we had to go out to the city …

GB: Now explain the armband, to show that you were.

LS: The Jew. We had on the left hand a Star of David, a white Star of David we wore. We went to different groups for different jobs. Like I worked for a while in the klausen, that was the Germans brought in stuff from the war like a cleaning klausen, you know. Not the drycleaning, like something in the big truckfuls they used to bring in the clothes from the front and we used to sort them and clean them. Like my father used to work in the brick factory, you know. My sister had to work in other parts. I don’t remember. Everybody had a job, you now. They didn’t pay, a little something they gave us, a little bread and at night we used to come to the room they gave us in the ghetto. One room to nine people. It’s eight people because my brother was gone already at that time. They caught him the first time they walked in. And, uh, what happened, it was like they brought in more Jews from other towns, you know. This was the center form other small towns and before long the ghetto had forty thousand Jews. And there was nothing to eat, they were starving in the ghetto, you could see dead people laying in the streets and everything else. They didn’t give us any food, you know, and some people died and the kids, and there was disease. Typhoid fever broke out, you know and you couldn’t do nothing. And so they made smaller the ghetto. They took five thousand, ten thousand and they took them to, they say, …, to different camps. But it wasn’t true, they took them to the crematorium. The third time they start doing that they took my father, my mother, my brother. It was, what I say the third time?

GB: You said that every three months they decreased the figures, they sent them to work camps, they said. Did you know at that time that they were going to the crematorium?

LS: We didn’t know it but after we found out because they took me, my father, my mother, three brothers and a sister. One sister was left and one brother was left. So the rest of my family, one brother and sister was left. They had special papers, they could work. But us they took. And while I was in the train I escaped from the train.

GB: How did you do that?

LS: From the windows. My mother told me go and try to save your life, you know. People escaped, people with guts.

GB: Your mother was on the train with you?

LS: My mother, my brother, my father, my sister, my two brothers.

GB: What did your mother do?

LS: Where? On the train?

GB: On the train.

LS: She say in Yiddish, she say …, go and save your life. And I was a tough little kid and I listened, and I.

GB: So you jumped off the train?

LS: They had little windows. Some people could stand, some people were dying in the train, some people, so we opened the window and I jumped from the train out. Moving train. So that was wintertime. So what do you do? You, I mean, you’re a kid.

GB: How old were you then?

LS: Maybe thirteen or fourteen probably. So I, I went back, few days it took me, I was sleeping with the cows, what you call it, the

GB: Barns.

LS: Barns, and with the hay, and whatever, you know, like I spoke Russian, Ukrainian and Polish and I used to stop the farmers, they used to give me, not as a Jew. I could act like a Ukrainian kid, you know.

GB: You speak Ukrainian?

LS: Yeah, I speak Ukrainian, Polish, Russian. Finally I made it back to my …ghetto. It’s different to talk about it. …And I came back and there was not too many people in the ghetto. I don’t remember how many, how much, how many people there were left. And finally I came back and my sister and my brother were still there. Somehow I sneaked in, you know you have to sneak in back to the ghetto, you couldn’t go in if you didn’t have the passport to work. So I sneaked in and we made a bunker under the ground they made for me, and I would sit, and when they went to work I was sitting in the bunker, and the Gestapo was looking, …the Gestapo had the dogs and they didn’t discover me. So finally in the end we, my cousin was there, my brother-in-law , he had a job as a tailor, they kept it, my sister, my brother, my cousin was there and we found out that it’s going to be soon Judenfrei. Judenfrei means they going to clean out the whole ghetto from all the Jews. So I had idea. The ghetto was surrounded with wires, the bombed out houses, you know, from the war because the bombs were flying, they didn’t look if it’s ghetto or not ghetto and some houses were burned out like a three, four family floor, they just have the floors burned up, you know what I’m talking about?

GB: Foundation?

