Manny Mandel was born in 1936 in Riga, Latvia. Manny survived a pogrom in Hungary, a journey where he and other Jews were to be traded for war supplies (the “Kasztner Train,”) and internment at Bergen-Belsen. Manny found refuge in Switzerland before immigrating to Palestine.
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Manny Mandel: My name is Manny Mandel.
I'm a survivor of the Holocaust and I'm a volunteer at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
I do this because we survivors need to see to it, best we can, that as first person witnesses to what took place, we are able to in some way convey this. So when this generation is gone, the next generation will keep up the information. This is very important in terms of the history of the world.
Specifically, let me talk about my history. I was born in Latvia, and I mention it only because I have no Latvian connection.
My parents are both ethnically Hungarian. My father's from Transylvania. My mother is from southern Hungary, which is Yugoslavia. But my father, because of earlier developments after the First World War, could not get working papers in Hungary. He found a position in Latvia, and since you have to be born where your mother is, I was born there.
In 1936, my father received permission to go to work in Hungary and we moved to Budapest, where we lived until 1944.
The first experience I had, happened in 1941, in the winter. As I said, my mother was from southern Hungary, which is Yugoslavia, and we went there to visit with my grandparents, her parents.
On the second or third day when we were there, we heard a knock on the door. We were told to come out for a census. It was peculiar to have a census in the middle of the winter for no reason, but the Nazis believed if they knew where people were, they could control the population.
We marched for several hours. I was carried, I walked, I was only five and a half years old, to a place which I recognized as a beach area on the Danube River. In the summertime, I'd been there in August.
We noticed that as we were marching along, or rather, ambling along the sidewalk, with the stockade fence on our left, some people were making a left turn into the fenced area, some 150 yards ahead of us.
As we were approaching this, a policeman on the right said to my father, "What are you doing here?" He said, "I'm visiting my family." To which he said, to which the policeman said, "That's your business. But your being here messes up the census because I know you're not from here."
My father asked him, "How do you know that?"
He said, "Well, I'm a foot patrolman in your neighborhood in Budapest. I've seen you on the street many times. I know you don't live here. Step aside."
We stepped aside. Soon thereafter, the razzia was over. We went back to the apartment, my aunt's apartment where we were staying. Phone calls began to come in with large numbers and we were told what was really happening.
Apparently, some partisan activity had taken place in the general community. The Nazis retaliated by lining up hundreds and hundreds of people. And everybody who walked through that gate, and turned left was marched to the Danube, which had been, ice had been broken open by cannon fire that morning. They were shot into the river, never to be seen again, but to be found downriver or when the river thawed out in March.
I had no idea what this was in the sense neither did the adults, but at least they could understand what had happened. I've heard about it many times since, but that was my first experience of Holocaust-related events.
First grade, as everybody had to do, not in first grade, but at all times, had to wear a yellow star. And I was marching to first grade with the yellow star. I thought it was a major mark of distinction because the adults had a yellow star and so did this kid and all the other kids.
What I didn't know is that some people, in fact, were marching behind me, my father or somebody else, just to protect me from somebody who had decided that maybe it's time to whack this kid on the head.
They don't want my shoes. They don't want my coat or my books. They just want to whack me on the head because that's what you do to a yellow star.
It didn't happen to me and I didn't know about it, but certainly it was something that I learned from.
The yellow star was a matter of distinction, I thought, until I asked my father, on one of his visits home from his labor camp assignment, to get me a bicycle. I had a tricycle I had outgrown.
He said, "I can get you the bicycle, that's not the problem, but I won't. Why? One, it's a hassle to truck it down the five floors," where we lived in the fifth floor in an apartment building where the elevator often didn't work. "But more importantly, if I go out with you to the park and you ride the bike, somebody sees the yellow star, they might whack you right in the head and leave you in the gutter. Not because they want the bike, they just want to whack you in the head."
That began to raise in my own young mind the fact that maybe this mark of distinction, which I thought it was, was really a target. And it was.
The Holocaust is not known to us in Budapest yet, and it's not known until the 19th of March 1944, the day that Adolf Eichmann comes to the city. As you know, he was appointed as the manager of the concentration of deportations in 1942.
The last country he comes to is Hungary because at one point, Hungary and the Nazis were allies. He comes in 1944, at which point the deportations begin at the rate of 12,000 a day.
The day that he arrives, within days, two men from kind of a self-appointed rescue committee approach him and say, "Colonel Eichmann, we would like to discuss a possible trade with you."
The trade was proposed as 10,000 trucks that he would be receiving for the release of 1 million Jews out of camps.
Problem? He no longer had a million Jews in camp, not this late in the war. And as far as trucks are concerned, they didn't have a hubcap, let alone 10,000 trucks.
