Mr. Nathan Suss
[b. 10/02/1909]
Recorded on 11/23/04
[Interview starts at 001 on counter]
Abigail Cantor: This interview has taken place at Hooverwood, the Indianapolis Jewish home for the elderly.
*(Ira Jaffe and Kathryn Cantor also take part in a few questions)
Nathan Suss: My name is Nathan Suss.
Abigail Cantor: Okay and where were you born and when?
NS: In Poland, Poland Galicia.
AC: And when were you born?
NS: Hm?
AC: When were you born? What year?
NS: What age?
AC: Yeah. No, what year were you born?
NS: 19, 19, October 2nd, 1909.
AC: Where did you grow up?
NS: In Poland.
AC: What was your childhood like?
NS: Hm?
AC: What was your childhood like?
NS: Childhood? In Poland, in our town people were no rich. We had a business, flour. We selled our flowers and bakings in stores. That’s it.
AC: When did you begin school?
NS: School wasn’t important. I had very little schooling at a Hebrew school, to start work at very young age.
AC: Oh, Jewish school.
AC: What was your school like?
NS: I liked it because, I liked it very much. But I had to be home and help here because we lived in famine. Eight children and a father and mother. We had to eat, We had to work.
AC: And, could you describe your family?
NS: My family was a very nice family. My father and mother, five brothers, and three sisters. In the end, in low thirties, one sister got married, and one brother got married. And between all the children in the whole family, I’m one of the only one, survive. One brother, was in the United States before the war. The whole family was wiped out, killed. And the house was taken away from the place.
AC: What were there, what was your age when the war began?
NS: Hm?
AC: What was your age when the war began?
NS: The age when war?
AC: When then war began.
NS: Thirty nine.
Kathryn Cantor: No, but how old were you?
NS: Hm?
Ira Jaffe: How old were you when the war started, when the war started, when they invaded Poland?
NS: I think, twenty six.
AC: Twenty Six.
AC: And as, what did you say your family’s business was?
NS: Flour. We bought the churner and we made flour and we sold the bakings in good stores. That’s to make a living. We had to have enough to eat, and be a family.
AC: Where were you, and how old were you when the Nazis came to power?
NS: The Nazis came to power officially; the Nazis crossed the border to Poland in 1939. When they came to Poland everybody know already what will be. They were going to keep, take all the men, all killed or they were going to put them in camps, working. This was in 39, people start run away, hiding out here or there, whatever possible. And people run away, into forest whatever they could find.
AC: Did you hide out?
NS: I tried to hide out, to run, but the Nazis caught up with me. When they caught up with me, they put me in a camp to work; I was working in a concentration camp for a couple weeks. I had to chance to escape. When I escaped from the camp, nobody see me, I was running away. I was running here and there for seven days. Seven days __.
Ira Jaffe: How did you, excuse me, how did you escape?
NS: Because they did a hundred people, more and more, hiking in the forest. In the summertime, a lot of grass on the ground and I was working there, working there I laid down on the floor, nobody see me and they didn’t leave without me. And I thought to run away, and start running away. And I was running for seven days.
IJ: So you hid in the grass, so during the day you would be out, what were you doing in the forest?
NS: I was running.
IJ: No, no, no what kind of job were you doing?
NS: Everyday I was only in the forest. Cutting trees, cutting trees.
IJ: Cutting trees?
NS: Yeah, cutting trees. Cutting trees and schlepping them.
IJ: Schlepping them?
NS: Yeah, that’s the day, nothing else. And I was running seven days, you have to eat something. We could eat from the ground, pounds of potatoes and the kind of stuff you find running, we’d eat it.
IJ: Were you by yourself?
NS: Hm?
IJ: When you ran away were you with somebody else?
NS: I was running away in this side and I went this way and were more people running away, yeah that’s a possibility.
IJ: When you ran away you were still in Poland?
NS: Yes, still in Poland, sure.
IJ: And then eventually you…
NS: Eventually I had reached the Russian border. I figured the Russian border wouldn’t kill me. I tried to cross border into Russia and they stopped me, and then take me, and asked, “What you are doing.” I told them I’m a Jew and I was against the Germans, they wanted to kill me, and I run away from them. “C’mon, don’t lie, you are a spy.” I tell them, “I’m not a spy,” and they put me in jail for four months.
AC: They put you in jail for four months?
NS: Yeah, in Russia. And four months in Russia was hell, hell. Four months in Russian jail is hell, hell.
IJ: Was it worse that the Germans?
