"We Don't Say Goodbye": Southern Tier People Remember the Holocaust

Support for we don't say goodbye has been provided by the Robertson museum and Science Center Binghamton. But Sheldon h solo foundation the shore family and the family of Dr. Edmund Goldenberg were way way way. If you had had just Roy show a decade ago but we didn't know that he would go away I think they put out those that you have in the. Bedroom to stand. I'm sure my mom does know that this is a no good. She talked to us

at the Capitol. Maybe at that time in that battle that you might survive but I won't. But you must soon by the time the Staunton. Here we are thousands of miles from Auschwitz and book and wild and troubling and more than a half century removed from the end of the Second World War and the evils of the Nazi state. Six million Jews and others perished in the Holocaust. Those who survived were displaced to many parts of the world. These are the memories of the Holocaust survivors who came to America and happened to settle within 40 miles of each other in upstate New York. They might not all have been personally acquainted or knew each other's stories but their experiences fit together. The Middle Of The Street of course but not much. He would have big.

Brood and. Keep bending under by watching them. I didn't look right. At the kid I did it to my chagrin but I wouldn't say that is behind you something I guess will remain with you for us will be alive. You DO WE member what happened to you. But you didn't have a normal blinking like for instance for and when my wife cried when to a class for you and you. I have no class with you in your Because I went to school in Germany Switzerland France and here. My earliest memory Smith had merely had much to do with my family. Member going to school and Bill and. His were actually happy memories you know all that I.

See that. We had a happy childhood. There was no anti-Semitism in Holland before the war. We went to school still young. I remember. Three of them walk by somebody who knocked at the. Window in the school. To tell the truth wish children that it was time for. She was told to go home because they had to go home before Shabbat starts. We used to walk out to the soup. Together. That night and then we came from school that was that and I think but I have been a member of that. Special Friday night to make kiddish. I have. Nine candles. And my day was to light light one candle. I have wonderful memories from that time in my childhood.

Whatever changed in 1933. The friends that I had. Those little birds and the good friends were. Mixed. Jewish. And Gentile. Back in 1933. The gentiles didn't want to play with me anymore and I was taught that it was much worse than going to medical school. They did not want to have any Jews. They allowed only a limited amount of Jews of all the southern tier people who survived the Holocaust. None was as dedicated to teaching about that period of history as Dr Edmund Goldenberg. He sponsored educational projects in the Broome County schools and wrote a book about persecution he faced as a young physician just out of medical school I got there and I was fortunate that they haven't been one of us but us

with everybody else. We get special seats assigned to the gyms. And the classes were and other means that we were expected to provide own courses for or the such and so on. Like the professors of the teachers who were dismissed from the universities had no income either and emigrated very quickly. My friends did not fall into that category. And being a veteran of the First World War. This cannot last very long survive it etc. etc.. So I think what happened is that taps the inside at the time that you had to leave. How could have they predicted what was going to happen in Nazis being 2 percent in one thousand twenty eight How could they predict what that political

programme was going to to look like. Dr. Lance Sussman is a rabbi and a historian from 1989 to 2001 he was spiritual leader of Temple Concord the Reform Jewish congregation in Binghamton and associate professor of history at Binghamton University. Among his writings is the book in our midst about how the Holocaust influenced this one American community. I would say it takes a long time for one's psyche and for the collective. Public's psyche to be really organized in a way where you could make the kind of statement that ultimately Leo back made that a thousand years of German-Jewish life was over. Who could imagine their families had been there for a thousand years. When I fry bacon but other people fought back they backed off. They were taken by surprise because Jews were known in parliament in Germany for not fighting back. But this was

unbecoming. To Jewish people who were afraid or whatever it was we didn't know what to do whether we could be evicted. Being Jewish and so on it became life became absolutely yeah. It finally ended that we have to eat in the Jewish soup kitchen which was really the bottom of the barrel and I never forget that. And then came because stand there in the 1978 November 9th and 10th 1938 the night of broken glass. Organizes attacks on Jews and their property cross Germany and Berlin Leopold drone found was an eye witness. The streets seemed empty. Because. People were congregating to the places where the action was. To the synagogues and to the stores. I went to the synagogue service. And it was inflating pressure on the Jewish community had been mounting.

Maybe with the exception of advance just before the. Thirty six a little pigs when the Nazis were trying to put a little better face on for the outside community in fact use cruise style knock to get the. Ne Semitism going again it was compensatory that maybe let it go too far from their. Their very distorted perspective. I think it was the scale. And the ferocity that caught people by surprise. I saw a pair of school olds. In the street. And people working on then I dare not get into I had a friend who went with me to her to shoot. Was a little bit older than I am and he told me. That we should go inside and rescue one of those. Torah scrolls. And. We did.

