LONDON (APP) – Manfred Goldberg was only 13 years old – his skin was removed and was moving toward an SS guard at a Nazi labor camp in Latvia – a man tech on his shoulder He whispered with a whisper that saved the life of the young Jew.
“If they ask you your age, say you are 17 years old,” the man told him.
Goldberg followed the advice, and the guard directed him to the selected group for the wages of the slaves. It was only later that he realized that small prisoners were sent to die because the guards believed that no one under the age of 17 was too young to do a profitable job for a Nazi war machine.
Goldberg said, “I sometimes consider the man an angel who was sent to save me.” “I never saw it again”.
Monday’s ceremony on the 80th occasion Ashwitz’s independence anniversary Remembering about 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust is more than a moment. It is a reminder that the number of survivors is decreasing, which has left few people to testify to Nazi genocide, while the Holocaust’s refusal and hostility are on the rise.
In an interview at the Jaush Care Holocaust Surveyors Center in London, he said, “I am only one drop in the sea. “But I have made my mind that as long as God gives me strength, physical and mental, to continue this work, I have pledged to continue my work. So here I am 94 years old. I’m talking to you
This is his story.
Rise
Manfred was born in Castle, about 220,000 in Central Germany. At the age of 3, when the Nazis came to power in 1933, he did not realize how the country was changing until he enrolled in a nearby Jewish primary school.
By that time, an organization called Hitler Youth, which was apparently similar to Boy Scouts, was used to encourage children to Nazi ideology, began to spread hatred against Jews.
Goldberg said, “They sometimes wait for us, ambush us or curse us.”
Children were warned: run away or face more problems.
As the Nazis systematically excluded Jews from the public life, they first tried to deport Goldberg’s father, then threatened to send them to the concentration camp. Manafid’s mother Rosa requested time to grant her visas for migration.
He heard that the British Embassy diplomat in Berlin could help, so he traveled 200 miles to see them. There he found a British intelligence agent Frank Foley, whose embassy was tasked with his spying activities, and eventually allowed more than 10,000 Jews to flee Germany.
“I’m sure he was a heart,” Goldberg said.
Fuley granted an emergency visa to Goldberg’s father and told his mother that the rest of the family could follow him in the coming weeks. But 10 days later, on September 1, 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland. The family is divided.
Star
As soon as the war broke out, Germany accelerated anti -Jewish laws.
The Jews needed to wear a yellow six -point star outside, and they could only buy food from specific shops. When the shops were over, the fate of the Jews was over.
One day, the mother of Goldberg told her to keep her book bag, in which the star is covered on her jacket, and go to a non -Jewish bakery with her. Standing across the road, he gave him a handful of and told him to run in the shop, ask for bread, keep the money on the counter and grab the bread before someone stops it.
“I was 7 or 8 years old. I did the same as he told me,” He said. “But in the past, I realize how serious the situation may have been. She might be hungry, but she couldn’t tolerate her children by hunger. “
Then in 1942, the Nazi government called it a “final solution”, European Jews were systematically executed.
When the SS fired at the Goldburg’s modest flat door, he gave his mother only 10 minutes to pack the suit case. After spending three days and three nights in the train without food and water, Manrfide, his younger brother, Herman and his mother found himself in the Latvian capital, Riga, who started a nightmare that he had the next three years. I will take to five camps.
The number to be.
Manfred lost his name. He became number 56478.
Soon he arrived at the sub -camp known as Prako, where Goldberg and his mother were put to work. But Herman was very young and left behind in the camp when Manrfid and Rosa went to work. Finally, the SS came and took the children. Manfred never saw his brother again.
“The next morning, both me and my mother had to stand in line and go to work as if nothing had happened,” he said. “The mourning happened internally, but if we refused to go to work, we would have known.”
Just months later, Goldberg suffered the fate of his brother when an unknown Mohsin whispered in his ear.
As the Nazis began to lose their place on the Eastern Front, they moved their prisoners away from the hands of Russia to the west to keep and continue the killings.
Goldberg was shifted to Stothov, a camp near Gaddinsk, Poland, known as the Gateway of Death in front of him because very few prisoners survived. More than 60,000 people in the camp were killed due to typhic, deadly injection and gas with Zicon B, starting in June 1944, due to the same compound used in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
But one last horror was coming.
After the war in Europe, the Nazis continued to move prisoners to Central Germany to the west.
The Goldberg and his mother were marched 25 miles northwest, where hundreds of prisoners were mounted on Bajars and for several days the sea was closed without food and water. When the SS guards disappeared, strong prisoners torn the board and used them to pedal the big boats back to the coast.
But as soon as the prisoners landed, the guards returned. First of all, they shot the weak who could not survive, and then grabbed those on the coast, including Goldberg and his mother, marched back to Germany.
Then a British tank column came.
Goldberg recalled, “Suddenly our armed guards, who were killing people for a few moments ago, turned and ran away from us in the opposite direction.” “People were happy. We are not under supervision. We are free! We are free! … You can’t imagine the happiness we felt.”
After meeting his father in England again, Goldberg made his career as an engineer, married and had four children.
For more than 50 years, he refused to tell his story.
He wanted his children’s parents to be normal without the burden of the Holocaust. But about 20 years ago, when he was in the 70s, his synagogue asked him to take part in a commemorative service. His wife Sherry encouraged her to remember: Who will tell your story when you go?
He never looked back.
Goldberg said, “Silence never helps the oppressed. “It always helps the wrongdoers.”
The best revenge
The living room of the Goldberg house in London is proof of all the things that are important to it, a gallery filled with life -long pictures of children, grandchildren, grandchildren, and family gatherings. Standing in the room is to see a man who is celebrating the miracle that he was allowed to survive.
But there is another picture.
This is a painting of a coarse cheek boy with a checker herb and a smile on his lips. Hanging with the front door, where whenever Goldberg steps into the world, it can be seen, this is the picture of another boy who has not got this opportunity.
Everyman
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Nat castaneda supported this story.