LS: Foundation, the foundation of each floor, they were cement and me and my cousin found out that would be a good place to hide. They were going to Judenfrei , a city without Jews so I came back to the ghetto. Somehow they sneaked me in back to work. So in the morning when I come, lined up, the commander come out he say “I need a man who knows how to drive a horse and a buggy”. I stepped out. He says “OK”. They didn’t ask no questions, okay we need you. So I was the guy that was picking up the clothes from the people who were sent away and we were bringing it to a special location, what they did later we don’t know but we were picking up all the clothes from the people with the horse and buggy. And while I was doing that I had to go to the outside of the ghetto, to the Irish side, the Christian side. And I knew some Christian people, and I came to them and say “gee, I’m doing this job now, I’m still in ghetto, my brother and sister still in ghetto, I’m going to need food because we’re going to hide, because we know pretty soon they gonna make Judenfrei, city without Jews.” She said “okay”.

So I was gonna go with whatever he had, good clothes and to this Polish woman, you know. And she was preparing for me every day five breads, you know, special bag made up. And me and my cousin said we gonna start storing it on the second floor of the burnt out house, brick house. So I brought in a tent and we made a tent, put it about two feet tall and we start storaging everything in the tent, you know. Onions, you know because we figure if we stay we need all the stuff. Big barrels of water and everything that I brought in from the outside at night we used to bring it in because the ghetto was surrounded by police but inside you could do what you want nobody seen it. So at night we start doing that thing and by going up stairs on the second floor on that

GB: On that landing there?

LS: On that landing there, see, was walls all around. The windows were burnt out, only the cement was there, the bricks. We made a tent two feet tall so we start storage there and we say we can lay there. So before, what, we had eighteen people already, quiet, nobody should know. We had food, and we dried the bread in the sun. All the bread that I used to bring, we’d slice it, left it on the top of the tent, and during the day it dried because dry bread can stay, fresh bread can’t, you know. We found out that its was going to be Judenfrei, so that night all eighteen people we went upstairs. We had to be strapped up by a belt , two strong guys had to get up and bring us into the big toilet pipe. See, the toilet pipes were very big in Europe, not little like here. Everybody was strapped in and pulled up there. We ran away. A few days later we hear they’re looking for us, a couple days later, you know, eighteen people missing, especially with a horse and a buggy, now, what happened? So they were looking all over; They didn’t find us. Two days later they closed up all the ghetto and all the Jews they took away to the

GB: Where did you think they were taking them?

LS: Some they killed right there, right in the cemetery, some of them right in the place, and some they shipped out to Belzec because I went, when I went on the train it was to Belzec. It was gas chambers, that’s the direction I was going.

GB: But you didn’t know that.

LS: On the way there, no but later we found that was what

GB: Where did you think you were going at the time you were going?

LS: We didn’t know. They say … the Jews were just from one place to another one like, you know

GB: Transferred.

LS: Transferred, that’s it, that what they would tell us, I mean, that we going to a transfer to work, you know they tell us we going to working camps, you know. We believed it! Nobody believed that they could just take millions of Jews and just burn them, cremate them, you know. So, we stayed in that bunker for nine months. It was already Judenfrei and they took all the Jews away they opened the ghetto and whatever was in the ghettoes left the Polish people, the Ukrainian they come in and take everything, you know. But they never come into that building because there was nothing to look for there, it was all bombed out, stones and everything.

