Life in Hiding

I lived in eternal fear for my whole family. I constantly saw people being waggoned in at the station, heard them crying and screaming, saw people being shot in the square and knew that my relatives would be there too. My wife, my child, my parents and 2 sisters were also taken away and they were never heard from again.

I fled in November 1942 and lived in the forest until the liberation in August 1944, hunted like an animal and pursued by German patrols. Once I was shot, I took three bullets in the back, my lungs were injured and the wounds began to fester. A fellow sufferer primitively took the bullets out of me.

When the Germans occupied my home, I had to do extremely hard forced labour in all weathers, like digging potatoes and other field work ... We were all taken into the forest in autumn 1942 and the Germans started shooting at us. I grabbed my sister by the hand and we ran away, hiding in the bushes and escaping with our lives. When it got dark, we crawled back and found my mother and brother robbed and shot. We got ourselves a shovel and buried them. My father was not among the dead, we found him alive later.

I am making this affidavit in connection with my application for compensation for damage to body and health.

Before the outbreak of the persecution measures, I lived with my family in Frankfurt/M in Ostendstrasse 3. When we fled to Belgium, I was a seven to eight year old child. As a result, I don't have too many memories of that time. But I know that we lived well. Of course, it was no longer possible for me to go to school after 1939. I was always healthy. As a child, I didn't experience too much of the persecution that began; we fled headlong to Antwerp when they were looking for my father. As we had fled without any means, we lived in poor conditions.

In 1940 the Nazi occupation took place and we lived in fear and terror again. Only now I could already understand things.

In January 1941, my family was dragged off to the concentration camp. The conditions here were appalling. We hardly got anything to eat in the Zonhofen camp, we were harassed every day and everyone trembled before the deportations. My mother became very ill. My father had to go to hard labour every day. I sat around alone in the barracks. I constantly had sore throats and fevers. I didn't get any medical help.

However, my family managed to escape from the camp after eight months. We lived in Antwerp for a short time. We had to stay at different addresses all the time and hide. Then my family fled to Brussels. I was given to a Christian family who hid me. When the situation became increasingly untenable, I was given false papers and was sent to a monastery near Namur. I have terrible memories of this convent. They had to hide me all the time when I was searched. Some of the children knew I was Jewish and harassed me. I was an outcast and felt very hurt.

When I was liberated, it took me weeks to be able to speak to other people at all. When I was liberated, I learnt about the death of my parents and my sister. That was another shock for me.

My brother, who had already come to England in 1938, took me in. I stayed in England until I moved to Israel. I have lived in the USA since 1955.

In November 1942, this ghetto (note: Majdan-Tatarsk/Lublin) was also liquidated and I managed to escape with my daughter. We found other refugees and always walked at night, deep into the woods, as the Germans were carrying out raids. We lived on what we could steal from the farmers. Sometimes we were so hungry that we ate tree bark. Things got a little easier in the summer because at least we didn't freeze so much and we found turnips and the like in the fields. Then the winter of 1943/44 began and we froze miserably, exposed to the cold and snow without warm clothes. My little daughter fell ill and began to run a high fever, without a doctor or medication, and as I feared for her life, I asked the farmers for mercy. Some took pity on us and hid us for a few days in the barn, cellar etc., but as they were afraid of being discovered, I had to keep on walking. Then, in the spring, we had to wander into the forest again, where we were liberated by the Red Army in July 1944