One of the two was sent to Egypt to discuss the matter with the British, who held the logistics and the vehicular arrangements for all of the European theater. He was arrested as a spy, spent the rest of his time in a Cairo jail, survived the war. No trucks.
These discussions went from 10,000 and 1 million to 1,700 people for a great deal amount of money and jewelry and varied valuables. Somehow, my mother and I and my uncle, not my father, were included in this group of 1,700 to be put on 35 boxcars to be taken out of Europe.
You remember that Hitler wanted all Jews out of Germany, which he achieved. He wanted all Jews out of Europe, which he didn't quite achieve, and he wanted all Jews out in the world, which he didn't achieve at all.
Anyhow, we were in the train boxcars for nine days. We were told to bring some food and some clothing. Nobody starved. You don't starve in nine days. And we were given some provisions from field kitchens at night when the train stopped and we had water. But 40 people in the car is very crowded.
We arrived at a place that nobody recognized. Again, I didn't. But I was a kid. But the adults did. The name of the place was Bergen-Belsen. Bergen-Belsen was a major concentration and labor camp in northern Germany, very close to the city of Hanover.
I visited there twice since the war. But Hanover was a well known, rather, Bergen-Belsen was a well-known concentration camp, not a terminal killing camp.
However, because we were a particular group that was, in a sense, a barter group, we were given certain privileges because they were not, the Nazis were not paid, the money that was collected for that purpose until we were released.
We were released, almost six months later. Life in camp was difficult. Food was very, very precious. The conditions were difficult. We had to be outside for hours and hours, again for these various censuses. Many people got sick. Nobody died.
After six months of this kind of life, we were taken out by the Nazis in troop trains and taken to Switzerland. In Switzerland, my war was over. My mother chose to go further south, which had been the original intention at one point. We wound up in what was then Palestine, later Israel, came to the United States in 1949.
My father joined us in Palestine, so the family was reunited. I've lived in Silver Spring, Maryland, for almost 50 years. I'm a retired psychotherapist. My wife is a retired state legislator. I have two children, three grandchildren and no dogs.
I would like to end this conversation by saying to you folks that I do this because I think it's terribly important that my children, who are not kids, and my grandchildren, also who aren't kids anymore, know about what my history was and how that represents the history of the Holocaust and the Second World War.
We want to be reminded of George Santayana. Santayana said, those of us who do not learn our history well, we are doomed, perhaps, to repeat it. I'm not saying we're going to have another Holocaust but since we can't learn from the future, but can learn from the past, we must learn what the past was, so we can plan for the future.
I thank you for your attention.
Transcript
Manny Mandel: My name is Manny Mandel.
I'm a survivor of the Holocaust and I'm a volunteer at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
I do this because we survivors need to see to it, best we can, that as first person witnesses to what took place, we are able to in some way convey this. So when this generation is gone, the next generation will keep up the information. This is very important in terms of the history of the world.
Specifically, let me talk about my history. I was born in Latvia, and I mention it only because I have no Latvian connection.
My parents are both ethnically Hungarian. My father's from Transylvania. My mother is from southern Hungary, which is Yugoslavia. But my father, because of earlier developments after the First World War, could not get working papers in Hungary. He found a position in Latvia, and since you have to be born where your mother is, I was born there.
In 1936, my father received permission to go to work in Hungary and we moved to Budapest, where we lived until 1944.
The first experience I had, happened in 1941, in the winter. As I said, my mother was from southern Hungary, which is Yugoslavia, and we went there to visit with my grandparents, her parents.
On the second or third day when we were there, we heard a knock on the door. We were told to come out for a census. It was peculiar to have a census in the middle of the winter for no reason, but the Nazis believed if they knew where people were, they could control the population.
We marched for several hours. I was carried, I walked, I was only five and a half years old, to a place which I recognized as a beach area on the Danube River. In the summertime, I'd been there in August.
We noticed that as we were marching along, or rather, ambling along the sidewalk, with the stockade fence on our left, some people were making a left turn into the fenced area, some 150 yards ahead of us.
As we were approaching this, a policeman on the right said to my father, "What are you doing here?" He said, "I'm visiting my family." To which he said, to which the policeman said, "That's your business. But your being here messes up the census because I know you're not from here."
My father asked him, "How do you know that?"
He said, "Well, I'm a foot patrolman in your neighborhood in Budapest. I've seen you on the street many times. I know you don't live here. Step aside."
We stepped aside. Soon thereafter, the razzia was over. We went back to the apartment, my aunt's apartment where we were staying. Phone calls began to come in with large numbers and we were told what was really happening.
Apparently, some partisan activity had taken place in the general community. The Nazis retaliated by lining up hundreds and hundreds of people. And everybody who walked through that gate, and turned left was marched to the Danube, which had been, ice had been broken open by cannon fire that morning. They were shot into the river, never to be seen again, but to be found downriver or when the river thawed out in March.