NS: The Germans killed, but they didn’t kill you. In jail food is nothing, and there was floors: 1, 2, 3, 4 people all the way. And the pissed upstairs, running on you. It was terrible. Besides this, people would lay with blankets; the blankets were full of lice. They go in your mouth, terrible. Nothing could explain how it was there. It was hell, hell. And after ____ + for four months, they send me on the Volga.
IJ: Volga or Siberia?
NS: Biggest river in Russia.
IJ: River, the Volga.
NS: Yeah Volga, they’d been on the Volga maybe two weeks and ___ + beginning of Russian, Siberian, ____ + all the biggest places working, places to work.
IJ: What kind of work were you in?
NS: I was in fires, mostly fires.
IJ: Cutting trees, carrying logs?
NS: Yeah.
KC: Where were you living?
NS: Huh?
KC: Where would you live when you’d work in these?
NS: Not place. They’d give us; they’d make barracks, barracks.
IJ: Box?
NS: Barracks.
IJ: Barracks.
NS: Yeah, I’d take them, and build them myself.
IJ: What did you sleep on?
NS: On wood. Yeah, wood.
IJ: No mattress?
NS: Nothing, no. Some were incapable to work…they’d die. Thousands of them died of hunger. I was a strong boy so I was able to work. Six years like this. Six years, in 1946 they make an agreement, Russia and Poland to turn back the criminals. Russia to Poland and Poland to Russia, criminals for criminals.
KC: They said you were a criminal?
NS: I was in jail with criminals.
IJ: What kind of, did you just have one set of clothes?
NS: Night and day I had a set of clothes, they took away everything.
IJ: What did you wear during the day?
NS: You wore one shirt a month-two months until it fell apart.
IJ: What about how often could you get a bath?
NS: A bath? I don’t know about those. They took the whole barrack, one building at a time. And they took, how they call it, interfection, pull it out and lice and everything and worms and the people what they were. Defiantly a hard life, a hard life.
IJ: The guards, when you were out on the forest, there were guards with guns?
NS: Dogs, dogs, dogs. We were marching one time for two days and whoever could not keep up going the dogs bit them in their face. The dogs, the dogs they chased the people, chased. And some of them couldn’t go and that is what happened to them.
IJ: Did you ever see them shoot somebody?
NS: Hm?
IJ: Did you ever see the guards shoot anybody?
NS: They didn’t shoot.
IJ: Whip? How about a whip?
NS: Whip, yeah. The dogs bit into their back and they chase them. Go, go, go, run, run, run, and they gave me, every morning, food for the day. They gave me a piece of bread that’s 40 grams. 40 grams, we would eat bread and some cabbage soup. All of us drank the cabbage soup and the bread put in pocket for the next morning. ______ + very hard living, very.
AC: When the Nazis came to power did you notice any changes in your family and how did it affect you personally?
NS: I personally didn’t know anything. I didn’t know anything from the stuff they feed me and then I came home I was told father, mother, brothers, sisters, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, all killed. All got shot out, nobody was there.
IJ: Did you know what camps they went to, were they in Auschwitz or…?
NS: They were in the town. They shot them in the town.
IJ: They didn’t even go to a camp?
NS: No, they only took the people youngest like 18, 20, 25, 30 to work but the other people they shot them right away.
IJ: And they destroyed your whole town? They leveled the buildings?
NS: They killed, they almost killed in Poland where I lived, in my town, eighty percent of us killed, Jewish people.
KC: Were you all caught at the same time?
NS: Hm?
KC: Were you all caught at the same time?
NS: I wasn’t even, I didn’t know even how many they killed. And I came back and find out all the killings.
IJ: Nathan, when you decided to run from your town, did you tell your parents, your mother and father?
NS: They knew, they knew.
IJ: They knew? What did they do?
NS: They couldn’t, the people could not run.
IJ: They stayed at home?
NS: They were lying. Germans were tried to lie to us, they wouldn’t do nothing, we wouldn’t kill them, do nothing but we find out that they kill other people.
IJ: So the Germans occupied your town already?
NS: The first town to occupy was Poland. Cause they know in Poland, all the Polish people are against the Jews. They were helping the Germans find people who were hiding around.
IJ: Were most of the people in your town Jewish?
NS: Not not Jewish. Oh, a lot of Jews.
IJ: Was it a village or a town?
NS: Town, town size of_____ +
IJ: It had stores and it had a synagogue?
NS: Yes, a synagogue. The biggest, nicest.
IJ: And what’s the name of the town called?
NS: Dombrowa.
IJ: Dombrowa. Was it near Warsaw?
NS: No, not near Warsaw, another town.
KC: Which part of the country was it? If Poland is here, where is it in Poland? Where was your little town?
