"When I was a boy... about seven or eight years old... our history teacher told us stories from the bible." "And he told us about..." "Egypt, about the Exodus... how the Jewish people suffered there." "It was like a legend that had nothing to do with me." "I often think... that my granddaughter is going to grow up... knowing that I was born in Lodz..." "Jack Fuchs" " Lodz, poland and she is going to look it up in an encyclopaedia." "The city of Lodz... 750,000 inhabitants, textile industries... and that is all she will find about it." "That 250,000 Jews lived there... and died in such a tragic way... not one word." "And that is frightening." "A child may look in an encyclopaedia... and will probably find.:" ""holocaust, term used in connection..." ""with six million Jews who used to live in Europe..." ""and were killed under unique circumstances..." ""by the Nazis, between 1939 and 1945."" "And that's all." "aIgunos que vivieron - (some who lived)" "When I finished elementary school... we went to BieIz to take the entrance exam for high school." "Liza Zajak-Novera Hajnowka BieIsk, poland" "We looked like two blooming flowers." "My parents even bought me new shoes." "We were there waiting for the others... and four big boys walked by." "They looked at us, and one of them said... putting his finger on his nose like this:" ""It smells like onion"... meaning that there was a Jew there." "This incident is engraved here." "Kids were..." "Robert Lamberg" " Liberec, CzechosIovakia for somebody who felt persecuted...." "The kids were very dangerous." "One time, they were chasing me... hitting me, and shouting, "You dirty pig, you dirty Jew!"" "And out of despair, I knocked at the deacon's door." "He was in his bedroom." "He came out and said, "What's going on?"" "I said, "They're beating me." "They're shouting 'Jew' at me, 'dirty Jew."'" "And he looked at me, with a nice smile on his face... and said, "So what?" "Aren't you a dirty Jew?"" "And he closed his door." "Young men, when they were drunk, used to shout "Jews!" in polish." "Benjamin MehI" " Uchaine, poland" "They would say in polish.:" ""Don't buy from a Jew!"" "Sometimes at school, even the teachers... sort of reproached us for the fact that we were Jews... and, being young children, we felt bad about that." "Whenever my mother went to BiaIystok to buy goods... on her return, she'd say that she went to a show." "Many single people and young married couples came." "They talked about Eretz israel and the future of the Jewish people." "They talked about politics, about the future of the world." "And I tried to understand what these words meant:" "communism, fascism." "And the word "hitler" was already in every mouth." "until 1937, we lived in Reichenberg... and later in the city of Brno..." "Brünn, in German." "And finally, in 1937, we ended up in bratislava, in slovakia." "Why this journey?" "Like a slow exile... toward Turkey or Egypt." "Because my father was sure that there would be a war... a world war, and that there would be a persecution... of Jewish people like never before." "Some German Jews came to CzechosIovakia." "alejandro Horyath MichaIovce, CzechosIovakia" "They managed to escape." "More so, when KristaIInacht happened... the "night of broken glass."" "We talked about it, but it wasn't something that...." "We were blind." "We did not see the reality." "There the border was shut down." "So we stayed in bratislava." "And, as Jews... we could not opt for... what was in place of CzechosIovakia." "And what was in place of CzechosIovakia?" "Either the German protectorate... of Bohemia and Moravia... or hitler's satellite state... the slovak republic." "When I was 13 years old..." "I became a member of... a socialist youth organisation known as Bund." "And when I was about 14, 15 years old..." "I joined the civil defence." "They gave me a band to wear." "They gave me instructions... and everything was like when we were young children... playing war:" "the good guys and the bad guys." "We would hide." "Everything was like a game." "There was a rabbi and there was a shochet." "A shochet was a religious sIaughterer." "He was an archetype of what I imagine as a tzaddik." "A tzaddik is a saint, a righteous man." "He wanted to essentially "score a goal for God."" "He wanted to perform a mitzvah." "He knew there were some people... who might forget to light the candles." "So, in the most delicate way, he'd knock on their window... and he'd say, "It's time."" "And everybody, believers or not, would light the Shabbat candles." "1939" "The first day of September was the first day of school." "Mira Kniazniew-Stupnik BiaIystok, poland" "My father had left for work... and my mother was... gIued to the radio." "At a certain point, she shouted:" ""War!" "War has broken out!" "Germany has invaded poland!"" "So instead of us beginning school... planes began to fly over us." "I was born on September 4, 1939... exactly when the allies declared war on Germany." "My parents didn't want me to be