And Richard Speck That's it would put it about about foods things that I have done that they had not just impact. On my life although that day itself did itself as I remember it didn't try advertise me. I mean I didn't get hysterical. I was curious and I was driven by curiosity not by fear. I didn't really think that anything was going to happen to me. And. So give us a nickel. Even though her father was Jewish Berlin native Leila Reese was able to escape persecution. But as a young woman she remained a witness to the evils of the Nazi regime and the destruction of war time. Everybody was so funny to go down. This is I think the show they wanted to do. Too.

Many people be afraid. We're trying to live a normal life in the beginning go ahead terraces made tempers and I got to say I remember you know there was how bad their condition. Somehow you try to. Survive. And loss went on. In severity and. In small steps. And I remember each time something came out. Like. For example Jews cannot. Leave in the evening unless they get special permission. But if you did I got special permission to go to school. With each time one of these things came out. We would say to each other. Oh that's no big deal we can live with this. And the next thing would come. But as things got worse. Jews and other opponents of the Nazi regime did seek

a way out. Ruth when Miller and her family were passengers on a well-known journey of cash hope my father found out that he could get a visa in Berlin. How he found out I don't know all they went to Berlin and they bought a visa. My father my mother and myself. To go to Cuba unless I am a lawyer or were a luxury lawyer. We went 7 7 on the sand lawyer once we got on and moved out of the Hama. We were fleeing when we arrived in Havana. We got a very to get off that morning. But things they had no people say that America Online knew that we could not land because we had paid not on the way. Passage to Cuba they also asked us to pay for their turn passes to Cuba. We paid first class return I was hauled to us class.

After about a week we had to leave and we headed toward the United States. We didn't know it but we were heading towards Miami and we could see the city and the abyss but there was no way they would land our land. Ruth and many of the children spent the war years in orphanages. Many of the passengers aboard the St. Louis survived but some did perish in the concentration camps. Meanwhile they appalled Grunsfeld family fled Berlin enjoin some 17000 Jews in Shanghai China. It was unbearable. The humidity was his Highers temperature was showing I was actually at sea level. It turns out I see it is now it turns out is the best thing that ever happened to us. But again you have to understand that we came you know dressed in the uniform of Central European Jews you know who came to work we expected there.

It was an enormous amount of sickness that comes in tropical countries with poverty and very very kind people Chinese enormously kind people are being displaced soon as the Nazis come into power and Binghamton and and environs in particular you begin to get German Jews. Coming in who will become involved in the dairy production dairy farming. Others will work for the photographic company depending on their technical skills so you get people coming in throughout the 30s prior to mass killings. This uncle of my mothers was a kid a year Army officer and a physician. It was directed to himself. Because when people knock came knocking at the door. And this was something that the

particular there one day an adult cross-party of again not a party did a lot. They were knocking on doors and say Is there a Jew here is if you live here. Hard Knocks it open the door. He would be in his high officer's uniform with the medals an open door and he would. He then told me that either. Chuckling Glee laughingly that they would jump to attention salute and leave some of them who has nothing for the Germans and but gave up on very easily. Soon the swastika would fly all across Europe that night. I will never forget. Because friend of a hero had announced. That Holland was no more. We all said to get in the living home. And my mother had settled herself in her

chair. She staring into space and she was ashen gray but nothing happened. And that first night in Holland's many Dutch families committed suicide John Sternberg's family emigrated legally from Germany to France. They held together even through time in a French concentration camp. But then his parents had to go into hiding. I remember for the US was two guys walking through woods towards the Swiss border and we hid. Above all Road railroad barbed wire and then Switzerland. These guys knew of a certain place that there was no bob way. So at one point they told us to go ahead. Now the patrols have gone by because their load going to Switzerland.

My father had been in a first world war and he was afraid that when you walk at night you have a tendency to walk in circles. So we walked and walked. I don't know what is maybe 2 o'clock 1 o'clock flick I don't know I don't remember. And we came to a small village and I memba Mandos maybe four o'clock five o'clock at the time and the man on the bicycle came along. First question and I spoke to the fact French I told you. Can you tell you I'll be in Switzerland and France you know for walking he says on the outskirts of Geneva. Says I want you to come with me with the permission of the parents. They placed the children into foster homes. You know I was fortunate enough to end up with a doctor in Basel Switzerland

who had four children of his own and it took me in as a first child and I was with them for four years. One day you could take that market place in the open space and they were sending their way people to different concentration camps and one day my brother my youngest brother who is 13. You were in their way. Another throw him again you wouldn't know about that at that time where he's going. Everybody from that time on had to carry a little ID card in their pocket at all times. Then than get us a special branch of station which you showed me and really had to come through to city hall. And I guess stamped with a big J.

