teaching the holocaust 2004 summer workshop - Southern Institute ...

see, old religious Jews, and walked through the whole city. Then they brought us back to the
market place, and they had put everything from synagogues, took out all the books, all the
prayer books, they made a bonfire, and they told everybody should dance around, and our
neighbors stood and watched and laughed. That was a bigger hurt than the degrading that
they did. At that time they took out everything, I mean the prayer books, everything took out
from the synagogues, and put the synagogues on fire. They burned the synagogues, and we
had to dance around the bonfire.
PR And you're telling me that the Poles and Ukrainians stood there.
E Yes. Yes. I have now like in front of my eyes I see them.
PR And they stood there and they did what?
E Watched like you would watch a Mardi Gras parade.
PR Did you tell me that they laughed?
E Yes. Many of them.
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A REAL GOOD UKRAINIAN FRIEND
E No, no, no. It worsened, because the Germans came in and the real anti-Semitism began.
The Ukrainians collaborated with the Germans, the Poles didn't stick too much up for us,
they were I guess afraid for their own lives because right away there decrees in Poland who will
help the Jews they will kill their families. I mean, the Gentile families, the Polish families. So
they didn't too much stick up for us and the gap even widened between the Poles and the
Jews.
PR Your friends who you went to school with, there was a complete separation.
E Complete separation. Complete separation. Even my, I had one brother who had a real