Seymour Gold Shoah interview 1995 transcript
Today is the 13th o f September, 1995. The
survivor is Seymour Gold. I’m Jackie Lew.
The interview will take place in New York
City, New York, conducted in English.
Can you tell me your name? Seymour Gold. . Can
you spell that? S e y m o u r , last name,
G o l d.
And what was your name when you were born?
Sioma Goldfischer.. First name, S I o m a
, last name, G o l d f I s c h e r.
And where were you born? I was born in the
shtetl, Skole, which was first a county and
then, it was a shtetl. It belonged to the
state of Shtanishlavik. Stanishlawow. How
do you spell Skole? S k o l e. Skole.
When were you born?
I was born February 9, 1911.
What was your father’s name?
My father’s name was Leibisch....L e I b
I s c h Goldfischer.
What was your mother’s name?
My mother’s name was Regina Dingott.
And did you have brothers and sisters?
Yes, I had one brother and two sisters. My
brothers name was Sol, when he came to America.
His name was Shulem, in Poland. My elder sister’s
name was Lea. And my younger sister’s name
was Hinda...H I n d a.
What did your father do?
My father was a salesman, selling skins of
some animal for shoes that looked like sneakers.
Can you tell me about your childhood?
My childhood was miserable,
We lived mostly on potatoes. My mother baked
bread once a week, on Friday, for the whole
week. By the third day, the bread was very
stale and we broke our teeth.
Once a week, my mother made meat. The children
got the bones. The meat we didn’t eat. She
made delicious pancakes from potatoes and
cornbread. We didn’t see vegetables and
we didn’t see tomatoes.
We ate pears, apples and plums.
We had half an orange that 
was rotten....we ate it because we were hungry.
Mother made jam out
of the plums. They called it piwillo.
What was your house like? We had one kitchen
and one bedroom. Four children...we had no
mattresses. Our mattresses were made from
straw. That’s why we had a lot of bugs.They
ate us alive.
We had 2 closets.
Mother made goose fat. It was delicious.
The furniture was 2 closets which my sister
got when she got married. We had an attic.
We kept everything there. The only thing which
we didn’t have was geese. We used to feed
them and we used to kill them and then we
would eat them￼. We loved eating the fat
from the geese It was very delicious.
It was called grievenous. (Yiddish word).
When she boiled them in the water, it
gave off a lot of fat and it was very very
good.
We had a very very miserable life. We would
take , in the winter time, a bath once a year,
or once in six months. Summertime was wonderful
...we had a river and we used to go swimming
and everything was fine￼. I used to carry
the water from the river to the bathtub. Everybody
use the same bathtub. By the time I went into
the bathtub, it was filthy. The water was
like mud. I didn’t mind.
Somehow I survived.. I finished high school.
I was very good in Polish. Not so good in
math, but I became a teacher. I had to get
up at 5 o’clock in the morning to take a
train to the gymnasium. That’s where I was
teaching. What time was it the gymnasium in?
It was in Shkolim. SERYJ.
How far was it ? 30 miles.
And Saturday I didn’t travel because it
was Saturday. My parents were very religious.
I decided to stop being so religious and I
took the train Saturday. I didn’t want to
be religious anymore it was too much trouble.
I told my father I had no other choice, because
I was hungry. I couldn’t eat on the street
I had no place to sleep. And that’s how
I finished high school until I got sick, with
meningitis.
Two of us came out alive, one girl and I.
They took out something from my spine and
I survived but I became deaf in one year.I
became deaf in the left ear ...I had to interrupt
high school, but I went back to high school
after I recovered.
In your high school with her other Jewish
people? Yes there were other Jewish people.
Around that time is when we started to feel
the hatred of the Poles.
Anti-Semitism. And the anti-Semitism even
came from the church, mind you. The Ukrainians
were our next-door neighbors. They also hated
the Jews. They were poor, they were unemployed,
they were more miserable than we were. They
hated the Jews because we were there sacrificial
lamb. They had to take out their anger on
somebody. And their leader was a fascist.
He was born not far from my hometown. And
at that time of the Nazi occupation he was
there. In school they show their hatred for
the girls by cutting their arms with razors
and making them bleed. They called us names.
My brother ran away and he
went to America. He went to Belgium and then
he went to Canada, where he was a waiter and
then he came to the United States. And he
opened stores, clothing stores, in New York
City, with other relatives.
Did your family want to come to America, early
on? They wanted to come but, America was closed.
They didn’t let anybody in.
Can you tell me about an anti-Semitic incident
that happened?
Yes, there was a strike in the town. They
pay the Jewish people very small wages. Do
Ukrainians had a stroke and they said that
the reason they had the strike was the Jewish
people talk them into the strike. And they
started to beat up the Jewish people. We live
there for years and years and yet we were
like strangers to them. We were not friends
with them. My mother helped them but we did
not get any help from them. Did you associate
with non-Jewish people at all? No, not at
all. One Jewish girl converted. She married
a Christian and the father was a religious
Jew.. The family wanted the father to takeoff
his shoes and sit Shiva, as if she were dead.