NS: Poland has a border to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, not Czechoslovakia, Hungarian is there, Lithuania was there, and was these small towns were around there.
IJ: Was your town close to the Russian border?
NS: Not too close, I was only, I was only seven days until I reached the border.
IJ: And where was the prison, the Germany camp, where was that in relationship to your town? How far was the camp? Do you remember the name of that camp?
NS: I don’t know, no.
IJ: Did they take you by a train or did they make you walk?
NS: No there were no trains there, they would ship me.
IJ: Ship you, how?
NS: Barging, barging, barging they got a ship on the ocean, it’s a ship.
IJ: Oh on the river.
NS: On the river, yeah.
AC: Before you go any further I just want to see if this is recording.
NS: We were marching, along with the people, long distances. There was no water and we were hot. No water to drink. There was rivers, but they wouldn’t take us to the rivers to feel the water. The night came, the night I was freed, the night I came back to Poland, they had to take out all my teeth they were rotten. Not only the teeth, my stomach was rotten, they had to clean out my stomach.
AC: How did the observing the Sabbath change?
NS: I didn’t know no Sabbath, no Sunday, no Monday, no hours. I didn’t know nothing. I only know when it was hot it was sunny, when it was cold, freezing. I didn’t know nothing.
IJ: In the winter, would you have a coat?
NS: _______ +
IJ: Because it would be very cold.
NS: Very cold, in the night fifty below zero.
IJ: In Siberia.
KC: Did you practice your religion at all? Were you able to practice Judaism at all?
NS: Nothing, I didn’t know what day it is. For six years, maybe a year before, I would know what day, what week, what hour, like blank.
IJ: Nathan, before the war, before your family was religious. Very religious?
NS: Yeah, all of them were.
IJ: Orthodox, kosher?
NS: We kept kosher.
IJ: Did you put tiphilin on every morning.
NS: Everyday? Soon they caught me, in the beginning I did, they took away my satchel with all my tephilin.
IJ: But before that, before they came, you practiced and you enjoyed the holidays.
NS: Yeah, enjoyed 100 percent the holidays. Every holiday, every day, that’s where I come from.
IJ: Let me ask you a spiritual question at this point, after you were going through all this, do you still believe in God?
NS: I still believe in God, I survived which is a miracle. It’s a miracle.
IJ: Did you ever think why has God done this to me?
NS: Is there a part in the Bible that tell you, there will be something like this.
IJ: Say that again, there was something, you knew this was going to happen? There was a prediction in the bible?
NS: Yeah, it’s going to be, destroyed all the Jews and all the people around there. The town was very bad. It is very unbelievable that God something like this. They destroyed the whole town.
IJ: Babel, town of Babel.
NS: God in case he find 50 percent Jews let them live, 25 percent leave them alive, but nothing. Destroyed the town.
IJ: So you knew this was going to happen?
NS: Hm?
IJ: You knew that something terrible was going to happen to the Jews in Poland?
NS: We did not know about this. Nobody would expect this to be happen. But it happened and killed twenty three million people, Germans, six million Jews. All kind of nationality, twenty three million killed, the Germans.
AC: Did you have any friends who went to concentration camp with you?
NS: Friends, oh yeah friends.
AC: Did they come to the concentration camp with you?
NS: Uh huh.
AC: Did you have any friends who went with you on the trip?
NS: When I came back from Russia from the war in 1946, when I came back from Russia to our town, nobody was there.
KC: When you went to Siberia were there anyone from your town with you?
NS: Siberia is thousands of miles.
IJ: Okay, when you, when everybody started escaping or being captured, wherever you were, whether it was in Germany or Poland with the Nazis or Russians was there anybody there that you knew from your town?
NS: Yeah, yeah my cousin was there, wherever I went he went too. My father’s, brother’s son, my cousin.
IJ: Younger or older?
NS: Younger.
KC: He with you in Russia and in Poland?
NS: Yeah.
IJ: Did he make it?
NS: He didn’t make it.
IJ: And when did you know he wasn’t going to make it?
NS: When they were freed, he wasn’t there anymore. Eight children all got killed, the father and the mother.
IJ: But you said he was with you in Russia.
NS: We met, we met, I know that he was here. Maybe I didn’t see him no more often but I was told. He is named Schmuel.
IJ: Schmuel?
NS: Yeah, Chalm Schmuel, two names. Somebody saw him there, somebody saw him there, he was alive.
IJ: But, somebody said that they saw him in Russia? But you didn’t see him?
NS: Once I see him. Once I saw him too.
IJ: So would he have died in the Russian camps or the…?
NS: I have no idea how he died. A lot of people never find out where somebody is.
AC: How did you make it back to America? How did you end up here?
