Child survivors of Auschwitz liberatd by the Red Army, January, 1945 1Abe didn't see Thomas Buergenthal either, who was 10 when sent to Auschwitz and "miraculously" survived the "death" camp. Maybe Thomas told the Germans he was 16, and they were so stupid they fell for it.
When Abe esacaped from Auschwitz he "didn't eat or drink for five days".
Holocaust survivor
John Dempsey, Pharos-Tribune, Logansport, Ind.
Combined Jewish Philanthropies
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
July 26, 2009
Jul. 26--I spent six years in hell," Abe Price stated, "between the ages of 16 and 22 during the Nazi occupation of Poland."
Though he is 86 years old, his voice is firm, his eyes ablaze. The tattoo on the inside of his left arm is evidence backing up his statement. B-3266, the number he was given on arrival at Auschwitz. The B, he explains, stands for 200,000.
The pain remains evident 64 years after he escaped his Nazi captors. And it's there for good reason, as he will tell you.
"I lost 200 members of my own family," the father of Logansport optometrist Herb Price said during an interview here Thursday.
He was 16 and in high school when the German army invaded Poland Sept. 1, 1939, the event that officially started World War II. His name was Abram Piasecki. He was Jewish and he lived with his parents and four older brothers in Kielce. The city was home to 28,500 Jews in 1941 -- one-third of its population.
When he returned after escaping a Nazi death march in January 1945, there were seven.
"It looked like a cemetery," he said.
The Gestapo confiscated his parents' shoe factory, which employed 110 people, and their stores.
"They forced us to put the Star of David on our arms," he said. "My oldest brother went to the Soviet Union because he thought that was discrimination."
And while he was sent to a Siberian gulag to do forced labor for six years, that brother survived the war.
"My parents, two brothers and their wives, the Nazis killed," Abe continued.
While living in the large Kielce ghetto, his parents were taken to Treblinka, one of six extermination camps, where they were killed in 1942.
"My next younger brother, he was an attorney in Lithuania," Abe explained. "He was murdered by Lithuanian Nazis with his wife in Mariampolie on September 1, 1941. That was just a couple months after the Nazis invaded Russia.
"My third brother went with his wife and was taken to Treblinka and died August 24, 1942."
In 1940, Abe was sent to work on highways, but escaped. In 1941, he escaped again while living in a labor camp and working in a stone quarry.
Abe and his fourth brother, Charles, were living in the little ghetto when three boys came back from Treblinka. "They told us the news of what the Nazis were doing there."
"My eyes were opened. I then knew the facts of life," he said. "For the next 2 1/2 years, I knew every day could be my last."
In 1942, he was picked up again and sent to a woodworking factory. When he escapted that time, however, he was caught.
"A Polish girl helped me, but they arrested four women. I was hiding in the small ghetto. I had a hand gun and wanted to join the small underground," he recalled. "A fellow recognized me and called the police. I was taken back to the factory and got a bad beating.
"I was taken to the Germans and they interrogated me. I knew three of the women, but I wouldn't implicate them, so they were set free. I played dumb. They asked me why I escaped. I said I wanted to go home and thought the war was over."
The Germans began to liquidate the small ghetto in 1943. As Abe and Charles were being led behind a building, Abe saw a number of Ukranians in black uniforms with machine guns and thought they were going to be killed.
"I pulled his sleeve and said 'run after me,' but he didn't," the Naples, Fla., resident said. Charles was sent to a concentration camp in Germany where he was eventually rescued by American troops.
Abe was eventually sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944. That was where he was tattooed with the number.
At Birkenau, 12,000 to 20,000 people died every day. Trainloads of people were brought in boxcars, at least 120 per car, from all over Europe. There was no ventilation, no food and no sanitary facilities. Those who survived the trip were separated by age. Those under 16 and older than 40 were killed with the rest sent to labor camps in the complex.
"The devil himself couldn't have figured out such hell," Abe said. "One and a half million Jewish children died there. For three years, I didn't see a child under 16 or an adult older than 40."
He was put on a work crew building an oil refinery.
"There were 800 people in this camp that was bordered with high-voltage fence and watchtowers with machine guns," he said. "We were only there for half the year when they took us on a death march. The Russians were coming and about a week later they freed Auschwitz."
So, with his friend Ernst Tauber, Abe bolted.
"We were condemned to die until I took the chance. I know we would have died if we had stayed," said Abe, who weighed just 90 pounds by then due to the Germans' 300 calorie a day diet.
Sure to stand out in striped uniforms, wood shoes and shaved heads, the two contained their escape to fields.
"We came to a small house about 15 miles from Auschwitz ... crawled through a window into the barn and dug our way under the hay," Abe said. "We didn't eat or drink for five days. Finally, we decided to knock on the door figuring it was a Polish family.
"The old lady opened the door and invited us in. She had two daughters living with her. Their husbands were in the German army. They were ethnic Germans. They were wonderful people."
The women attempted to dye their uniforms, but when that didn't work, they were given some of the husbands' clothing.
"They could have brought the police. But they gave us hot milk, eggs, bread and butter -- food we hadn't seen in a year. They were afraid the neighbors would see us so they told us we had to leave."
The women gave them five loads of bread before they left. The eventually came to another farm where a Polish farmer had returned, taking his land back from Nazi farmers.
"We stayed for three days. The SS came to house and was checking IDs. The farmer had one but I didn't," he continued. He went to the barn to use the restroom and heard two soldiers saying that he had escaped.
Abe went back in where the SS officer asked where he had been. But, the officer never asked for an ID and didn't arrest him.
"It was pure luck. I spoke in Polish only so he didn't know I was Jewish," he said.
The farm was on the front where the fighting was going on and changed hands three times. But, with the Soviets back for good, Price and Tauber secured a pass from a Soviet officer.
Over the next few days they checked out Auschwitz and Birkenau before making it to Krakow.
Tauber remained in Krakow because his home of Prague was still occupied by Germans. Price headed for Kielce, but only remained there three days.
[...]
Copyright (c) 2009, Pharos-Tribune, Logansport, Ind.
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