Survivor: Joseph Sher

These are the true stories of the suvivors that lived throught the Holocaust and came out alive..

Joseph Sher

Place of Birth:	Krzepice, Poland
Date of Birth:	July 27, 1917
Life During Wartime:	Labor Camps
Current Occupation:	Tailor
Family:	Widower, Two Children

There were 6 of us, 3 boys and 3 girls. Abe was the oldest. I was the middle son. My brother Leo was the youngest. The girls were Leah, Manya and Freida. Freida was the youngest girl and such a beauty.

There was no future for Jews in Poland. Jews were second class citizens. The church taught that the Jews killed Jesus. This is where the hate came from. In public school I could raise my hand all day, but they would never call on me. In the street a Jew could get beaten up. My mother, not just my mother, every Jewish mother had to go pick up her children at school because it was not safe for them to walk home alone. Women got a little more respect.

The family moved to the city of Czestochowa. When the German army came in, they put placards up in the street. Every male Jew between the ages of 15 and 80 had to gather in the market. We lived in a third floor apartment. I was frightened, so I hid in the attic. I said to myself, "If they kill me, let them kill me here." My father and my brother Leo went to the market. All the Jews were told to lie face down in the street. The sun was hot. There was no food or water. If you raised your head, you were killed. They shot every tenth or twelfth man to scare us. This is when we found out what Hitler means. We called it Bloody Monday because they shot hundreds of people.

They burned down the synagogue. They made a ghetto. We wore the yellow star and the yellow arm band. We were ashamed, but we had no choice. We felt the way a dog feels. The Germans picked out a number of rich Jews and made them responsible for the community. This was called a Judenrat. The Jews had to do to the dirty work for the Germans. They shoveled snow, cleaned horses, shined boots and dug ditches.

They burned down the synagogue. They made a ghetto. We wore the yellow star and the yellow arm band. We were ashamed, but we had no choice. We felt the way a dog feels. The Germans picked out a number of rich Jews and made them responsible for the community. This was called a Judenrat. The Jews had to do to the dirty work for the Germans. They shoveled snow, cleaned horses, shined boots and dug ditches.

Hitler was building a highway in the east and needed workers. Each city had to supply so many men between the ages of 20 and 30. In Czestochowa each family had to give up 1 man. My older brother, Abe, was married. My younger brother, Leo, was not yet 20. Leo was afraid for me because I was little. Leo was strong. He asked if he could take my place, but my parents would not let him go. They just looked at me, and I knew I had to go. You cannot imagine what my mother went through.
They took us in cattle cars to Lublin. From there we went to Cieszanow and from there to the place where we were going to build the highway. Out of the 1,000 young men who went there from Czestochowa, only 3 survived. I am one of the 3. Even strong people could not survive. We had to be at work at 5:00 o'clock in the morning. When we got up at 4:00 am., we had to be counted. We got 2 kilos of bread, which had to be divided between 4 people. Some people finished their bread in five minutes, but I crumbled my bread into the pocket of my coat. All day long I ate a crumb at a time.
We slept on straw in barns, 70 to 80 people to a barn. We wrapped sacks around our feet to stay warm. We got lice, and some people scratched at the bites all night with their nails. Many got infections and died. Once it was ten degrees below zero, and we had to cut holes in the ice to wash our bodies. We took off our clothes and stood as naked as when we were born. We put our clothes on the ice, and in 5 or 10 minutes all the lice got frozen. Then we put our clothes back on. But in a couple of days the lice came back.
When you went to the toilet, you had to drop your pants and sit over a big ditch. There was no paper; you used leaves. All of the sudden from the distance a bullet would knock you down. The Ukranian and Lithuanian guards took their guns and they played with us. They tried to shoot close to us. If they got you you fell in the ditch. I had to sit and do my business. You got diarrhea from the bad food. Someone sitting next to me got shot and fell in. I could hear him saying the Shema Yisroel. For myself, I did not care. What happened, happened. We just lived from moment to moment.
 
We cut down trees. We dug up hills. We filled in trenches. There was a hand cart that ran on rails that we used to move earth. Four of us would push it up the hill, and it was more dangerous to come down. The cart did not have any brakes; you used a 2 by 4 stick to put under the wheels to stop it. People got killed every day. People got beat up. I was careful not to let them hit me because when they beat you up, that was it. If you could not work, you were worth nothing to them. One day I was pushing a full barrel. A Ukrainian guard passed by with a stick, and he hit me right in the head. I was crying. I told him I was pushing with all my strength. I was careful to do exactly what they wanted, but you could not be safe. Some tried to escape. The next day they brought the bodies back tied to a horse.
 
I survived because of two German Jews that I knew from the big ghetto in Czestochowa. They moved into an apartment across from ours. One was a doctor and one a professor, and they worked in the office with the Germans. They had come to Czestochowa with only 1 suit a piece. Every morning I would put a crease in their pants. I would fix what needed to be fixed. When they heard that I was being sent to the labor camp, they promised my mother, they swore to her, that they would do their best to bring me home. They were crying, "We have to do something to get Joseph Sher free." It took them months. One night as I was sleeping, 2 Ukranian guards came in and called me. I thought they were going to shoot me. Instead they took me to the infirmary.