circumcised..." "Pedro Boschan" " Budapest, Hungary foreseeing that this could be a risk factor." "As a result of my parents' refusal..." "I was excluded from Jewish records from the very beginning." ""The Jews caused this world war." ""It was the Jews who were the cause of it all!"" "This was heard everywhere." "This was taught at school." "My mother had lived in Lodz during world War I... so it was still fresh in her memory." "My grandmother had died of starvation, of typhus." "My mother remembered the awful lines to get bread." "So when the war began, it was exactly the same." "From the very first days, there were long lines to get bread." "And just a few weeks later there were Germans on the streets." "But people continued on with their lives." "My little brother went out, and with his two big, beautiful, dark eyes... kept staring at a few soldiers who were eating something." "One of them stood up and gave him a loaf of bread." "These were the first soldiers." "They didn't discriminate yet." "They didn't ask whether we were Jews." "There were theories that Jews could be smelled... because they stink." "You can see them from far away." "Their ears are like this... and their noses...." "And the way they walk." "That was even taught at school... in a subject called:" "Rassenkunde, theory of the race." "We had to assemble, and I was assigned to a line... that was headed by the man who had been my history teacher." "He did not even look up." "He wrote my name without lifting his head, ashamed to look at me." "They made Jewish record books where they listed everybody." "What their names were, where they lived, and they just grabbed them." "They didn't take long to give the order to wear the star... which was worn on the Ieft side on the front... and on the right side on the back." "And one day... they came at dawn, surrounded our city... with lists, house by house... they came in and took us out." "Each one with a little bundle in his or her hand." "I cried, I cried for my dolls." "Eugenia Unger" " Warsaw, poland" "I cried because I had a special place there, a room... that had a bed, a dining room... all those toys that were beautiful, really beautiful." "And when I had to leave all of that... part of me was broken." "My uncle could have saved himself, together with his whole family." "He had a brother here in Argentina." "And he received a letter from this brother in 1938..." ""Why don't you come to this country?" "I will help you. "" ""Why don't you come with your family?"" "And years later, in the ghetto... he would walk around with that letter in his hand... showing it to everybody, "Why didn't I listen to my brother?"" "1940" "My brother had to smuggle things." "They would bring food from the Aryan side, the "gentile" area... into the Jewish area." "The idea was to get the bunkers ready... to hide." "And then one day, the Nazis caught them." "I couId talk from afar with my brothers." "There was a little boy there... he was singing there, in the prison." "Oh, my God." "That song that this boy sang...." "An image that I remember strongly is that of my father... as they were bringing him from the cellar where he had been beaten... his face covered with blood... and, of course, I couId not understand why... my father would let himself be beaten in that way." "At the beginning, they only smuggled food... but later on, they began smuggling weapons." "And many times... for a Iot of money, for a Iot of valuables... they would bring weapons that were either useless... or had no bullets... and so it became necessary... to manufacture weapons inside the ghetto." "The Jewish leaders, as well as a part of the population... did not consider the Resistance such a good thing." "But we must keep in mind that this was a civilian population." "They were not an army." "There were brave people, there were cowards." "They were families with children." "old people, sick people." "Not everybody was born to be a hero." "In the smaller towns, they took the population... they forced them to dig a pit... and then they killed them with machine guns." "Very few managed to get out, climbing through the dead bodies." "Then they would come to the ghetto and tell us about it." "A few managed to escape the ghetto... through contacts with the Resistance... and went into the woods." "One day, they issued a statement... that everybody was going to leave this prison." "I grabbed a knapsack, and packed boots and shoes." "I thought that they were being taken for forced labour." "I ran...." "I ran after them... screaming:" ""David, run away!" "Ignaz, run away!" "Run away, run away!"" "And I gave him, what's it called...." "I gave him that knapsack." "And he was taken to the UmschIagpIatz, where the trains were." "At the beginning, they would say.:" ""If you come today, we'II give you two or three pounds of bread"... and the people were hungry." "They were starving." "So the people went willingly." "The fear was of deportation... not of going to a certain death." "The families that I