But the father would not do that.
He used to go to see her secretly. But, when
Hitler came, only people who had converted
for 30 years or more could be counted as gentile
people. The other people who are married to
Gentiles didn’t have any rights at all.
This girl was arrested by the Nazis, but she
lived and after the war she converted back
to Judaism.
But at that time when I was a boy, Jewish
people were strangers and so are the gypsies.
After gymnasium what did you do? I worked
as a teacher. In 1939 I wanted to go to college
but then the war broke out. And I went back
to my hometown. The Russian people were bureaucrats
and they took over all the apartments. When
the war broke out. It was a very nice day.
There was panic we didn’t know what to do
everyone was running around. They didn’t
go to work anymore. One of the boys who was
standing there was told by the Nazis that
they’re going on a train to Russia. He was
told to take very little with him and we started
to walk to mountains to a little station.
They wanted us to work on their collective
farms.
. They told us that we would integrate with
them there we knew that life would be miserable
for us. We were on a train for three weeks
on the way to central Asia. It was miserable.
At certain stations we could still get a piece
of bread and water. We were hungry. We were
starved.￼
When the Germans came and we were afraid of
them we took a boat and then a train to Central
Asia. We Went to Stalingrad. We wanted to
get away from the Nazis.
Where were your parents during all of this?
My father and mother stayed at the house with
my sister who had a baby. My other sister
was married. She was a lawyer and her husband
was a lawyer I found out later that she was
taken to Auschwitz and that they died.
My mother and my father and my sister and
the little baby were taken first to prison
and then they were taken out of the prison
and they were shot on a hill into a living
grave. A lot of people died from hunger from
starvation. Those people were beasts.The Nazis
found an elderly man who was a lawyer. They
told him to gather all the Jews in the marketplace.
And they killed him in The marketplace.
When I arrived in Stalingrad it was very very
cold. After being there for two weeks I took
a train to central Asia, to a town called
Tashkent. This was Uzbekistan, we’re only
cotton grows. The train stopped we got off
and we found out there was nothing to eat.
I worked as a shepherd and they were all the
sheep there. Again there was nothing to eat
and I got sick from typhus. I saw that there
was a pair of shoes when I was getting out
of the hospital and I was so hungry that I
traded the shoes for a piece of bread. After
that I got malaria and then after that I got
sciatica, where the pain was so horrible up
my leg. I was screaming like a wild animal
from the pain. I was given an injectionFor
the pain and then I was released from the
hospital.
When I got out there was still nothing to
eat I was starving I was miserable.
We all decided to go to the train station.
We got on the train it was so crowded I lost
all of my belongings and the bodies were piled
on top of each other and I couldn’t even
breathe.
My shoes were lost also and then I had a body
full of lice. The only thing to eat was leaves
and grass, but I couldn’t even eat anymore.
So I decided to commit suicide. Definitely
I decided this is the only way out. I decided
I was going to throw myself in front of a
train. I found out when the train was going
to come and I started to throw myself under
the train. Then I saw a group of people I
knew. They said they would be mobilized to
a factory in Tashkent. I had nothing to lose
so I went with them.. There was a woman in
charge. She asked me if I was physically OK
and that she wanted to know if I was able
to work. I said yes. Then she told me to open
my shirt. So I opened my shirt and she saw
the lice crawling all over me. And she told
me I can’t take you. Then I said to her
wouldn’t you take me as a Jew to a Jew?
She came back to me and she said I convinced
them that you should go with us￼. I worked
in a steel factory I swept the floor but I
could barely stand up. I was so weak I started
stealing coal and then I sold the call to
Gentiles so that I can get a piece of bread.
Then I found three sisters and they help me
a little bit
Where were you staying in the factory?
We had one room there.
Mattress made of straw again.
How many people were there?
around three or 400 people.
Mostly Jewish people.
What about the anti-Semitism?
That happen mostly after the war. They killed
writers and the artists.
And Stalin became like an animal too.
What are you doing in the factory?
In the factory I was mostly stealing, pieces
of bread.
They also gave me a pig to eat and I actually
ate the pig. And the pigs had very little
fat because they didn’t have any food to
eat.
What helped you survive? What were you thinking
about?
I was fighting to survive.
A lot of people died in the factory.
Did you have friends?
One boy took the oil from the machine and
use it as cooking oil. He try to fry some
potatoes on it and he died.
I had malaria on the hottest day I was shaking
like a leaf.
I had pellagra. My skin was peeling.
Then they put me into the hospital and I had
tuberculosis.
I was skinny I was miserable and I had nothing
to wear. I have no shoes the lice all the
time were eating me up alive.
When the war finished in 1945 they told us
we can go home..
Soldiers came back from the front and told
us that people in Europe were living better
than us.
I don’t know how I’m alive. I don’t
know why am alive. All I know is I have a
lovely daughter and a son and they make me
want to be alive.
