WEBVTT 00:00:00.063 --> 00:00:02.944 To tell the truth, I don't really know anything about the Holocaust. 00:00:03.040 --> 00:00:04.954 I expected to learn more about what it was 00:00:05.020 --> 00:00:08.214 and more personal experiences that you wouldn't find in history books. 00:00:08.321 --> 00:00:15.048 I think it's going to be hard for some of them to go back in time 00:00:15.111 --> 00:00:20.267 and remember all what happened to them and to their families. 00:00:34.332 --> 00:00:40.580 I remember every detail about the past because it made such an impact on me. 00:00:41.519 --> 00:00:45.602 What was life like growing up in Poland before the Nazis invaded? 00:00:45.741 --> 00:00:52.361 Before the war, I didn't know any other life except the life as a member of my family. 00:00:52.480 --> 00:00:59.201 People got on well together, except Jewish people suffered from anti-Semitism. 00:00:59.380 --> 00:01:05.131 When the Nazis entered Poland, September 1939, I was twelve. 00:01:05.528 --> 00:01:10.714 As a child had to defend myself after school 00:01:11.254 --> 00:01:13.517 because Jewish boys were beaten up. 00:01:13.977 --> 00:01:19.437 I must imagine at such a young age, this must have caused you big impact. 00:01:19.704 --> 00:01:21.941 Were you sent to the concentration camps? 00:01:22.069 --> 00:01:25.333 We were taken to the extermination centre of Auschwitz. 00:01:25.428 --> 00:01:28.895 People arrived half dead, disorientated. 00:01:29.054 --> 00:01:31.854 Some fainted, some died on the journey. 00:01:31.989 --> 00:01:36.684 500 from over 2000 were picked for slave labour, 00:01:36.854 --> 00:01:38.964 and the rest were taken to the gas chambers. 00:01:39.171 --> 00:01:42.671 Do you know what would have happened to you if you ended up there? 00:01:42.915 --> 00:01:46.077 I would have been taken to the gas chambers too and gassed. 00:01:48.733 --> 00:01:51.437 Was there someone in particular from your family members 00:01:51.469 --> 00:01:54.436 that helped you have more strength in order to survive? 00:01:54.548 --> 00:01:59.741 I grew up with my grandfather and he was my best friend. 00:02:00.170 --> 00:02:04.342 He was the one who later on, in Lodz Ghetto, helped me to survive. 00:02:04.552 --> 00:02:10.478 In 1940, 360 of us from our town, were sent to Lodz Ghetto. 00:02:10.906 --> 00:02:13.102 The rest were taken away and shot. 00:02:13.584 --> 00:02:17.174 The starvation at Lodz Ghetto began immediately. 00:02:17.349 --> 00:02:21.730 My grandfather contracted cold, which turned to pneumonia, 00:02:21.763 --> 00:02:24.788 and he called me to his bed and he said, 00:02:25.114 --> 00:02:31.254 'I've had my life. I want you, when you survive, not if you survive, 00:02:31.333 --> 00:02:36.193 when you survive, to tell the world of what is happening to us Jewish people, 00:02:36.389 --> 00:02:40.946 that we are being systematically murdered' and I promised I shall do so. 00:02:41.867 --> 00:02:45.367 How were members of your family affected by the Holocaust? 00:02:45.715 --> 00:02:49.853 My father died of starvation beginning of 1942, 00:02:50.233 --> 00:02:55.760 then later in 1942, my mother, my half sister and her two children were taken away 00:02:55.951 --> 00:03:01.155 to the first extermination centre. At that time I was quite alone. 00:03:04.457 --> 00:03:06.175 When did you get out of Poland? 00:03:06.286 --> 00:03:12.014 I was 18. In Autumn, 1945, we were brought over to England. 00:03:12.293 --> 00:03:18.421 We came semi-starved and for us, 00:03:18.437 --> 00:03:22.123 it's like coming to paradise, it was a different planet. 00:03:22.222 --> 00:03:24.738 What do you think is the most important thing 00:03:24.857 --> 00:03:27.592 for younger generations to learn about the Holocaust? 00:03:27.801 --> 00:03:31.200 Well, we should live without prejudices. 00:03:31.249 --> 00:03:36.974 Young people have to know that we all belong to this planet 00:03:37.495 --> 00:03:42.990 and nobody's superior or inferior, we are all equal in dignity. 00:03:44.128 --> 00:03:46.829 I knew the stories were going to be dramatic, 00:03:46.880 --> 00:03:51.513 I never thought they'd be that deep, all the things they had to do to survive. 00:03:51.593 --> 00:03:55.929 Roman, one of the survivors, had to witness his friends' murders. 00:03:56.040 --> 00:03:58.848 If I'd had to do that these days, I wouldn't have been able to handle it, 00:03:58.969 --> 00:04:04.044 losing people close to you and there's nothing you could do about it for no reason at all. 00:04:04.330 --> 00:04:07.118 I'm not going to lie, I think I would have been scared 00:04:07.166 --> 00:04:08.903 because I wouldn't want it to happen to me. 00:04:08.944 --> 00:04:13.745 Hitler, he liked Aryans, who wanted to be perfect, blond hair, blue eyes and I'm not that. 00:04:13.906 --> 00:04:16.445 All ethnic minorities, they would have suffered during the Holocaust. 00:04:16.541 --> 00:04:20.323 The life we're living in now, it's more relaxed, 00:04:20.371 --> 00:04:23.171 we've got nothing to really worry about. 00:04:23.187 --> 00:04:30.522 I had learned some things in school, but you know, what they teach us, 00:04:31.095 --> 00:04:35.365 it doesn't stay in your mind and you don't live the experience.