accompanied to the trains... took their belongings with them." "Nobody could even imagine... that the people going to the trains with their belongings... were going to their deaths." "A man came who had escaped from TrebIinka." "The names TrebIinka, Ponary, Majdanek, Auschwitz... were already mentioned in the ghetto." "And that man began to tell what was going on in TrebIinka." "He mentioned the gas chambers, the crematoria." "And we all took him for a lunatic." "1942" "They were cattle cars... completely sealed..." "David GaIante" " Rhodes, italy with just a little window... to allow us to breathe, to allow some air in." "We began to feel the overcrowding." "Diseases broke out." "people were dying inside the cars." "mostly, for sick people... or old people, this was unbearable." "At that time, I had a temperature, I was not feeling well... and there was a little lake, and my mother took me there... to wash me and get my temperature down." "At that moment, some trains came in... and the trains blocked us from the sight of the guards." "And my mother took advantage of that to hide me." "We stayed there hidden among the brush... while the people were pushed into the cars and taken away." "From that moment..." "I never saw my sister again... who disappeared or died, we never really knew." "We arrived at a railway station..." "Victor OppeI" " Poienu GIoduIui, Romania in a city, the Iast city in Hungary." "Before going through SIovakia... someone made this gesture with his hand... to warn us that we were going to our death... and somebody from the back of the train said, "He's an anti-Semite."" "My brother said that he remembered from a book he had once read... that people would hide underground, in bunkers." "So he suggested to try that, and get underground." "It could be for a day, a month, a year." "So we dug a hole." "We measured to fit in 10 people... alongside, and in the width, and the height was... about 3 feet, so that you could turn a little bit." "But not sit down." "We could not sit down in there." "At the beginning, it was easier." "Everything was easier at the beginning." "We could hide behind an armoire... using it to block the door." "They put the armoire there, and everyone was hidden." "But all that was useless." "Those Nazi bastards knew all about these tricks." "As they searched for sick people... you could sense that something terrible was going to happen." "Therefore, people went into hiding." "In my case, my mother and I... went down for the selection." "My father... and my two little sisters went into hiding." "And I... did something that today I think... was unethical... because they needed to take a certain number of people." "If they did not take my father and my two sisters... they had to take somebody else." "There were endless lines of people... and one mother carried a suitcase." "She did not want to open it." "And the Nazi fired two or three shots... and the suitcase opened, and a dead child fell out." "I saw that from... the little windows where we were up there, hidden on the roofs." "There were moments when those stairs were opened... and we could go out." "The streets were full of dead people." "They still had some clothes on." "They still had some belongings." "And then the poor people came... taking everything off them and putting on their clothes." "people were dying from typhus, diarrhoea." "It was terrible." "fleas were eating them up." "I remember a little boy who came by with a bundle... such a small boy... and he took out a photograph, and he said, "I had a mum and a dad." ""Look how handsome my mum and dad are!"" "My mother was able to get...." "I guess she paid some money...." "She was able to get us false identity cards in Budapest." "We kids played in the streets... with the weapons or the helmets that were scattered around, as toys." "But we were constantly aware... that we had to keep a secret... therefore, in a way, my little friends were potential enemies or informers." "1943" "It was the night of August 15th to the 16th... when the liquidation of the BiaIystok Ghetto began." "At 6.:00 in the morning, notices were posted... ordering everybody to gather at the assembling place... that was in Pietrasze." "They always sent the Jewish police first... or the Ukrainian and ByeIorussian collaborators." "And only then the Nazis came in." "They began to take people out of their houses, and it was then... that the Resistance reacted." "It was an unfair confrontation, but it was fuelled by heroism." "To see German soldiers dead on the streets... of the ghettos was no small matter." "But later, they came in with planes... they began to fire from a Iow altitude." "It became almost impossible, but the Resistance did not stop." "The Nazis had the ghetto surrounded for a full month... until they finally crushed... all the remaining resistance." "They were our heroes... the brave Jewish youth... who fought not just to defend their lives... but the honour of the Jewish people." "And we all came out." "We were