The Nazis attacked Poland in September, 1939 . . . I was at the time in the Polish Army and I was looking forward to finishing my tour duty which was supposed to be in November, 1939, but in September they attacked. I woke up at five o'clock in the morning, and the German planes were bombarding . . . Krakov . . . Poland had a military pact with France and England. [They] were supposed to lend their help to Poland in case they were attacked . . . On the third day of the war after Hitler attacked Poland, England and France declared war on the Germans and we naively expected to directly see English or French planes attacking [the] Germans, but nothing happened . . . From the time the Germans took over Poland in 1939, we Jews became their commodity, their possession and the SS and Gestapo could do with us whatever they wanted to do and that's exactly what they did. Depriving us of our liberty, taking away our material possessions, and stripping us of our pride and dignity . . .

It was May 2, 1942, a beautiful morning. I was getting ready for work and so were many other men on the streets of [the ghetto]. I heard some commotion outside on the street. I looked out the window and pulled back my head quickly and closed the curtain. I could not believe what I saw. On the street was parked a big Mercedes with swastika flag and on the street the Rzeszow chief of the Gestapo, StrumbanFurer Mak and his driver with their own pistols in their hands was shooting people like the puppets at the [shooting] gallery. They did not ask any questions. I could hear the Gestapo chief shouting to the driver to catch this one and shoot him as he was busy shooting someone else. Then the two killers pulled out their cigarettes, lit them, slipped into the shiny Mercedes and left. We later learned those two killed thirty-six people that morning.

How could I describe my feeling when in the liquidation of the Rzeszow Ghetto, my father, brother, aunt, uncle, sister-in-law with [a] one year old baby and thousands of other young, old, women and children were moved under SS guard to the train station, loaded into the cattle cars with the SS men following kicking, beating, and shooting at will? How could I describe my feelings when all my loved ones were gone? The ones who gave me my life, love and protection in my younger years were gone . . . My dear girlfriend was taken away. . . Removed by the supreme power of the German Nazi and Gestapo to unknown destination. Those feelings and agonies are impossible to describe . . . The Germans would bring to Rzeszow camp some Jews from other towns and take out some people to the unknown. How traumatic those selections were when the wives were separated from husband, children from mothers, boyfriends from their sweethearts and all this to the brutal beating, kicking, and hollering by the SS men. And the people's cries, and the prayers, "Oh God, where are you!" when they were driven out to the cattle cars. It is not easy to describe my own feeling to be a witness to this tragic separation or the feeling of those who just lost their loved ones.

After the ghetto liquidation, we, the survivors, were broken, morally and mentally, but we were still living with the hope that we [would] hear in the future about the fate of our families. The abuses and the random killings in Rzeszow working camp was a daily routine, People going out to work for the Gestapo sometimes did not come back. One Jewish German girl was wandering during working hours, [and was] stopped by the SS men . . . She tried to explain that she was looking for her husband who had [a] permit to stay in the camp. The SS men kicked her to the ground, hollering, "You dirty Jew." She was really beautiful. He pulled out his pistol She was pleading with him and hoping for mercy, opened her coat showing that she is pregnant. That made him more mad. He was hollering again, "You dirty Jew. You know that Jews do not have any future. You should not have any children," and fired the gun. As she lay there, covered with her beautiful black hair, he put two more bullets in her body and calmly walked away. That was our life without hope for the future.

After the liquidation of Rzeszow camp I was sent to Szebna concentration camp. It was a dreadful place . . . with over 3,000 Jews in it from many small towns. In the first day, we were ordered to gather in a circle of fifty men. The SS men instructed us to put in the center all the valuables we had with a warning that noncompliance will be punishable by death. So the pile of watches, gold, diamonds was quite sizable. Then the SS men was checking the pocket of one of the men and found something. He started to beat the man, hollering, "You dirty dog Jews, you are all cheaters. You cannot be trusted. You were told to give up everything." He made the man lay down on the ground and shot him in the back of the head to the horror of us all. There were persistent rumors that Szebna camp [would] be liquidated and here again we were facing the unknown future. Early in February, 1944 the fateful day did come . Truckloads of heavy armed SS men took position around the camp. We, the 1,500 in the camp, were ordered to assemble in the square surrounded by the heavy armed guards and machine gun placement on each end of the square. The guards intentionally were pushing and cursing, making from us a tight human mass. Again, how could I describe the horrors, the cries, the prayers of the human multitude. Some SS men came and started to take out some people. I was one of them . . . They took out 105 of us and put under guard on the side of the square. We were not allowed to talk to each other and did not know which group would be safer, ours or the one in the center of the square. as I was leaning against the wall of the barrack I was witnessing again the unfolding of a monumental tragedy. The trucks come in and the SS men were loading them to capacity with the people from the square, driving them out from the camp. A short while later I could hear machine gun rattling coming from the nearby woods. Then the guns stopped and the empty trucks were coming back fir more human cargo. And again the same. The trucks left, the machine guns started again. We all were bewildered realizing that the German were machine gunning the people in the woods, and this sort of thing continued through the day until nobody was left in the square except some people who had committed suicide by taking cyanide pills. By the evening the machine guns were silent. I could see flames coming from the woods. i was silent, asking myself, "Oh God, where are you?" The Germans were burning the bodies. All night the sky was lit up by the fires. I was sitting on the ground leaning against the barrack wall speechless with my own dark thoughts flashing through my head. If that is the unknown destination, then hat happened to all our loved ones? . . . I was almost hypnotized by the distant fires, thinking of all the beautiful people going up in smoke.

