Holocaust world war 2 Survivor Naftali Salsitz testimony coupled with real time historical testimony from Gaza holocaust world war 3
Naftali Salsitz, holocaust survivor of Kolbuszowa,
Poland. We were 9 children, I was the youngest. My father was a Hasidic Jew,
very religious. I studied under a very famous Rabbi and my father was his
disciple. My father had a wholesale store which he sold everything which was
needed for a household. Villagers come to us and buy merchandise for their
stores. My father saw to it each of my married sisters would remain in our town,
he bought them a house and established a branch of our business for them. I
hated the Hasidic clothing and wanted to escape the burden of what my father
wanted, to sit in the temple and study morning to night, but I was afraid to
ask my father to become a doctor. Once things happened in Germany we felt it in
Poland, 1935 they cut out the Jews who sold merchandise. My father said it’s a
short time our business will go down, they will cut out wholesale stores and
manufacturing, which was mostly in Jewish hands. What we see in Germany we
started to see in Poland. I decided I have to leave Poland, I have a very bad
feeling something terrible will happen. 1939 the war broke out, within days
thousands of refugees came through the town from western Poland. Thousands
thousands more more. We see army units broken apart coming through the town.
Within one week the Germans came. The Jews were the refugees. They didn’t know
where to hide, they were afraid and caught in a strange town far from home.
Atrocities started immediately. Germans marched everyone out to a field and
burned half of the town. I started to travel to different towns and bought
merchandise on the black market to smuggle it, I knew all the suppliers, and I
supported my family. No one ever stopped me because I look Polish. A ghetto was organized in our town. If the
Jews would make a saint of somebody Doctor Unterman should have been the first
saint, the president of the Jewish council. He was a captain in the Austrian
army, he was a Polish officer. He never belonged to a temple but he considered
himself a Jew. He sacrificed his life. He wouldn’t leave the Jews because he
said no one would defend them. The chief gestapo arrested all of the Jewish
council and they were sent to Auschwitz. He taught me how to open wounds and
clean them. I inherited his suitcase of instruments when he was killed. His son
was in the Polish underground, killed in the Warsaw ghetto uprising. The second
Jewish council came to power and I was appointed to the same work, to go to
other towns and pick up merchandise. On the 28th day of April in
1942 there was a banging on the door and we knew immediately it’s Germans. The
first thing was to hide the men. My father went to hide in the outhouse. In
this moment the gestapo came to the back of the house and grabbed my father.
Germans broke open the front door and my sisters ran to the backyard screaming.
My older sister tried to grab the revolver but he hit her, my second sister
twisted his hand to take the revolver until she fell down. They dragged my
father into the shed and I heard the loudest two gunshots I have ever heard in
my life. Until today I wake up in the middle of the night and I hear those two
shots. I hear the screams of my father, not human screams. He screamed Vidui a
prayer before death, He said Shema Yisrael so loudly it rings in my hears. I
saw my mother and sisters laying over my father’s body, he was dead. They shot
him, one hand was ripped off from the bullet. My mother was crying, they took
away my crown, because he was the crown of the family. He was 60 years old, we
buried him with a knife in his hand, it is a tradition, the belief is that this
if for revenge. All the towns in the area were relocated, 30,000 people into
Rzeszow ghetto. We loaded sacks with everything we have and walked 30
kilometers. Elderly and children were separated and walked to a nearby town
where ditches were prepared in the woods and they were killed. We paid money to
someone to go with the road with the trains and learn where they went. He came
back and told us there are death camps in Belzec with gas chambers. I know the
taste of death. If somebody is dead he cannot tell you the story. I got 50
people who wanted to escape, including my brother. One day a Polish commandants
tells me in secret, we got orders to surround the ghetto and take everyone
away. I went in and told everyone get ready to escape. We loosened the boards
in the fence. From 100, 55 escaped. From them 30 were caught within days
because local Poles informed on them. 25 of us reached the woods. We found a
camp in the woods with 35 Jews, we joined them. Little by little more Jews were
coming to us who escaped from the camp, they found us. We became 125 Jews and
we bought guns. Stalingrad changed it turned the whole fortune of war. Partisans
got bigger. Germans pulled large quantity of soldiers from east Poland and the
railroads were blown up. The Germans went back back the front came closer
closer. From our group of 125 only 6 were alive when we were liberated. I
remember everyone who was killed, how he was killed, when and by whom. Nobody
can tell any stories, they are dead. How the Polish people could do all those
things to us. There are survivors who when they open their mouths the pain
comes back and they cannot sleep at night. When my father was shot his last
words was revenge, revenge, take revenge. I took revenge as much as I could. My
mother wrote one last letter when she was taken to Belzec, you are my youngest,
go on in the world and live. Go tell it what the Germans did to us how they
murdered us. I joined the Polish army and entered Krakow 18th
January 1945. I came with my wife to united states in 1947.
https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn505553
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