among the Iast Jews who left the Warsaw Ghetto." "We were taken to the UmschIagpIatz... where the trains were." "And along the way, when I came out from the bunker... dead bodies were lying there... my cousins, my uncles, my aunts...." "They were all lying there." "After four years in the ghetto... we were among the Iast to be deported." "people could feel that the end of the war was close." "We had endured so much already, so we tried... to keep ourselves together, and not be deported." "But at the Iast minute, we were found." "The door was left open." "That is something engraved in my memory." "How can you leave your home... with the door left open?" "Our ghetto was liquidated in January, 1943." "And I Ieft in the third transport... with all my family." "We travelled... for four days and four nights... without any water... without anything." "One of my uncles reached out his hand with a small cup... and the Nazi shot him in the head, and he fell there." "He was dead for three days, Iying in the car... together with us, as we crossed all the territory of poland." "We were taken to Auschwitz." "We were ordered to get off, while being beaten." "We just collapsed like a shapeless mass." "Like garbage on the dirt." "And they were there with their huge dogs... screaming, "Right, left, right left"... just choosing a few young ones... and all the others to the other side:" "women, children, old people." "They told my youngest aunt, Sarah, to run... her little daughter stayed with my mother... and my mother turned her head and shouted at me, "Run!"" "And I ran." "And my little sister one year younger than me, ran after me." "But they beat her and sent her back... to where my mother and my little brother were." "And I ran after my aunt." "I stood by her side." "My little sister ran after me, and they beat her mercilessly." "And my mother and all the others... got on the trucks... and they all went to the gas chambers." "They took away all our clothes." "Everything." "And they took us to a block of barracks... where there was a kapo... and he screamed, "You are in the biggest..." ""concentration camp in the world!" ""There are so and so many prisoners." "Every one of you is in my hands!" ""I can do whatever I please with you!"" "And then, Dr. MengeIe came." "He set himself there... and then... selection." "To the right, to the Ieft." "The old women, the old men, the crippled... all of them... they went immediately to the gas chambers." "And children, too." "Those who were not at Ieast 16 years old were gassed." "I remember a boy... who was about 1 4 or 15 years old... and MengeIe told him:" ""How old are you?"" "The boy said, "Sixteen-and-a-haIf."" "He said, "I asked you how old you are!"" ""Fifteen. "" "And he sent him to his death." "In the barracks, there were children of about eight... ten, twelve years of age." "And they fed us very well there." "They gave us good food." "They took care of us." "They even gave us milk." "They had written on the card that I was eight years old." "When they realised I was 18... they sent me back to the working barracks." "Later I found out that all those children... were there for experiments... that the doctors performed on them, and then they were killed." "They took away my clothes... they gave me wooden shoes... and they cut my hair... they held us in quarantine... in Birkenau." "fleas ate us alive." "They didn't give us any food." "They brought in a pot of water, with potato skins... and a small piece of bread." "That was our meal." "And we were forced to work." "We had to do everything we were ordered to do." "It could be 3:00 in the morning." "They were barking at us, ordering everybody out." "In cold rain or snow, we had to line up in groups of five to be counted." "They spent their lives counting us." "people's lives were worthless, but everybody had to be counted!" "From there, we were sent to pick up debris." "The Nazis destroyed all the villages around Auschwitz... so that no witnesses were left." "And they killed people there." "Beatings were terrible." "If you just slipped, they wouldn't let you stand up." "And my friend MaIka, plodding on that mud, she tripped." "And this huge dog jumped on top of her." "When it was time to go back, everyone had to be accounted for... dead or alive... in order to make sure that none of us had escaped." "And I had to carry MaIka... together with another girl." "My workmate had to carry MaIka's legs... and I had MaIka's head hanging here... and MaIka's arms, as we walked along, were pounding on me." "They were pounding on me." "They are still pounding on me to this day." "We had to carry cement." "In order to carry cement, you need to know how... because if you don't know how to carry cement, you just drop dead." "We worked in the mountains." "Moises Borowicz" " SokoIy, poland" "We made tunnels with air hammers." "They planned to put factories there... to manufacture ammunition or some other weaponry." "They had entire towns with factories, with planes... everything