A week later I and the others were sent to Krakow Plaszow concentration camp. That was a camp of 32,000 Jews. The life and the horrors of this camp was all eloquently shown in the move Schindler's List . . . I, as an electrician, was sent to the camp electrical shop and here the same horrors. Behind our shop was [a] ravine and the Germans were bringing truck loads of Jews and Poles, shooting them, and burning the bodies. Every morning [there was] senseless inspection for hours. One time we were standing naked for eight hours on the assembly square in freezing weather, slowly starving, not having enough to eat, but being eaten up by the lice, being infected by diarrhea and typhoid . . . Then, one time when everybody was on the assembly square the SS men loaded all the children on the trucks and sent them to Auschwitz. How can I describe the cries of the mothers and fathers, their pain and agonies watching all their children being sent out to the unknown. [At the] end of August, 1944, I and 49 other electricians were sent from Plaszow to Germany. The Germans were running out of skilled workers, so ironically we, all the dog Jews, were sent to help the mighty Germans in their war effort. We arrived in the German concentration camp, Maizweiler. From there we were sent to do electrical work in subsidiary camps. As "Neckarelz," "Neckargerach," and "Neckarbishowshaim." In March, 1945, the Allies were closing in. We were hearing distant artillery and the Germans evacuated us. We marched for two days and nights hungry, cold, and exhausted. We arrived in the city of Hoff. We were loaded in the cattle cars for destination unknown. But after two days we arrived to the Nazi Paradise, with a huge sign, "Work Makes You Free." Dachau concentration camp was greeting us. That was April 1, 1945. We were put in quarantine barrack 13, in one room for fifty there were two hundred and fifty prisoners. Typhoid fever decimated the population. Between the barrack space was a pile of probably fifty corpses. We were told that they died the night before and tomorrow there would be a new pile. We did realize that the war was almost over but I also didn't know for sure that with this typhoid and the fifty corpses every morning outside the barrack nobody will survive. By shear luck, four days after I arrived there, SS men came in looking for still healthy men for outside work. I did not know where this work would be but I was the first to raise my hand and step forward. I did not care where they took me but Barrack 13 was for sure a death trap.

After I and several others stepped out, the SS men formed us in a group and led us out to the assembly square where other people were assembled for the dame job. We were transported to Munchen Rum, it was a military airfield for the new German jet planes. The airfield was bombed out by the American Air Force a week before and they brought us to fill in the bomb craters. But a week later [at] noontime, the sirens started to blast. A huge armada of American bombers was approaching. The SS men started to move out to the outskirts of the field to their bunkers. We tried to follow to find a safer place in the woods. " Oh, no!" were hollering the SS guards, pointing the guns toward us, "You will stay on the field and be killed not by us but by your friends." They meant Americans [and] laughingly they left. So we were helpless in the center of the runway, what we knew would be the objective of the American bombers. This bombardment was hell on Earth. The one thing on my mind was even if in the last hour of the war I will have to die from American bombs, I will die with the knowledge that those American pilots in the sky are risking their lives, taking revenge for all our and our family's suffering, putting to ashes the barbaric Nazi Germany. By miracle, I did survive the bombardment but 115 were not so lucky. They died because the last brutality of the Germans did not let them get off the airfield. Two days later we were back in Dachau in Barrack 13 with a pile of corpses and typhoid fever. But this time luck was on our side. April 29 suddenly the barbed wire gate of Barrack 13 sprung open. "We are Free!" People were running and hollering, "We are Free! the Americans are here!" We danced. We embraced each other and cried. Late in the afternoon [we] were assembled in the huge Dachau assembly square, over 30,000 men, and were addressed through an interpreter by an American colonel. He told us that we were free again. That we did not have to fear because we were under American protection and as I saw the American flag by his side, I knew that we were indeed free. But I myself standing in this mass of happy people felt how alone I was. Like a kaleidoscope were flashing through my mind the events of the last years. The Szebna massacre took from me all illusions that maybe my family had a chance to survive. At that time I did not know that for every survivor, fifty members of the family were annihilated. I did not know that I was standing here, maybe the only survivor of the whole family. That I will have to start a life without those [who] were so dear in my life. That to survive the holocaust I will have to suppress the past but never to forget.

After liberation . . . the International Organization for Displaced People took care of us . . . because many of us didn't have anywhere to go . . . we didn't have anything. We waited to immigrate somewhere. In 1948, 40,000 were let in the United States and we were in the group . . . In December, 1948 . . . we came to the United States . . . and January 12 I was working already, so I think it was a good investment for the United States. Some politicians were asking ,"Why are we letting in people?" People like myself never were a burden for the government or anybody. We all became citizens and we paid our taxes and we enriched the country and benefited from the free society . . . I went back in 1946 because I wanted to see if somebody was left and unfortunately except for a cousin [nobody was] . . . My aunt and uncle who was . . .a professional officer . . .in the Polish Army were evacuated to the east and that was the part the Russians took over. They went through their calamities too, but they survived in Russia. . . My brother, who was living in this part . . . which the Russians took over, he was in Russia too separated from his wife and baby . . . He was a musician . . . playing in [a] symphony orchestra and was sent by the Russians inside Russia for concerts and when the Germans attacked Russia, he could not go back. So he did not know what happened to his family. He joined the Polish Army . . . After the war he was sent to England where he learned he lost his wife and baby in the holocaust. He remarried and immigrated to Australia. [I'm] sorry to say he passed away a few years ago . . .

The deep emotional scars will always be a reminder of the holocaust I went through. I and everyone of the survivors of the concentration camps will be carrying the pain, the horrors and the agonies for the rest of our lives . . . Unfortunately we are seeing those calamities are repeating . . . [in] Kosovo and other places because some politician didn't pay attention and didn't try to stop it before it started . . . In the Kosovo War we know that some politicians didn't think that the United States should take part and try to stop it. Good thing that our President insisted on it and we did stop it. Every calamity like this should be stopped before it is exploding.