I had no idea what this was in the sense neither did the adults, but at least they could understand what had happened. I've heard about it many times since, but that was my first experience of Holocaust-related events.
First grade, as everybody had to do, not in first grade, but at all times, had to wear a yellow star. And I was marching to first grade with the yellow star. I thought it was a major mark of distinction because the adults had a yellow star and so did this kid and all the other kids.
What I didn't know is that some people, in fact, were marching behind me, my father or somebody else, just to protect me from somebody who had decided that maybe it's time to whack this kid on the head.
They don't want my shoes. They don't want my coat or my books. They just want to whack me on the head because that's what you do to a yellow star.
It didn't happen to me and I didn't know about it, but certainly it was something that I learned from.
The yellow star was a matter of distinction, I thought, until I asked my father, on one of his visits home from his labor camp assignment, to get me a bicycle. I had a tricycle I had outgrown.
He said, "I can get you the bicycle, that's not the problem, but I won't. Why? One, it's a hassle to truck it down the five floors," where we lived in the fifth floor in an apartment building where the elevator often didn't work. "But more importantly, if I go out with you to the park and you ride the bike, somebody sees the yellow star, they might whack you right in the head and leave you in the gutter. Not because they want the bike, they just want to whack you in the head."
That began to raise in my own young mind the fact that maybe this mark of distinction, which I thought it was, was really a target. And it was.
The Holocaust is not known to us in Budapest yet, and it's not known until the 19th of March 1944, the day that Adolf Eichmann comes to the city. As you know, he was appointed as the manager of the concentration of deportations in 1942.
The last country he comes to is Hungary because at one point, Hungary and the Nazis were allies. He comes in 1944, at which point the deportations begin at the rate of 12,000 a day.
The day that he arrives, within days, two men from kind of a self-appointed rescue committee approach him and say, "Colonel Eichmann, we would like to discuss a possible trade with you."
The trade was proposed as 10,000 trucks that he would be receiving for the release of 1 million Jews out of camps.
Problem? He no longer had a million Jews in camp, not this late in the war. And as far as trucks are concerned, they didn't have a hubcap, let alone 10,000 trucks.
One of the two was sent to Egypt to discuss the matter with the British, who held the logistics and the vehicular arrangements for all of the European theater. He was arrested as a spy, spent the rest of his time in a Cairo jail, survived the war. No trucks.
These discussions went from 10,000 and 1 million to 1,700 people for a great deal amount of money and jewelry and varied valuables. Somehow, my mother and I and my uncle, not my father, were included in this group of 1,700 to be put on 35 boxcars to be taken out of Europe.
You remember that Hitler wanted all Jews out of Germany, which he achieved. He wanted all Jews out of Europe, which he didn't quite achieve, and he wanted all Jews out in the world, which he didn't achieve at all.
Anyhow, we were in the train boxcars for nine days. We were told to bring some food and some clothing. Nobody starved. You don't starve in nine days. And we were given some provisions from field kitchens at night when the train stopped and we had water. But 40 people in the car is very crowded.
We arrived at a place that nobody recognized. Again, I didn't. But I was a kid. But the adults did. The name of the place was Bergen-Belsen. Bergen-Belsen was a major concentration and labor camp in northern Germany, very close to the city of Hanover.
I visited there twice since the war. But Hanover was a well known, rather, Bergen-Belsen was a well-known concentration camp, not a terminal killing camp.
However, because we were a particular group that was, in a sense, a barter group, we were given certain privileges because they were not, the Nazis were not paid, the money that was collected for that purpose until we were released.
We were released, almost six months later. Life in camp was difficult. Food was very, very precious. The conditions were difficult. We had to be outside for hours and hours, again for these various censuses. Many people got sick. Nobody died.
After six months of this kind of life, we were taken out by the Nazis in troop trains and taken to Switzerland. In Switzerland, my war was over. My mother chose to go further south, which had been the original intention at one point. We wound up in what was then Palestine, later Israel, came to the United States in 1949.
My father joined us in Palestine, so the family was reunited. I've lived in Silver Spring, Maryland, for almost 50 years. I'm a retired psychotherapist. My wife is a retired state legislator. I have two children, three grandchildren and no dogs.
I would like to end this conversation by saying to you folks that I do this because I think it's terribly important that my children, who are not kids, and my grandchildren, also who aren't kids anymore, know about what my history was and how that represents the history of the Holocaust and the Second World War.
We want to be reminded of George Santayana. Santayana said, those of us who do not learn our history well, we are doomed, perhaps, to repeat it. I'm not saying we're going to have another Holocaust but since we can't learn from the future, but can learn from the past, we must learn what the past was, so we can plan for the future.
I thank you for your attention.
