Testimonie: Ben Munn (english)

The fol­lo­wing text from Ben Macz­nik is a word by word tran­script of an vi­deo in­ter­view made by his son Sam­son Munn in 1985. Ben Macz­nik was born in Po­land, in Lodz, and em­mi­gra­ted to USA af­ter word war II. His bro­ther Ja­cob Maczik was a fa­mous pain­ter (e.g. "A Woo­den Syn­ago­gue") be­fore the war when he was li­ving in France to­ge­ther with Ben.

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I de­scri­bed to you that our win­dow had iron bars like in a jail. So if so­meone was outs­ide in the field working, we could see the per­son, we could speak to the per­son, but we were not per­mit­ted. The per­son could speak to us were af­raid to say anything [?]
All of a sud­den we saw a wo­man star­tet to come every day. And it was not field time but she came and she kept on with [...] turning over the ground and pi­cking up roots.
We saw this work done with a cer­tain pur­pose but not for food. Till she worked up her­self one day close com­pletly to the gate. Then we saw she was loo­king and working, loo­king and working till the sol­dier was wal­king away from this side. [...]
Then she star­ted and our win­dow was open, she said "who are you?", so we told her, don't you know, wer are je­wish. "Why are you sit­ting here? Why are you in jail?" We said, this is not a jail this is a con­zen­tra­tion camp. "What is a con­cen­tra­tion camp?". She was li­ving be­side us and didn't know it. "What's a con­cen­tra­tion camp?" "This is not a con­cen­tra­tion camp. I found out", a few day la­ter she came back, "I found out its an Ar­beits­la­ger." Then we saw she is so naiv but she is onest we opend up and we told her the story. That we are ac­tually not workers, we do forced la­bor, don't get paid for it, we are not being fat, we only get a soup a day. We told her just be­cuase we are jews and and the ger­mans want to have a pure race and so on. An other day she came back with new in­for­ma­tion but she was tal­king to use. And one day she came and threw us an apple that has one bite ta­ken out of it. You un­der­stand that? She had a sand­wich and she threw it into the win­dows. We couldn't for­get it. She was about fifty-fiftyfive. And she came every day. In the me­an­time she got more in­for­ma­ti­ons and she found out the whole truth and the whole facts but she still came every day till we got free. The day be­fore we got free, we heard the shoo­ting very close, we saw the fire from the shoo­ting. But we still didn't know are we free or are we not free. All of a sud­den we saw we have no guard, the gate was not lo­cked, we had no guard, we had no one to take care of us. So the man in charge, the je­wish man in charge took the same charge as he did be­fore but we star­ted to wis­per. We were af­raid to talk that we were free or we are maybe free be­cause maybe the ger­mans will come back one hour la­ter and say "Hi" we were af­raid of the shoo­ting. We were not sure about our self.
But all of a sud­den that wo­man co­mes and walks in width two gi­ant ger­man man. Through the gate, walks in and said: "You are free". Can you ima­gine that? And she wal­ked into our buil­ding: "All you man come with me. The ger­mans are away they are not in town any­more. The Rus­si­ans are here, the Ame­ri­cans are here." Both troups at the same time! And we trus­ted her, we went with her and she took us in her ap­part­ment. She had a big nice ap­part­ment. She had food, she star­ted to cook for us. The two man were close to us. She in­tro­du­ced them: "They were not Na­zis" she said "they are people who al­ways tried to work against the re­gime but they couln't [...?] they didn't know ever­y­thing" The man pro­perly knew, she may not have knew it. She was a [...?] little wo­man. Then she told us her story that her hus­band and her two sons were all ap­p­ly­ers [??] and they were all kil­led but she is not alone there are two ne­phews. And she let us as much food as she had in the house, we stayed there for a few days and then she run out of food. So we of­fe­red to bring her food be­cause we got back to our selfs in her ap­part­ment. So we went out and went into the em­pty stores and the em­pty ap­part­ments were the Ger­mans for­got­ten and we took the food that was there left and we brought it to her house. She kept on coo­king for us. Till, it was about two weeks we were with her, then we de­ci­ded it makes no sence to stay lon­ger, we feel a little be­ther, we have to hitch hike back home.