Once the Nazis were in power they did conduct a racial census. And the fact of the matter is that the technology. At that point which supported census taking was an IBM based technology was not IBM and there was a German parallel division but nevertheless that was the technology that was employed by the Nazi government to do racial classification. They didn't have to go around in town and say this one's Jewishness one is Jewish it was already done. When they organize systemic. Systematic fashion I mean that and that is one of the most important aspects of the understanding that the Holocaust is was not random this is is different than a massacre. You have a nation state using the systems of a national government Ward particularly in the feria school which is the destruction of a

people in the cause and a culture and ultimately a biological destruction of a people that always help train them to sleep through the night. Mr. Clinton I think somebody must. Coming out of the Gestapo come and take a fall. That's almost one third because my son to me. It took away with him. To win over you know people trying to hide. They were finding them relatively easy. And they were killing them. We either a man or raining men you know to go after the camp of the group work and drive away. There's only one type of work that I knew of. And that was going out. It's still inside the gates. And. Digging. Graves. But as my scrapes Usually

when I went the graves were already. Filled or have healed. And they were big bright hills of chlorine which. Smelled terrible and for years after that and to this very day. I associated the smell of urine with that when it came to our shit. Why did you. Write it you know in music. And music playing. And later the two clans that left today claim that tolerance but I didn't know it had come a time when they didn't know what I read. Well look to me like I bake it because I have wealth. Sexsmith and like like from a baker a plow with sacks of flour you know. You know I said to my husband my boyfriend so I have next to me and I said some bacon that bit me. Yeah he was smarter than I was. He said No

honey what they're doing he is burning to people here and the ashes from your parents from your grandparents. And they came and it took my husband away in the fire hitting him because he would have you know next to me and it took me away and I didn't see him in a moment. You people who had to be kept out of there were they had the German Jews. Who said he was a god. Probably was a medical student of them. But how he became the camp that I reported through a couple of them says we're going to go to the vim and got shaved shaped up ahead in numbers. Did you get a number. Yep. What is your number. I have to look at it. Can I look. I don't want to remember that.

It's. Seven's made them to 7 7 then you see the names what I what they didn't use anymore the names and what is your number. They could be 136. As was my name. Can you read the number 1. You couldn't tell him to have one vote their peers did nine and a bad them showed him right through. He took everything away and next day it's a book that I found and I looked it was from my mouth that I didn't remember had so I wouldn't put it there. And that a lady she was. When Czechoslovak cry

she wasn't sure which and that she had to when I was my Maga. She'd hit huband O's blade. I was stupid. You are who and I will show you where you know I'm very heated towards a legal one and you can see what he do with them. Prius name how would I pull a small and tell you to come on out get your kid and tape and can I your thing can say anything in the only good thing. Because hippy if I had to say it but some night to shame a gentleman and say come on you get well and it bad right.

It wasn't allowed to play with. He was very young at 16 16 years old maybe 17 and us young Chip and I could. Call needed a night. And she said to us. Listen. I know. I don't have a book. But. I have no to pray as. I have. But you have to be Betty Benteke by you. Know by this foot here. She started to say the prayer and then the Opens the Gestapo. You're not going to pay me. It took at of a we never saw her again. That camp wasn't on him. First of all the place where your will can

was a place called Where have been gangs and waltz and now mountain Col-Col the mountain they made the one and the two rockets and that that's why there wasn't a mountain and we our work was to help the jam and it's always the human who has to walk faster. We were on such a high you could make those we wanted to be food always scream and do the best in the world can figure I. Was just like a how the accidents are. Common if you have a bad accident there was a your child who goes mobile you're not. Useful anymore. I still remember the young girl who got shot with a hoop you know her other six months and he was yelling I'm not dead yet sugar. I'm for girl boy

sermons. It was a new study. They took all the calls and often we had to go into the cover ALL the hall for the whole body. Everything and he walked out. You have to go into a basin like a swimming pool and your body when you have Bill and having a couple doesn't like it that it does in fact that above all your body even got out and Mr. than Langer gave your closing. Poems probably just was. In southern Poland just as as you. And lots of snow most. People are going to have a thing to put on. So I went to the. Doctor. And he sort. Of. Room. No problem. In the there were a couple the couple days later the bootloader got a.