NS: I had a brother in the United States before the war. In 1933 he came here.
[Interview interrupted by Kathryn Cantor’s departure]
AC: So you had a brother in the United States? Where was he living?
NS: He came here in 1933 to Poland. He came to the United States; he came to Poland with a young girl, eighteen years old, nineteen years old. They lived there, before the immigrated to the United States they lived in our town. After 20 years later they had a girl and they came to our town to look for a boy, boyfriend, a husband, but our town is very religious. They didn’t go out like this like here, they went to the Rabbi. Rabbi is hope to become big men. The Rabbi helped in school, how they call it, students, students. About fifteen students, all of us, the Rabbi had all of us fifteen boys, students. And this couple come from the United States, and the girl, mother, and the father went to the Rabbi and told him they lived here thirty years ago. And they came back to make a Shetach. And the fifteen boys, maybe twenty boys, this is not working, this is not working. My brother didn’t like to go to the United States, he didn’t want to go. The Rabbi make him, the Rabbi make him to go. United States, they’re supposed to go there a year later. A year later came he didn’t want to go. He says America is traph, not kosher. He refused to go because it’s not kosher, he was very religious. Anyway, he went, he went in 1932-33. A six, seven years later he went there and he worked a business in the United States, kosher restaurant.
AC: So your brother missed the Holocaust?
NS: Yeah, he didn’t see the Holocaust. The Holocaust started in 1932, six years earlier.
AC: Oh, so he was lucky.
NS: Sure he was lucky.
AC: And he was the only member of your family besides yourself that survived?
NS: Hm?
AC: He was only member of your family besides yourself…
NS: He was the oldest of all the brothers. And he find out after the war that I survived, he was very excited. Very excited, he went and sent me the papers. Papers, to come to the United States.
AC: Oh really?
NS: Yeah sure, right away.
[Interview interrupted by Ira Jaffe’s departure]
NS: As soon as they send me papers, I went to United States.
AC: Did you want to go to the United States?
NS: I had nothing to do in Poland, our section was completely clean. Including the house, everything.
AC: Did you get there by boat?
NS: Airplane.
AC: Airplane?
NS: You see a plane, yeah we take it. And we came to see the airplane, it took around 40 people to come to meet me. Like I came from the other world.
AC: You did what?
NS: Like I come from another planet. It was a miracle that I could survive. They all came there and greeted me and took me home. And after being in United States I had other problems. I’d been through a very hard life. And I’m still, thank God, here in my life, 95 years of my work. And for my wife, come here every day, back and forward, back and forward. And I do it myself, okay.
AC: It’s amazing that you still have faith.
NS: Amazing, amazing cause nobody believes it. But I am at this age, I can do what I do.
AC: That is amazing.
NS: Amazing. They call me American now, not Jewish. They call me American and since I survived such a hard times, hell, hell, hell and I still, all of them got killed and I am still alive .
AC: What was the day-to-day life like, before you went to the concentration camp?
NS: Before, we were business people. We lived like here. My mother work, make breakfast in the house, make a breakfast for all the children, lunch for all the children, and make Shabbos, all the holidays. Mother, my mother cooked. Thank God for ten children ____ + my mother.
AC: Ten children?
NS: I said In Europe my mother feed ten children, bring them up. They grow up, and in the United States would not hold on the one mother. She’d get sick, _____ +
AC: Right, it’s not good health.
AC: Were the members of your family ever arrested by authority or did they not even take time to arrest them?
NS: No, what kind of stories?
AC: What?
NS: I didn’t understand your question.
AC: Oh okay was your family arrested or were they…?
NS: No, they’re honest people. Honest people, I’d been living code. In the United States, I’d been living code. I never bothered nobody. They honest people, they’re very honest people.
AC: That’s wonderful. If you were sent to a concentration camp, oh well you were, what was your very first impression of the concentration camp once you arrived?
NS: I didn’t know if, I remember, I know I had a ____ + what’s guna be.
AC: How long did you say you were in the concentration camp?
NS: Six years, 1940-46. In ‘46 I was survived in the exchange. Between Poland and Russian exchanged enemies. Towns, cities, countries. When we all came out a lot of people from Poland run away to Russia. A lot of people from Russia, Russia. A lot of Russian people will run away to Poland. And after the war, when the war finished, they had an agreement to send back the people to their country and they exchanged prisoners. They called us prisoners. I didn’t, I didn’t have nothing.
AC: Right, did they, so you were, you began in Poland in a concentration camp, you escaped, you were arrested and then sent one in Russia?