How long can the food last? It didn’t last too long, you know. So what happened? The food was getting short after three months or two months. I volunteered again. I was the smallest, the youngest, you know, I would go out. So again I dressed up like a Ukrainian working group, wooden shoes and special Ukrainian mark and hat, you know. I went back to my Polish woman and I told here that the ghetto’s free and we need food. And she said “it’s very tough to get food because there’s a war going on but whatever I can do for you, I get it”. Whatever everybody have, we get it. Watches or dresses or clothes, whatever, you know. And she did it for me. I used to go out once, twice a week and used to bring in five, six bags, even just for medicine. And that lasted about nine months. One day I walked into the Jewish woman, the Christian woman, the Polish woman. Polish policeman was there, the Ukrainian policeman, a German Gestapo. They were having a picnic. So I walked in and spoke like a Ukrainian. I blessed Jesus Christ, you know, and she said gee “Leo”, she called me different names, Juzek, my name was Juzek, not Leo, she say “you know what” she told me in Ukrainian, “your mother didn’t bring nothing in today? And I have nothing to give you, maybe tomorrow”. I understood what she was smart enough, you know, she took care of me. So I took off and I went back to the bunker and I came at night and I gave a sign, they took me up. Next day I came in again. And I was doing that for a long time, going and bringing, going and bringing. One time we didn’t have enough food. One of the oldest, older men, guys, he said “Gee, let me go out and help Leo”. He wanted to go to his Polish friends. Well he went out. They caught him and when they leading him out. What happened, I was at that Polish woman’s bringing food, and I come back with the food I see that the police were surrounded already, the whole building. Because when they caught him he used to cry, scream out “I’m going to death!” …he says in Polish. “I’m going to death.” And they figure something’s happened there so they start looking, looking. Next morning I went away. I went about three or four blocks away and I was, there was a lot of empty houses, you know, after the ghetto was free, and I was looking out what’s happened and I see in the morning they start taking my brother, sister, whatever people were there. The Gestapo, the police. And I was ready to walk towards them; if I had ammunition, grenades I would throw it bombs and everybody would go. But I didn’t have nothing. So I said let me go with them. I mean, it doesn’t make no sense. And I was very close to step into the group. Something tell me no, Leo. And I didn’t. I changed my mind and I went back to that attic and I stayed a few days there because I had food enough to eat and lay there.

And after I finished the food, or something, it was cold, I don’t remember what was the reason I said “Let me go back to the Polish woman”. Now I’m going to the Polish woman, a Ukrainian teacher of mine, no, no I’m sorry. I wanted to see some Ukrainian friends, they were such good friends of our neighbors and I walked into those friends, they did not remember me. He was a teacher in the old days but when the Germans came the Ukrainians became the big ones, you know. They became the police chiefs, they became the. So I walked to the house and I say “Gee, I like something to eat, or I’m hidin’ and, uh. So the husband says “Sure, stay in here”. And he walked out and he say “I’m going to bring something”. I’m looking through the window. He’s bringing a policeman. So I start running again. I ran. I knew the city. Kids, you know, know every corner.

So I run back to my Polish woman and I told her what happened. At one time when I was going for the food, I forgot that too, another kid noticed me and he start saying “Jew! Jew! Jew! Jew! Again I had to run, to hide myself. So then I went back to the Polish lady; her name was Sophie, and she say “You know what, Leo, where can you go. You can’t be on the street”. So I says “Can you hide me”. She says “You know my husband’s got a heart condition. He knows I’m hiding Jews, he’s going to die”. I say “You go ahead and find a place in the cellar and between you and me nobody will know’.

So I went down to the cellar, that was a cellar for the whole apartment house, maybe it was fifty tenants, you know. So I’m going down the cellar steps, I see under the steps of the cellar there’s a lot of junk, a lot of old metal, you know how people, even my cellar I’ve got a lot of junk under the steps. So I said “This looks like a good place I can hide’. So I go outside, digged out everything from underneath there, the steps, I couldn’t touch the front, and I made myself a little space here and I laid there like a duck for three and a half months. And she used to bring every day a little food. But she didn’t bring it to me. She bought a, what you call it, with the white ears?

GB: Rabbits?

LS: Rabbits. She bought two rabbits. She put them in her cellar because her, ‘cause everybody had a private cellar but she didn’t want to put me in the private cellar because they kept potatoes and whatever food for the winter. And every day, she put the rabbits in the cellar she fed the two rabbits in the cellar and she covered my food – a piece of bread, whatever or potato, you know, with some rabbit food and she used to come down the steps and “Here rabbits, here, here, here” She threw me a little potato and the rest she gave to the rabbits and she say “Leo. Stay. Pretty soon. The Russians are fighting close, close. I stayed there three and a half months.

One night while I was sleeping, I mean sleeping, you know, laying there. Remember I told you I dressed up like a Ukrainian, I had like a cover for my truck. What you call that material? Tent?

GB: Tarpaulin?

LS: Tarpaulin. I had clothes like this made. It was stiff, tough, cold. One day I was sleeping, see the steps? Next to the steps there was a platform, a door, was apartment and while in Europe they didn’t have toilets in the houses, so that woman who lived next and that woman came down and did her duty there and sleeping, and I hear her yell to her husband “Hey Yashu, Yashu, I hear Jews down the cellar. Jews sleep down there. They snore.” And I woke up with a sweat, with a wet, and I say “I have to go”. So she went back to sleep and I ran, because I know they didn’t have no telephone. I knew in the morning it’s gonna be the whole house surrounded. I ran away. And I went again on my own hiding in the old houses there, you know.