Big blow for. The bump in the middle of the King of them looking. And looking at the seams and so listen to them who can. There was a mouse. It's. One. Thing to. Say hello to. The world and big hug big things and survive to cling to them. So you. Know there were some. Very Orthodox Jews in that camp. Who somehow are allowed to keep that religious. And and most of those long player.

Song. Is. With. A box. Of all descriptions side. And they would use those to try to beat other prisoners. To get there. And. And I know I had this feeling. Vaguely flitted through my head at the time but I know I had it at the time. This is supposed to be for playing. Not a good beating. People used to grab the blood from somebody else to eat. I remember once a day they sent six people to bring the sub and the kitchen to have her back. They got in a hijacked by Russians and it took away the barrel of the soap. While going on and stayed with. Us. We would say goodbye we don't say goodbye. Girl So goodbye mood human didn't seem to. Reply throws hope to soon to see her again.

Well when you can private Lao Tsu again. Will you kill. I just know that many people died in Cam and that it was middle of the picture. She was she was 17 when she went into hiding and she was 18 or 19 then she was caught she was right too. And this was. The end. If the Nazi era began with parades it ended with death marches as the military situation turned against the Axis powers inmates of the concentration camps who had not been killed or starved were taken from their barracks and forced to walk themselves to death. The colder the better walk the walk without a chair with a head like shoes from wooden shoes.

And a lot of people die a lot of people and the power especially by pressuring them to just track them I want. He went from him up my street from they just got together thousands and thousands of people. So many think we don't have any fruits. We just took some snow from the ground and you know they brought a little better than us. That's have it survived the march went to a concentration camp. Name My thousand. And. My thousand was a large camp nearly Allston German border. Which was so large and so full that it formed satellite camps around it. We got to my house and I remember that place is a large

fenced. And. The chimney is going full blast. I could see the chimneys and black smoke billowing out of the chimneys and I knew they were coming to hims. That's where they burned the bodies. Americans are just about the most able to crawl out. There and we played a standing couple. Button pegs and people were all around yelling and screaming and dancing and whatever. I didn't call cause for because I was too weak to go into the mass of people but I saw small over the male actor and it was somewhat of an abandon. So I with difficulty I crawled all over the. Bread. The problem was water took my water with hands. Took it to my face and.

Then. And. I had my first of. A look. There were two dead bodies. Or. Something. I recall that there were no guards there. And for the next two days there were no guards and there was no food. And it's like opening the cage. Of a bird the bird doesn't want to leave the cage doesn't there. We can know your fate. And of course we knew. That it was thinking if we didn't do it I do believe. That if you could believe you would be shot. So what do these mysterious I would do overs are this is. Hunger. And. You found the doors were not locked and they got out. And very soon after that the very same day I saw

American trucks I saw a big green tux with white star spinning on them. And I thought it was a Russians and Soviets because of the star I didn't know so it starts with it. And. There were black faces. In the tux and I knew they were Americans because I knew that. They were OK call the negroes in America and not the Soviet Union. But they just kind of dogged by. So nobody actually liberated us in the sense of coming in and throwing the Germans out and open the doors. The Germans left they fled. Not saying a word to the prisoners then and say you can go now. It's very warm there by I can give you. Ice of. The Commons at least.

There could be some. Unbelievably bad. They were starved so bad that their legs looked like two broomsticks. With a grapefruit stuck in between where the need should be. They were so light that I can remember picking many of them up to time to carry them off the train. I was a big strapping young man at the time and had a lot of strengths but even so they only weighed. Forty to sixty pounds apiece. They were just nothing but skin and bones. How did you manage to survive and you can't. Well I was young and I was strong and. I almost didn't survive I think the reason our survived is because my experience was it was a short that is in that particular camp it was about five months and I'm saying that because I lost more than have my body weight and

I became ill with typhoid. Just after the camp I stopped being so inspired of my youth and physical strength. I probably wouldn't have lasted another month the way I will go now where you know wrong. Because you can't stand to have. No Hong. No family no kind of way I will get no more to talk so that I had crossed that it was and I can and need instead to what can we do for you. Tell us anything you want solution to rush you. You want to do it. We do know what to do for him.