After the war, in 1945 I was put in a displaced
persons camp. And somebody wrote a letter
to my brother telling him that I was alive.
My brother was in America.
My brother asked me how much money do you
need? I told him what I needed and he sent
it to me so I only had to work in the DP camps
for a few months.
What happened when you went back to your hometown?
I saw that it was completely destroyed and
they were Russian people there.
I went back to the DP camp.All they gave us
to eat was spaghetti. I got so sick of looking
at spaghetti I couldn’t stand it.
How many people survived in your shtetl?
17 people survived in the woods.
How many people live there before the war?
3000 people live there.
The people who is put on the trains to Auschwitz
couldn’t breathe so they broke the doors.
When they ran away from the train the Nazis
shot them like dogs. They killed their children.
What did you do with the DP camps?
Nothing. I did nothing.
I wanted to go to Paris. So I went to Germany
and then I went to Paris.
Some people took me in and I was so grateful
to them. I wanted to know how I can repay
them. So I met a man who saw all these displays
children and he gave me $1000 to take care
of the children which I did
Just like I take care of sick people here
in this house where I live. There was a woman
with multiple sclerosis. I go and I feed her.
I take care of her. I have a purpose.
I wanted to come to America. My brother sent
his sister-in-law, to Paris, to marry me.
My brother was married to my wife’s sister.
My wife lives with my brother and his wife,
who is my mother sister. My mother had a little
boy, who later became my son when we got married.
I started to communicate by letter with my
brother and my wife.
My mother had no way to support herself. She
had a little boy who was three years old.
She was a widow. So she moved in with my brother
and he took care of her and my son.
My wife sent a picture of herself to me. I
thought she was so beautiful and why would
she have any interest in someone like me?
She told my brother that she would do a favor
for him, because he did a favor for her and
took her in.
So she came to Paris on a boat and we got
married by a lawyer and a judge in no time
at all in 1948.
What was her name?
Anda
So I came to America with my wife and live
with my brother. My brother helped me and
I became a customer peddler. What is that?
I had no idea how to sell anything and I couldn’t
speak English, so I just put my foot in the
door and I said to the lady, “lady, I have
shit and pillowcases to sell. Then I said
lady would you like to spread on the bed?
What I meant to ask was would you like to
buy a bedspread? But she understood what I
meant and slowly but surely I got more and
more customers and they thought I was great,
even though I hardly spoke the language. I
earned very little money.
And then I also brought customers to my brothers
store where they bought furniture and I earn
the commission. My brother on the furniture
store.
And I decided to speak English and little
by little I survived.
What are the names of your children?
Jerry and Ronnie...R o n n I e.
Can you tell me about your life now?
My life is good. I was very sick. I had two
operations.
I had a esophageal cancer and they cut out
my esophagus.
My son got me on Medicaid.
I suffered from depression and I couldn’t
eat, for a long time, especially after my
wife died.￼
I read a lot.
I watch television.
I am 84.
I spend my time writing in my journal and
people contribute articles to the journal.
I publish the journal and then we distributed
to the residence of the place where we live
here. People enjoy it very much
I worked in I smoke shop for a few years,
after my brother lost his store when he died.
My wife and I moved into this building in
1981, from Laurelton. Then she died in 1989.
What would you like to share about what you’ve
learned about having live through the holocaust?
I’m very upset that my brother never asked
me any questions about the holocaust. He didn’t
want to know anything about it
After what the Germans did to the Jews, they
could pay thousands and thousands and thousands
of dollars and I would never make up for all
the horror that we live through and that so
many perished for.
The Germans killed the Jews as if the Jews
were not people. They force people to take
their own Graves And then they shot them and
they killed them.
Many Jews did not even have a chance to fight
for life.
I wanna thank you very much for doing this
with me today.
I wanna thank you. I don’t deserve it. I
think I
take for granted what I have here in America.
But I don’t take for granted how I live
in
this little apartment, In New York City.
Now we can see pictures. This is my wife we
got married like to 47 and
I came in 1948.
This is my son Jerry and my daughter Roni,
at her college graduation. She graduated summa
cum laude as a speech therapist. And before
that she worked for the telephone company
in California. She is now going for her masters
degree
And I have from Ronnie, one grandson. His
name is Joshua. He’s 20 years old and he’s
at Dartmouth College.
I married my wife on a blind date., in Paris
She took a chance and we met and we fell in
love. Ooh la la
My daughter married the great grandson of
Sholom Aleichem.
This Is my son Jerry. He got me Medicaid and
took care of all of my medical issues and
helped me stay alive. He works for the city
of New York.
Well my father is my stepfather. My biological
father died when I was three years old.
In the beginning, he didn’t say very much
about the holocaust. He just couldn’t talk
about it. It
was tough. Of course I knew what happened
to him and his family in
the tragedy. My father has a great deal of
compassion for other people. I’m proud of
him that he does that
for other people
and
that 
he
wanted
to survive.