Three days later I came back to my woman, you know, and I says “What happened?” And she says “What happened? I didn’t see. I say “That woman upstairs she say that Jews was sleeping there”. She say “Yeah, she come in the morning and told me and I told her, you know, this is my big cat, Mordizok”, I remember, “he is snoring like that. Don’t you see when he’s sleeping in my house, he snore. She said ‘I was sure there were Jews sleeping there’.” So she lied, you know, so nothing happened. She say “Go down”. And from that day I didn’t sleep no more. I had to hear that woman come in, and do her stuff, and lock the door.

Then suddenly they start bombing. The Russians start bombing. The Americans start bombing the city. They used to come in with two, three hundred planes, and when they bomb the people from the apartment house they run down into the cellar. So where do you stay? They all sit down right on the top of my steps! Would you believe it? Right on my head. And my lice are bitin’, you know I didn’t change clothes for nine months. One day I had to, I couldn’t stand it so during the day, I went into the cellar window and I start taking off, I was confident I knew what to do, I took over three hundred little packages, you know? …And, so what happened? Uh, then, toilet, I don’t have no toilet either, so I had to make my own toilet there. Make it on the ground, like a dog. It’s terrible. It’s unbelievable. And that’s what happened. I was sittin’ there for three and a half months. The husband didn’t know, nobody know. The Russians were comin’ in closer. One day they came into my city. They didn’t even walk into to the, to the, they didn’t even occupy the city. The woman came down with a big stick “Hey, …Get down out of here! You’re free!” And I had a big, you know, nine and three months no wash, no shave, no shower, you know. So she took me into the house and she says “Only me and you know”. I cleaned up. I shaved up. She gave me clean things.

GB: Do you know what her name was?

LS: Yes. Sasha Mikula. She’s dead. They both dead. Sophie. She was a good woman. She came with a stick and she said “Get the hell out! You’re free!”, you know. So we got out, you know, free, and I’m the only Jew. No home, nobody. The only Jew alive because nobody came out at that time. Nobody was alive, you know. A few days later a Jew came down from …and before we know it we had about seven or eight Jewish people, you know, young girls, young boys, my age, maybe a little older, two or three years older. I was probably younger.

Then, what happened, we figure, you know, the Russians are here, we are Jews, we lived through a war. Nothing. They dragged us, all young guys, we were standing there talking. The Russians come in and grabbed us all to the Army and I ran away at that time. I don’t know if they’d take me, a young kid like me but they see young people, you know. I ran away. I don’t know, I think a couple of guys went. They never showed up there and I was there, then more Jews came in, all the Jews they start forming a Jewish committee. Maybe a hundred Jews showed up from a city that was maybe twenty five thousand Jews, you know before the war, thirty thousand Jews. Maybe a hundred people survived. And we stayed there for about a year and we dressed up, cleaned up, whatever, we formed a little group, start davening. …We could see that the Polish people didn’t have use for us, and the Ukrainians and the Polish start fighting too because they hated each other because during the war the Ukrainians were against Polish. And they didn’t have use for the Jews and a couple Jews, people got killed by the Polish people, by the Ukrainians, whatever.

So, we said let’s take off from here and we went to the new land that the Russians took over, the German land, you know. The Schlesien, you know Schlesien?

GB: Alsace-Lorraine?

LS: No, Like Breslau, like …Germany, you know that section. That was a German land but the Russians took it away and gave it to Poland, you know. Because they took half Poland and Russia gave half of Germany to Poland, you know, the Silesia section.

GB: Oh.

LS: Silesia, I think they call it. So we came came to Beton (sp?), Boyton they called it, Beton in Polish, and there was more Jews there. I don’t know what happened but we stayed there a little while and we said it’s not good to be there. So we paid, to a Russian truck driver “x’ amount of money, maybe fifty of us, you know, young kids, and we say we want to go to Berlin. Because there was no sense to stay in Poland, you know? So he brought us over the border for money. He knew the border, the border guards and his Russian friends. And we came to Germany, and in Germany we went to Berlin, you know.