Why what did he what did he do. What did why did you want to do something Couric us to tell you said true. And he was American and he was had to win who has it really still have somebody left in the world. And they went to the city and I came back with we had some American soldiers and they said that we had this little Bible they've met and they embraced and they were wonderful they came back eventually and brought us food and clothing so we can change and it was the most beautiful. Time. Of my life at that time it was spring of May May. The weather was beautiful and the birds were. Singing and praying and we don't have to starve and we don't have to march and we don't have to see all the horror and we are live in. The lifeboats and from the

system. Put into place the to help take care of people. The political problem develops we're going to go we're going to go back to their homes and Paul ones. Where you are welcome to go there. It's a very thorny problem. Ultimately a large number of them want to go to Israel or what becomes Israel but the British had a white paper in place so concentration camps empty and DP camps still and the same people or under much more humanitarian conditions and in the concentration camps are nevertheless caught in the vortex of history with nowhere to go. And ask it be happy to have kids and America may be but on their own in the good America. I pick up my hand and I said I have. And I spoke Yiddish. And he said You is. So he spoke he

understood. And I said I have to tell it kind of Finn in the United States Fayette New York. But that it might or might not think you know what they found that he was searching for them now a long time. And he upon me be you know a sense to me that so that there's. You know there's a new thing in the least. Gibson to grow. You can in my opinion as. A neighbor singling the big game and think that it was an obscene ruling which no Jav my grandfather's

fair boy. There were 12 kids of which six or seven had emigrated to the U.S. way back and they all settled in New York City. And then the offsprings started moving other places like one cousin of my mother moved to you know he was a quite a cattle dealer quite a businessman and then another cousin followed to Bainbridge and then my hand and uncle followed moved to bring up then and this is why we came to Binghamton. They needed a physician who practices to have their own clinic as your practice because Johnson. Lots of people love a kind check so I was at home which was a lie you know isn't it that.

Nobody and you knew nothing when printed in the new system is when he came here and in the 90s. Some people can either see this thing through good to them and sees through as they would. If you want to get through your life sometimes you have to bury the memory along with the people. And allow that allow that to come up just to allow yourself to experience a great deal of personal. Pain. Thirty years pass 40 years pass and you have different thoughts if I don't tell my story remember. I can never see it if I'm Jewish and Gentile You know what I mean. I can never be like an American Jew. Do

you know I think it really took them seriously in family how I can do that. And I was scared. I don't have enough confidence you know the way my company and I do have nightmares and recurring nightmares but it's getting better. It's getting bad. Bad. Definitely night Mass. Being trapped. Nightmares of being trapped. And no way no way I would. Call my cell. And I'm. Pretty sure I'm in your the. Room of a company and some like. You. And. I don't think I was ever young. Either grab them the child and constant constant feeling of

being loved one and some others seeking. Going on. I like to I like to think you can Ruben. About that. Dr. Edmund Goldenberg died in August of 2004. His friend Rabbi Sussman was then in Germany leading an educational exchange with American and European youngsters. I believe the day of Dr. golden Berg's. Funeral I was a book involved with 11 Jewish kids and 12 German kids and we had a memorial service there. And I said cut it for Dr. Goldenberg there in the middle right in the middle of a concentration camp. And I think he would have totally approved that it was a circle of love of understanding.

Holocaust survivors who came to the southern tier of New York carried their experience with them and if possible behind them they became U.S. citizens. They could go on and enjoy the blessings of everyday life raise their families and do their work. John Sternberg as an engineer he foreign teams over Smit a pianist and composer Very would teach German to Cornell University and Leopold grew and became a professor in Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Jeanette and Jacob Geld were managed a grocery store. And Jake would tell about his experience in the book from Auschwitz to if in 1067 a pillared monument was erected on the grounds of Temple Israel investor in memory of the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. For those who survived there will always be the recognition that the event that changed them also changed the world.

I have never forgotten the travel time they've been through and I can still not go to negotiation to a without thinking about poor people who cannot go to close a store. And buy nothing. These are just basic basic. Need for any human being should should have and I could do this. But. I have come to the conclusion God happiness comes from within and not from election. Thanks factor my hasn't become president of the synagogue. He served for 11 years and I was present up the sisterhood I would always have been of the Borg I was workin for you and I could use your fear. I was so grateful to be here and I want to give myself for that. 10. When did lesson gain here. Mike you know you did and we were going to Florida that was my mind privilege of mine to play here to help them.

I cannot stand to say good but that's it's a long and symbol can and stroking. Oh. Support for we don't say goodbye has been provided by the Robertson museum and Science Center

Binghamton. The Sheldon h solo foundation the shore family and the family of Dr. Edmund Goldenberg.