was hidden underground." "I had to work in the factory where the grenades were manufactured." "Sometimes we managed to send grenades without a detonator." "VaIeria WoIIstein-Cohn BeIed, Hungary" "That was our little contribution, one might say... for the war effort." "On a Monday, we just fled." "We had to walk through 3 feet of snow... in temperatures below zero during the night." "And our parents could not breathe, or walk, or anything." "finally, one of the brothers... two of my brothers held my father up... and my mother, we had to carry on our backs." "halfway into the woods... my mother begged us not to take her any further." ""Just leave me here." "I cannot go on."" "She could not breathe." "She could not live anymore." "My father felt the same." "So we told her, "If you stay here, then we stay here, too." ""We won't go on."" "1944" "The clothes they took from the people sent to the gas chambers... were brought into the women's camp." "Everything was checked in the presence of two SS with machine guns." "If they saw something, we had to take it out and put it in a box... called Wertkasten, the box of valuables." "They also checked that a pile of good sweaters... didn't include one with a hole." "Each StapIerin, the woman who prepared the packs... had her Sortiererin, the one who... sorted out the clothes brought in by the men from the crematoria." "This was a good job... because sometimes we came upon a piece of bread." "And this could save our lives." "My father made a pair of shoes for me... real sturdy ones." "And there is a whole story around that pair of shoes... and I felt bad later on, because in Auschwitz... the only thing they let us keep was our shoes." "The last time I saw my father... they wanted to separate me from my father and I did not want to." "I am not sure if this is a dream... but my father pushed me away and said, "You go. "" "And I had these shoes." "I kept them." "Some time later... a Ukrainian, or a Frenchman, I don't remember who... saw my shoes, and he said:" ""Why don't you give me your shoes, and I'II give you a loaf of bread."" "And that loaf of bread... was like an injection of blood..." "like a blood transfusion." "I couId feel it replenish my body immediately..." "I felt it could help me survive a few more days." "To this day, I do not understand why they kept us in German territory... with typhus, tuberculosis, diarrhoea... people dying, corpses all around." "What was the purpose?" "Somebody explained to me later that they did not kill us because... they were waiting... to find a way... to wipe us out completely." "A MuseImann was...." "At the end, I was a MuseImann... because I was finished." "When one weighed 70, 75 pounds... a person with a body like that... was a MuseImann." "It was a body to be burnt." "Birkenau was the bottom of hell." "The crematoria could not keep pace... and the smell... that piercing stench of burnt flesh... a sugary odour that I can still smell." "In the barracks, I received the slice of bread for my brother... and when I went to give it to him, I found him dead." "That was terrible." "I thought I was going to die the same way... because after my brother got sick and died, I got sick with typhus." "You had the corpse on top of you, and you screamed, "Get off me!" ""I cannot stand you any longer!" And the person was dead." "Dead!" "I would wake up in the morning, and by my side there were two dead people." "Then I would sit them up... so they would be given a piece of bread." "I sat them up... and instead of just one piece of bread, I had three." "As for hope...." "I saw dead people every day." "I knew that one brother was dead, knew nothing about the other one." "I knew that my parents had been killed in TrebIinka." "So I had practically no hope of living." "When they were beginning the evacuation... my father, who always instilled... so much courage... and so much hope... he said... that he would leave Auschwitz on that train." "Of course, after this my mother was no Ionger a person." "She was practically a MuseImann." "And I decided that if, in the following selection... she was sent to the Ieft, I would follow her." "And the feared selection came." "MengeIe came in... and he indicated that she should go to the Ieft." "We were taken to the death block." "The trucks went in... and people were taken to the gas chambers." "This happened in January 1945." "The allies had already taken Majdanek." "There they found, working at full capacity... the gas chambers, the crematoria." "But the trucks never came for us." "So they took us back to the camp." "We were not the only ones spared from the gas chambers." "There was a previous group of people... who were already inside the gas chamber and were released." "And all the sick people stayed alive... and were liberated at the end of January 1945." "1945" "We had to dig the pits... and then throw the dead people into them." "And later on, they were covered with lime, I think..." "lime and dirt and...." "That's why they gave me an