GB: Mm, hmm.

LS: And in Berlin we went to the American zone already and there was a big Jewish committee already. And I found out that one of my cousin, not really my cousin, my father’s cousin, survived and she was looking for, somebody told me “Did you know you have a cousin alive? And she’s looking for you”. So I said “How do I get a hold of her?” I knew I had a uncle in Canada. His name for Froyen (sp?) Krieger but in Canada he changed his name to Frank Kruger. Would you believe it? So I said “How do you find Frank Kruger” and this was Froyen, my mother’s brother. Somehow he got a hold of that cousin and that cousin knew somebody in Montreal and they got connected, and I got connected with them, and we became relatives again, you know my cousin, and my uncle from Canada. So we didn’t stay too long in Berlin. We went to Munich, you know because I was a young kid and it didn’t make sense, no Poland, no Berlin for me and I went, start going to school there, you know. The ORT school.

What happened? I went to be a mechanic because everybody says Israel needs mechanics. I think Israel was then a state. I can’t remember if Israel became a state. ’47 was it a state?

GB: ’48.

LS: ’48.

GB: So you went to a … school in Munich?

LS: To where?

GB: In Munich?

LS: In Munich, yeah. I went to school for mechanics. They say they need. Because we had plans to go to Israel, you know. And, uh, I went for I don’t know, two years, or a year and a half? I don’t know. I learned to be automobile mechanic, you know. And that was Jewish kids mostly from the ORT but the German and Jewish teachers. And we were getting help from the ORT, you know, at that time while we go to school, you know. They paid for our room and the German housing, with German families because we were single, kids. We would eat in a kosher restaurant, they had a kosher restaurant for us in Munich, you know. They sent us packages and a few dollars. And then what happened I got papers to come, my uncle’s in, no, no, before that I signed up, Israel became a state already a state, I think. Forty-eight? Impossible. Why ’48? When I came out in 1947 and I was signed up to go on the Exodus ship. The Exodus ship was going, well, not legal, it was not a legal ship.

GB: That was before.

LS: Before that. I signed up to on that Exodus, on that ship to go to.

GB: That’s ’47, I think.

LS: Forty-seven, I think. So while I signed up I got my papers from Canada, from my uncle who came to Canada. So I didn’t want to go to Canada. I said “Gee, I want to go to Israel”, no. But everyone says “Gee”, even my uncle, “You live through so much you go better to America”, you, to Canada. So I listen, and I went, no, I. Then they had for young kids we signed up to America, too. We didn’t know, I didn’t know if I get paid from the uncle. So we had all the youngsters under 18, or under 16, I don’t remember, under 18, I think, who were left alone without parents, you know, who were yesoyem, you know they say in English is a orphan. I got my invitation to go to Canada, 45th anniversary, to meet, I just got it last week, I show you. So I listened to people and I didn’t go to Israel, and I didn’t go to Canada because I signed up for United States. United States papers came first and we went as a youngster to the United States.

When I came to the United States, I was two, three weeks there, in New York, with the Joint , the Joint gave us the papers, you know.

GB: The Joint Distribution

LS: Joint Distribution Committee.

GB: J.D.C..

LS: Yeah J.D.C., that’s right. So we came to New York, a couple days later my uncle flew in from Canada. So, he say you come to Canada, you know, and I went to Canada with him. He was a very good man and, but, I wasn’t used to be under control: don’t do that, don’t touch this, be home at six. I say to him “I want to be a mechanic”. He said “No, Jewish kids not mechanics”, you know. He told me to be a businessman. I said I don’t like business so I say “Uncle, you know, I love you, you nice to me” I say “I go back to United States”. He felt bad, I felt bad but I think I was better off because it would be very tough, you know. He figured I’m still a kid, you know, and I wasn’t a kid no more, I was a man, by that time, you know.

GB: How old were you at that time?

LS: A man, a kid, really a kid. Forty-eight, I was maybe 18 or 19 years old. I was born in 1928 and I came in 1947, December. So, I think 18 years old I was. I turned 18. So I stayed there. There I learned how to press, I learned how to do cleaning, you know.

