Julius Balbin

MOTHER – Well, I visualized the tragedy of that fateful day of October 29, 1942, when she was carried away from the ghetto to nowhere. "Judenaktion," so called "Judenvernichttungsaktion." I watched her. We were expelled from our building and had no choice but to mingle with a crowd that was divided into two groups. I never knew, nobody knew, which group was going where, because young and old people were in either group. I was in a group that was fated to remain in the ghetto. My mother was in one that was destined to go to a gas chamber.

FATHER – I respected him. I did not love him as much as my mother, but when he died here in America in 1963, I was profoundly shaken. He was a dentist. He was also put in a concentration camp, Malthausen, and there, thanks to a Polish doctor in the infirmary (Chaplinski was his name), was protected. He shielded my father from being killed to the end of the war until the liberation by the Russians.

SISTER – My sister ran away to the eastern part of Poland and was deported by the Russians to the Ural Mountains, and from there to Uzbekistan. That's how she survived the war. She lives in Haifa with her husband, and she is quite happy there. She wouldn't think of coming to live in the U.S.

SELF PAST – I remember the love bestowed on me. I was basking in the warmth of my mother's love which was bordering on worship, which I reciprocated. I had a very happy childhood even though my father was severe, on the stern side, the right counterpart to my mother's overwhelming love.

SELF HOLOCAUST – I always admired myself for having achieved that fantastic, unbelievable deed, survival. To the point that I sometimes don't believe that it was a reality but to have been a terrible nightmare. Plashow was called a labor camp but it was a euphemism because, in actual fact, it was an extermination camp. Every day the Kommandant, Amon Gert, went out for a morning walk, and, in that walk, he had to kill at least three Jews during their hard labor outside the camp. It was for pleasure, for sport, morning diet, breakfast. If he didn't like a face, he simply shot the man. Incredible. I fell sick in that camp with jaundice and I was hospitalized in the camp infirmary. Once he appeared there to select the sick for shooting. He looked at me and he skipped me. He took several other patients who seemed in very bad shape. They were executed on the so-called "pricks hill," in Polish slang, because men had to strip themselves before they were shot. From there I went to the Velichka camp where I was mining salt in the lowest shaft. The SS were afraid to descend and so the Polish workers were able to sneak us some bread. They knew how hungry we were. After they abandoned that camp, they took us by train, day and night without even a drop of water, to Malthausen in upper Austria. That was 1944. My father was there. He was kept in the sick bay. I was delegated to a labor squad in Linz cutting stones in a stone quarry. We were dying, bitten by lice, and starving – dying while cutting stones. A year after liberation, I received a letter from the Red Cross that my father was hospitalized in Prague and that he was looking for me.

SELF PRESENT – I cannot divest myself of such an experience. It haunts me day and night.

SELF FUTURE – My life's task is to bear witness to the Holocaust by writing about it.

Otto Schulz

FATHER – My father was very stable, always merry and of good cheer. Joking all the time. A good father.

FIRST SISTER – Else, the eldest sister, was, in the early days, somewhat of a mother substitute. She is still alive. To this day we have a good relationship with each other.

FIRST BROTHER – Ernst is the eldest brother. The affinity is not as great as perhaps to my sister or to another brother. But we definitely get along.

SECOND SISTER – Trude died many years ago of Parkinson's Disease, somehow through the effects of the war. A quiet, cheerful girl with a good singing voice. Never discontented and never bitter about destiny, although she knew that her days were numbered.

SECOND BROTHER – Walter, an athlete and a regular clergyman, was foolish enough to enlist in the war. He was a soldier, very brave, who was killed in action as late as April, 1945.

THIRD BROTHER – Paul was born a sickly child – some kidney business – and died during the war as a young man.

FOURTH BROTHER – He is still alive. Generally, he is known by the name Karlchen. That is what my mother called him, and we almost all still use it today. I have good relations with him.

SON – We have a very good relationship with each other, without doubt. Maybe better than 10 years ago or, for certain, better than 10 years ago.

SELF PAST – Yes. I cannot state that simply. My past, in terms of thinking, is perhaps 60 years. Thus, I have to distinguish between the past as a child, which went rather harmoniously although it was not blessed with the good things of this world, and my second past as a soldier. I was a soldier for eight years. Then, after '45 or '46, when I came back from the war from my captivity, that was my third past, if you will. And then, I would say, was a good time. The third past has been a good time, and it still is good.

SELF WAR – Yes. I was a soldier for six years and a prisoner for two years. I experienced a lot as a soldier, a lot. But when the war was over I didn't suffer because of it, nor does the war or my time as a soldier matter very much to me today.

SELF PRESENT – At the moment I live a very aware life. Very nicely, very well. I am completely content, and I am even grateful for it.

SELF FUTURE – Well, if it stays like this, then I would not need any changes.

ABOUT GUILT – I personally do not think that I burdened myself with guilt in regard to the question raised (the Holocaust). But I am also naturally a child of my generation which is somehow certainly guilty in an extended sense. After the war I got to know several Jews and we became friends. I am very generous and very kind to them, not in the least for the reason of what was done to them. By the way, I still have two Jewish friends today.

ABOUT THE THIRD REICH – In the early days, hardly noticeable. I was perhaps shaped a little bit by my Catholic parents. I was not a friend, but I was not an anti-National Socialist either in those days because I could not even think politically. On the other hand, I love thinking for myself and would neither leave that up to the the Fuehrer nor to anybody else. Actually the horror – maybe you want to hear that. I first heard about the horrors of National Socialism in Russia. There were letters about euthanasia circulating. And I know that, afterwards, that subject concerned us a lot. We could not stop thinking about it. But from that day on I was somewhat prepared for the crime and disgrace that these people were responsible for.