extra bowl of soup, because I went there." "I didn't even think." "I didn't even think." "What was I...." "I couldn't...." "I couldn't think." "We were not there to think." "We were there just to survive." "The only thing that we had in our minds was:" ""Where can we get a potato?"" "The snow was up to our knees, and we kept walking." "And on each side, the Nazis with their machine guns." "We walked in rows of five." "The person in the middle could sleep, and we would hold each other up." "If planes were bombing us... we just dropped on the snow and they shouted "Ios hinIegen"... which means "Iie down. "" "And suddenly we began to notice that there was one less Nazi beside us... and another one was gone... and we looked to the other side, and another one was gone." "They disappeared as if by magic." "And when we realised what all those shouts were about... the American soldiers were standing beside us." "And then...." "We hugged each other." "And the American officer...." "He was a Jewish man." "And he hugged me as if he were my father." "We were so thankful, so happy that we were being liberated... that we pushed sugar into the soldiers' mouths." "We were giving them the most precious thing we had... and they tried to explain that they were not hungry, that we should eat." ""Potatoes!" "Grab potatoes!"" "And we grabbed from the ground... and we began to eat this mush... and the American soldiers looked at us, thinking, "These people are crazy."" "One morning, we heard Russian songs." "We went up there... we put our arms up and said, "We are Jews."" "They said, "Jews?" "Fine." "What are we supposed to do?" ""Do whatever you want."" "And to hear that "do whatever" was like a dream for us." "You cannot imagine what it was like... when we heard that song...." "That was the song they were singing as they were coming towards us." "That was...." "I don't know." "At that moment I did not realise that all my family was gone." "And I wondered, "Where should I go?" ""I have no poland." "I have nowhere to go." ""My mother is no Ionger with me." ""I haven't got my brothers." "I have nobody." ""Where do I go now?"" "After the liberation, we went back to find out what had happened... and inside the bunker our parents were dead." "probably a bomb was thrown in." "And my little brother...." "The bones of his little hands...." "people from the Red Cross, reporters from newspapers came to film me." "They asked me to take off my clothes." "AII my vertebrae could be seen under my skin." "Once I was shaved, my hair cut and disinfected... and I was wearing pyjamas..." "I laid down in a bed for the first time... and at that moment I just said, "Now I can die."" "Why didn't I say, "Now I can live"?" "I did not think about that then." "I thought about it 50 years later." "It was the feeling that they couldn't kill me anymore." "Now I can die." "One day, my father came by." "Even after being fed in a medical camp... he still weighed only 81 pounds." "I had so deeply engraved... this issue of my new identity... and the risk of death if I didn't use it." "So when my father mentioned the Boschan family..." "I told him, of course, that I didn't know anybody by that name." "That has remained a very bitter memory over the years." "Tante GiseIa, Tante camila... the other cousin, Ernst Lamberg... everybody dead." "And we received identical letters." "It is known that helshe was in... concentration camp Sered until this date... concentration camp Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen... until this date... concentration camp by berlin until.... ...left the camp with a skirt I had stolen from a German woman." "The skirt and a piece of rye bread, which was already greenish... because I couldn't bring myself to eat it." "I kept it in my knapsack." "Those were the riches I brought back with me... to my dear poland." "We went to the house... of a Christian girl who lived there... and her mother was waiting for her." "Her mother was waiting for her, together with all her family." "You wouldn't believe the party they threw when she arrived." "No wonder, of course." "The next day, they went to church." "I went with them, but I told them..." "I wasn't a Christian... and I wasn't going to kneel." "I was an atheist." "I did not believe in God." "Now I ask for Your forgiveness, God." "WAR IN EUROPE IS OVER GERMANY SURRENDERS" "When we went outside..." "I heard a newsboy saying that the Nazis... that hitler and his people escaped to Argentina." "At that time, I didn't even imagine that I was going to be in Argentina." "AII the Croatians, all the Nazis came to Argentina... and we couldn't get in." "The bishop's secretary... was the one who arranged everything." "He arranged everything." "We had to be smuggled into Argentina." "Perón did not allow us... to come into the country because we were Jews." "My aunt paid the $200 or $300 to get us here... and we arrived in this country." "Three or four months later, my husband arrived." "And the struggle to survive began again." "To