GB: Where did you go after you left?

LS: Toronto? From Toronto? To New York. I came back to the Jewish.

GB: Were you in Toronto?

LS: In Toronto, yes. He was good to me, he wanted really good for me, you know, but I just couldn’t. I wasn’t, not under supervision since I was 12, 13. I just couldn’t. It was tough for me. We didn’t have no fight. I told him “Uncle, I have to be on my own”, you know. So I came back to New York, to the Joint and I told the story and they say “That’s okay”. I say “I would like to stay in New York” but they say “You can’t stay in New York because we have too many people in New York. You have to go to smaller place. So I say “Where?” He say “ Rhode Island”. But I read Rhode Island. In Europe Rhode Island is wrote Iceland. I say “Ireland! I don’t want to go to Ireland. So they say explain it’s not Ireland, it’s. Ireland spells like Rhode Island, you know?

GB: Mm, hmm.

LS: So I say “Okay” and I went to Rhode Island and again from the Jewish service, whatever.

GB: J.D.C.?

LS: No, it was the Jewish Federation, I think, at that time.

GB: Where in, uh?

LS: In Providence. That woman was ready to put me on the train. She picked me up. They had a room for me in the attic, you know, like in the attic room, you know, this kind of room. And they got a job ready for me, at a mechanic place, you know. So I work there probably six months. They told them that I’m expert mechanic but I wasn’t expert. I was just a trainee, you know. In Europe mechanical work is different than here. In Europe you take out a part and you ground it and you fix it and you put it back in. Here, a mechanic you take out and put a new one, you know, and I wasn’t used to it. So they started me very good but then I couldn’t speak English and I couldn’t do the work that they want. They cut my wages in half so I was making about sixteen dollars a week coming home with about fourteen dollars a week. At that time it was fifty cents minimum, I think. They took off for the tools there and they put me into the toughest work, to the big trucks, you know, big wheels. And I say “These people taking advantage of me”. And one day I got a letter from a friend of mine in Chicago. He found that I’m in Providence. He say “Leo, why don’t you go say hello to my uncle”, you know. So “Who’s your uncle?” So he say “Benny Klare, from Klare Cleaners, you know, the dry cleaning place. So I got a big suit somebody gave me, about ten sizes too big, so I say “Hey, I got a number of a tailor, let me go and see him”, you know. So I go to see him and I say “Benny Klare, I got a letter here from your cousin from Chicago, we been together in Europe and I say “I have a suit”. And he says “Okay, I fix it for you”. And he measured me and fixed my suit and I start talking to him and I say “You know what? I was in Canada and I learned how to press. I say “I’m a presser”. And he says “Yes?” I says “Yes” and he says “Try that”. He say “You’re hired”. And he hired me for double the money in the mechanical place. And I quit the mechanical place and I start working for him as a presser. And I knew a little dry clean, you know, because he was in the country a few years but he didn’t know how to dry clean, I took care of customers and worked with him and he like me. I worked for him about a year. Again, I found another man from Europe and he says “Gee, you know the pressing, I know the tailoring, let’s go into business”. I said “Okay, sounds good. I had a few dollars saved up, you know, not too much, and he had a few dollars, so we both opened up a dry cleaning and tailor shop in Providence. He had his job and I had to work in the cleaning business but it wasn’t good enough for two people, you now. We both couldn’t make a living so we split. We split. We couldn’t split as friends. We had to split with a diventory , you know what’s a diventory means, you go to the shul and the three elderly Jews tell you what to do. The best way to split. So he says I’m gonna give him the money and I’m gonna take the business.

And I worked in that business about a year. I made a living, a good living, very hard work. I got a greeting from the Uncle, from the President of the United States. Leo Silberman you have to come in for a physical. We need you, Uncle Sam needs you, to the Army. And I say “Gee, they didn’t give me a chance yet I didn’t enjoy the goodies of America. I’m going into the Army to fight for this country, I don’t mind.” So they inducted me and I got 1A. I forgot what they call it.

GB: Yeah.