NS: I wasn’t arrested in Poland. In Poland, I wasn’t arrested, In Poland they didn’t arrest me, I didn’t harm Poland. Russian, at the border, I tried to cross the border this caused, I break the law. I want to be, I want to, the border between Russia and Poland and I break that law. They thought I was a German spy. I told them, I’m not a spy, I’m a Russian and a Jew against Russians, against Germans. I run away from the Germans. They wouldn’t believe me, they wouldn’t believe, right away they put me in jail. I was in jail four months.
AC: Which was worse, the jail or the concentration camp?
NS: Jail in Russia. In the jail, the jail was terrible. Terrible, you eat lice.
AC: You ate lice?
NS: They came into your mouth. Food, nothing it’s hard to believe, that’s it.
AC: Very hard to believe.
NS: You know what, they gave me a blanket and it’s forty below zero they give you blanket. The blanket was full of lice. And in the end we scrubbed down the lice. Hard to believe.
AC: So how many men would you say were in the, were any of the men basically in the jail Jewish?
NS: Most Jewish. A lot of Jews and they migrate from Poland cause they’re afraid the Germans. And they know Germans will kill you. And the Russians wouldn’t kill you. They’d put you to work, okay, but they wouldn’t kill you. A lot of people run there, they’d run and they grabbed them at the border, took them to jail.
AC: So at the end of the war you were in jail?
NS: Hm?
AC: So, at the end of the war were you in the jail?
NS: At the end of the war, in 46, this is the time they freed them. Forty-five men, Forty-six part of the solution, sent back. Poland to Russia, Russia to Poland.
AC: So you were sent back from the jail?
NS: Yeah.
AC: I see. Okay.
NS: In jail I, in jail I was before. I was there at the jail for five years. The was, the beginning of, afterwards I was working. Working, wherever they send me, if I wouldn’t work they would kill me. ______ + The Hungarian people were from Vienna, in Austria. The town, town half a million people died there. I saw very many people. Doctors and lawyers all died, they wouldn’t work.
AC: In the concentration camp? Or did that come after the jail?
NS: Yeah.
AC: So you were in two separate ones?
NS: Hm?
AC: You were in two separate concentration camps?
NS: They gave me a pension, Germans.
AC: Oh really?
NS: Yeah, every month I get a check because I lost my family and house. They gave me a pension, not, not much but if I wasn’t there they won’t be sending me a check.
AC: After the war?
NS: Everyday, every week we got a pension. C’mon, till now they give me a check.
AC: How, what was a regular day like in the concentration camp?
NS: Hm?
AC: What was a regular day like in the concentration camp?
NS: We didn’t know what hours is but day and night. We didn’t know anything but work and go to sleep and work and go to sleep and work, that’s all. We didn’t know what day is this, or month, or year, or summer, or winter, or holidays, blank. Everybody was same thing.
AC: Did you get to bathe and shower?
NS: Are we talking about bathing and showering? Maybe I got a bath. They’d push together 100 people and together and they would wash themselves. You wait for the water and they wash you up and that’s it.
AC: How, what kind of things, you slept on boards? Where did you say you slept in the concentration camps?
NS: Slept, we slept like in a room. And clothes, there’s no clothes. Whatever you had on yourself till it fell down from you. They won’t give you extra clothes, only in the winter when was very cold. They give me a big coat, you put it on. When they first took me away I had some clothes in my satchel. They took it away, I had nothing. They’d throw it away with everything, I had nothing, blank. They threw it away.
AC: How were you treated by the soldiers?
NS: Hm?
AC: How were you treated by the soldiers?
NS: The soldiers, never saw soldiers.
AC: You never saw soldiers?
NS: No.
AC: How were you treated by the workers at the concentration camp?
NS: The workers they were scared too and you worked good, they didn’t harm you. workers. If you stopped working that time, they let you die, that’s it.
AC: Were the workers Germans?
NS: The workers, the workers were strangers like me. They were Russians, they’re Russian. They were all around. I should work and they should work. Most workers were followers, big followers. They would cut things like trees, logs, 2 x 4s. I was carry one piece of plywood. 2 x 4, you were told what to do and that was it.
AC: How were you treated by others in the camp with you, other Jews in the camp?
NS: Hm?
AC: How did they treat you, how were you treated by other Jews in the camp?
NS: Everybody in the camps looked for themselves. To have some food and if not you’d get hungry. Sometimes you’d thirsty. You always suffered from hunger and thirst.
AC: When you were, when were you rescued or released from the camp did you say, what year?
NS: Released in ‘46, yes in ‘46.
AC: Were you relieved?
NS: They released me from Russia and I came to Poland and found I out my family, relatives; even the buildings weren’t there, nothing.
[End of interview]