learn the language, to Iearn a job... to Iearn sewing on an electrical machine." "We used to spend summers in Miramar." "When we were on the beach, I'd wonder, "Who lives in that house?"" "It was a two-storey house." "Later, I Iearned that Schwamberger lived there... one of the most wanted Nazis in the world." "He lived in that house across from where I was with my kids." "He may have passed by my side on the street while we were walking." "He may have touched my arm which they tattooed." "Many of them came to this country." "I can only mention the names I know... such as MengeIe, Schwamberger, Eichmann." "Lots of them came here and we still do not know today." "When I came to this country... and I saw the soldiers..." "I thought that all the Nazis were here... because they wore the same helmets, the same uniforms." "It was the period... of the nationalist rise... so again, we had to get false documents... with birth certificates from different places... stating different religions... with different dates." "Therefore, our arrival and settlement in Argentina... was still surrounded by an aura of illegitimacy... that had to be protected so it was not discovered." "1976" " MILITARY COUP IN ARGENTINA" "When el Proceso, the dictatorship took place in Argentina... it was much like it was in Europe." "This proved the idea... that this is not something that only happened there... as an accidental circumstance at a certain place in the world... but rather that this is something we're all subject to, permanently... no matter where we live, and no matter who we are." "Just like in Germany... there were many people who did not want to see." "But I did know." "I knew about the missing people." "About people we were acquainted with." "My sons at that time were studying at law school." "And every day, to see them safe at home, it was like "we survived one more day."" "1992" " BOMBING OF THE ISRAELI EMBASSY" "When the israeli embassy was bombed... the people involved were never arrested... and that was it." "With the bombing of AMIA (Jewish Federation)... they managed to destroy a cultural legacy as well." "1994" " BOMBING OF AMIA BUILDING" "The bombing of the Jewish Federation building, for instance... and the recent findings about police involvement in it... refute the government's more reassuring version of the incident... which was badly needed in order to settle down... establish roots, feel comfortable and belong here." "Some reporters said:" ""There were also innocent victims who were passing by."" "implying that those who were Jews had not been innocent victims." "I became an Argentinean citizen." "I feel I am an Argentinean." "And I think this was an attack against a country, against Argentina." "Not against the Jews." "The desecration of graves reminds me of the Nazi era... when they destroyed the Jewish cemeteries in Europe." "In Germany, at the beginning, hitler had ideal circumstances." "unemployment was very high... and the VersaiIIes Treaty put a Iot of pressure on Germany." "Taxes were very high, there was hyperinfIation... and unemployment reached a terrible level." "It reminds me of the situation here." "It scares me when there is such a high rate of unemployment... because then people look for a scapegoat." "How could this happen in Germany?" "In such a cultivated country?" "They elected a man like hitler." "I remember once when I went to work for a short time in Puerto Rico..." "I thought it was paradise." "I couId not believe how beautiful it was." "The palm trees and bananas growing everywhere." "You could just grab them." "Oranges, the sea...." "The beauty and peace of it all." "The first thing that came to my mind was:" ""Was all this exactly the same while I was in Auschwitz..." ""or in the ghetto?"" "apparently, it was." "I remember the first days in Dachau... the colours... because it is in Bavaria." "It was fall." "How did I dare... to look at nature... to look at the mountains... that I had never seen before?" "In September we celebrate the High holidays.:" "Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur." "Once on the eve of Yom Kippur... when koi Nidre is sung... somebody took out a siddur... a small prayer book... and began to pray." "The weeping in the barracks... is deeply engraved in my memory." "The weeping, the pain, and the feelings that engulfed all of us." "Perhaps one needs to cling to those memories... to that Yom Kippur... to keep on living." "And the people who could not break away from this pain... they just died." "The pain fades away and becomes nostalgia." "Sometimes, I even think... about the ghetto with a feeling of nostalgia." "You wonder how that is possible." "How is that possible?" "I remember my friends... boys and girls, walking around the ghetto... singing songs... and sometimes it is the survivors' pride... that prevents them from admitting that they have forgotten." "That does not mean that they do not remember... but it is impossible to relive... and nobody should criticise them."