LS: I was in good physical condition. So I told them I have a business. I told them I was terrified during the war. And they say it doesn’t matter. If you want to live in this country, you want to be a citizen. You can refuse it. I say “I don’t want to refuse it. I will go to the Army”. They gave me three months. I sold the business for two thousand dollars, I remember, and Uncle Sam called me and I was in the Army and I was stationed at Fort Devens and then I was stationed at Fort Eustis, Virginia. And I became, my M.R.S. was a Harbormaster, can you imagine? A Harbormaster, with ships. We were soldiers first but then we a M.R.S., a specialty in the Army. They made me a Harbormaster. So if Korea, if they need a Harbormaster, if they have ships coming in. I was lucky. I had a very good Sergeant and I think he felt sorry for me.

GB: Do you remember his name?

LS: Yeah, Sergeant Barnett. Sergeant Barnett, very good man, we were very good. While I was still in Eustis I was doing supply, Supply Sergeant duty I was doing, you know. And he was the First Sergeant and we became very friendly, and he needed men for Korea and he shipped for Korea. Me, he sent up to Greenland. I’m sorry, Newfoundland, Newfoundland, Newfoundland. And I was there as Harbormaster for a long time, a year I think. We lost quite a few men there because the weathers were bad and the ships were tough. We used to see the ships comin’. We had bases there, you know, during the Korean War, we had the bases. And the one day I never forget. It was a lot of hurricane weather, storm, a lot of bad weather. The ship came in and I picked up the radio and I say “This is harpoon, do you read me?” So the other ship figured with my accent, they said “Man! We picked up the Chinks! (Laughing)

GB: (Laughing)

LS: Really! It’s no joke! This I remember good. And the ship couldn’t anchor in, you know. So Leo Silberman had to go on the L.S.T. up to a few miles out in the water to bring in the ship but the bullhorns, the lights and everything that became the Harbormaster. And when I came to the ship they threw in a ladder. You know you can’t go on steps and Leo has to climb on the ladder and the ship just separated and I was hanging on to that ladder like this here. And this is the stuff I tell I’m smiling. If I would fall into the water nobody would say boo, you know?

GB: (Laughing)

LS: Finally I made it. I went on the ship and I explained what they should do. We brought in the ship into the harbor and I was discharged from Fort Dix two years later, 1951, I ‘m sure, yeah, ’51. I got it up there on the wall. So I was discharged I went back to Providence, back to Providence and I didn’t like the city no more because I see so much, you know. I had some friends in Hartford, acquaintances really, you know. So I visit them and I like the City of Hartford. I met a woman. I got married in Providence and we moved to Hartford and I opened a dry cleaning place in Hartford.

GB: What was the name of it?

LS: (Chuckling) You told me you not going to ask me. Ashley Cleaners. I’m not ashamed of it, the Ashley Cleaners & Tailors on Ashley Street. And I was there for about thirty-three years. And I sold it. And I made a good living. And the marriage didn’t work…; after twenty-five years I became single and I have two beautiful sons. And I sold the place, employed three or four people. I sold the place a year and a half ago. And I got a job working for the Aetna. They trained me and this is the story of my life.

GB: What do you do with Aetna now?

LS: I was in the Quality Control, in the, uh, Analyst, Policy Analyst but this, next week it will be something different because I’m only on the temporary basis. So I’m nine months with it, so far.

GB: What are your sons’ names?

LS: Mark, that’s the youngest one.

GB: He’s 29.

LS: Mark, 29 and Joel, he’s 31. Mark will be 29, no Mark, in January, 29 Mark’s going to be.

GB: And he has a child? Joel has a baby?

LS: No, No. In Florida, in Miami, he was trade, he was working for the Y.M.C.A. for many years. He’s got six years, Master’s Degrees.

GB: Social work?

LS: Social Recreation but he left the Y.M.C.A. and he’s doing

GB: This is Joel?

LS: Joel, the oldest. He’s working for the Jewish Center but he wants to go home. I wish I had a job here for him. Very smart young fellow.

GB: What else do you do when you’re not working?

LS: Right now? Friends, visitin’, you know. Dating right now. The only thing right now is I’m single (laughing)

GB: (Laughing). Can you remember anything else that you might want to tell us?

LS: You mean in Hartford?

GB: No, in you r life in Europe.

LS: In Europe.

GB: You’re very lucky to have come back, come to survive.

LS: Yeah, very lucky that I’m survive because really everything luck and that’s it, it was just luck.

GB: What do you attribute your survival to?

LS: I think, uh, my mother. Strong. Good, good strong people we were, very good. My mother was very strong, good upbringing, you know, schooling and hard work and good feeding. I think I could survive because I was pretty good before. I was brought up on milk from the cow. I had milk from the cow, would you believe it? Three times a day we had it right from the cow. They would milk and we were drinking it.

GB: What values did your mother teach you that you give her credit for your survival?

LS: Well, to be a good person, strong, be proud what you are, good education, you know. Don’t be ashamed what you are, that’s all. Don’t be ashamed what you are. Be a proud Jew.

GB: And you taught your children that?

LS: Mm, hmm. It’s different in America. Kids are different. They do, they think they know everything. They beautiful, nice kids, don’t take me wrong, they’re terrific kids but they figure they have more education, they were born in a nice country, this is a beautiful country, nice. You have to kiss the ground every day here and you have to make friends and live, live your life, you know.

GB: Do you have any plans for the future Leo?

LS: For the future no plans. No plans for the future, right now. Right now, no plans. I gonna to work a few years if I can, if God gives me health, and the right person will come along I may get married again. That’s my plan for the future. And if she doesn’t come along I stay single!

GB: Mm, hmm. Do you have any other relatives here?

LS: No, no. I have friends, good friends.

GB: From Europe?

LS: Yeah. It’s like a family, you know. These friends keep me going. Sometimes you know with the kids gone, you have no friends, you, like this guy just call, he’s like my brother, you know. You need change. When you become the wars your life changes. It’s a complete difference in life. People are not the same. You find out who your friends. I don’t know why. I’m a different person. I’m there to help people when they have problems but some people they are scared, for single, or whatever happens in life. But thank God some are become better friends and like family. So I have a few good friends.

GB: You never saw any of your people, or your relatives from, you never saw them again after you left Poland?

LS: No, no, I was very good friends. I was visiting Canada often, at least once a year.

GB: No, I mean your own immediate family, you never saw them?

LS: You mean my brothers and sisters? No, they all went because when I escaped from the train that was Belzec, that was a crematorium right there not even a working camp. And my oldest brother was at Limburglager camp. That was also the worst camp, also nobody survived, and, uh

GB: In other words, you were on your way to Belz, Belzec.

LS: And my brother, sister they were took out from the …and they were killed. And the only thing that bothers me is, I mean, that I went through so much, and Hitler did so much damage, the Nazis, that I cannot get a pension even from them. You know what, the Army, when I was in the Army people were applying for pensions and I couldn’t apply. And I missed out on the pension because a lot of people, lot of older people I know they have a pension from Germany and I don’t have that.

GB: And you can’t apply?

LS: I don’t know. They say it’s too late now. You see, that’s my biggest, my biggest gripe right now. I could use the few hundred dollars. I mean I suffered, I got through, I, you know. And this bothers me really, because when I see people and they get checks, it’s like a retirement check. And I haven’t got the … to talk and the … to take care of that stuff because they in those days I was in the Army when they were applying for these pensions. And I didn’t.

GB: Have you investigated it further?

LS: Yes, I investigated it. I was in New York a few times. They say they took it to the Army, you’re a healthy man, and you can’t get nothin’. But everybody’s getting’ it, everybody’s getting’ it. Right now I‘m not so healthy because I see doctors and I know it’s all the things comin’ back from Europe, I know it, you know. I spend money for medicine, for doctors.

GB: Mm, hmm.

LS: I don’t see no that I could get from Germany my restitution.

GB: Mm, hmm. How do you, how have you adjusted to Bloomfield?

LS: I belong to a synagogue, Beth Hillel now. My kids were Bar Mitzvahed there. I’m a member. I pay my dues. I have my memorial candles there lit on the holidays.

GB: Have you found anti-Semitism here?

LS: No, you don’t find nothing.

GB: I want to thank you Leo, we’re at the end of the tape. This is Gloria Bein. The taped interview will be placed in the oral history archives of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford to be used by students for research and study and to further the purposes of the society.