George Kennedy Presentation, 2007

George Kennedy Presentation, 2007

George Kennedy, Holocaust survivor from Hungary, shares his experiences before, during, and after the Holocaust.

Holocaust

Hungary

Genocide

2007-04-18

video

George Kennedy

https://archives.uwp.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=UWPMC018_Kennedy_2007.xml

5.4 George Kennedy Presentation, 2007 56:36 UWP Manuscript Collection 018 Carole Gottlieb Vopat Holocaust Survivor Speaker Series UWPMC018 Carole Gottlieb Vopat Holocaust Survivor Speaker Series University of Wisconsin - Parkside Archives &amp ; Area Research Center Holocaust Hungary Genocide George Kennedy mp4 UWPMC018_Kennedy_2007.mp4 1:|9(2)|15(11)|23(5)|31(4)|39(1)|48(2)|55(11)|62(3)|69(7)|77(1)|85(14)|93(5)|101(6)|107(12)|116(3)|123(10)|130(15)|137(11)|145(8)|154(1)|161(13)|169(1)|178(6)|187(10)|195(12)|204(8)|212(5)|218(17)|229(2)|238(8)|246(13)|254(3)|264(1)|271(10)|278(14)|287(6)|297(13)|304(1)|314(4)|320(7)|330(5)|337(12)|346(4)|354(2)|362(1)|371(6)|378(10)|384(12)|393(1)|403(2)|414(5)|422(10)|429(9)|437(12)|445(11)|462(9) 0 Kaltura video &lt ; iframe id=&quot ; kaltura_player&quot ; src=&quot ; https://cdnapisec.kaltura.com/p/2370711/sp/237071100/embedIframeJs/uiconf_id/42909941/partner_id/2370711?iframeembed=true&amp ; playerId=kaltura_player&amp ; entry_id=1_uqkcilee&amp ; flashvars[streamerType]=auto&amp ; amp ; flashvars[localizationCode]=en&amp ; amp ; flashvars[leadWithHTML5]=true&amp ; amp ; flashvars[sideBarContainer.plugin]=true&amp ; amp ; flashvars[sideBarContainer.position]=left&amp ; amp ; flashvars[sideBarContainer.clickToClose]=true&amp ; amp ; flashvars[chapters.plugin]=true&amp ; amp ; flashvars[chapters.layout]=vertical&amp ; amp ; flashvars[chapters.thumbnailRotator]=false&amp ; amp ; flashvars[streamSelector.plugin]=true&amp ; amp ; flashvars[EmbedPlayer.SpinnerTarget]=videoHolder&amp ; amp ; flashvars[dualScreen.plugin]=true&amp ; amp ; flashvars[Kaltura.addCrossoriginToIframe]=true&amp ; amp ; &amp ; wid=1_5ejfggaf&quot ; width=&quot ; 608&quot ; height=&quot ; 342&quot ; allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozAllowFullScreen allow=&quot ; autoplay * ; fullscreen * ; encrypted-media *&quot ; sandbox=&quot ; allow-forms allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-top-navigation allow-pointer-lock allow-popups allow-modals allow-orientation-lock allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox allow-presentation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation&quot ; frameborder=&quot ; 0&quot ; title=&quot ; Kaltura Player&quot ; &gt ; &lt ; /iframe&gt ; English 363 Changes after Hitler’s Rise to Power We were comfortable there, we lived well, we spoke Hungarian, I still don’t speak Yiddish. Hungarians who lived in the basic part of Hungary spoke Hungarian, period. Occasionally in school we learned German, we learned many other languages, which is different than American schools. Kennedy talks about his experiences during Hitler’s rise to power and his views as both a Hungarian and a Jew. 821 Invasion of Hungary and Life in Labor Camps Eventually the Germans felt that Hungary wasn’t doing everything the Germans wanted, they didn’t give food enough to support the German cause, so on March 19th 1944, and Germany invaded occupied Hungary. All in less than one day, there was no fight, Hungarians were out there with flowers to see the German conquerors, German soldiers. Kennedy recalls his time as a prisoner of the Germans and the conditions and hardships he and his fellow prisoners faced. 1652 Freedom The next day a Russian soldier sauntered to the area where we were. I turned to my buddy and I said Sam it looks like were free, let’s go eat. Looked to the sun, Budapest was east of there, and we started walking. And two weeks we walked in. When we got there I saw a Russian soldier and I asked him for something to eat. He went back to his unit and came back with a piece of lard. Kennedy tells of how he was freed by the Russians, his journey home, and life after the war. 2227 Question and Answer Question: So you were captured for how long? Answer: Exactly one year. I was taken April 17, the week of the 17th 1944-1945 that was another thing that I only managed to be in for a year. Kennedy answers questions about his life and his experiences during the Holocaust. Oral History George Kennedy, Holocaust survivor from Hungary, shares his experiences before, during, and after the Holocaust. George Kennedy: I was very glad to be asked to talk about the subject of the Holocaust, in a way it&#039 ; s almost my anniversary. Yesterday was the 60th year that I was taken by the Nazi&#039 ; s. --- Before I start talking about what happened to me, let me talk to you about the country of Hungary, I don&#039 ; t know how much, how familiar you are with it. Can you hear me? Ok good. Hungary is a small country approximately the size of Indiana, population depending on who won that years&#039 ; war, depending on what part they took back, or gave to Hungary. Its size and population changed through the years. There was a Hungary before the First World War, it ended in 1919-1920, the war ended in 1919 and the treaty was in 1920 by the name of Versailles. Near Versailles was a small town called Trianon, and that was a Hungarian peace treaty. That took part of Hungary away, took the top part by Czechoslovakia, the east part by Romania, another small part to Yugoslavia and a part to the west to Austria. So Hungary&#039 ; s size changed, and therefore the population changed. Hitler gave part of Czechoslovakia and part of Romania to Hungary ; Hitler got something for it in return. The population that came from the Czech area mostly the northeast part of Hungary near Galicia there were very many Jews, a big predominance of Jews. Generally Hungary was 60% Catholic, Roman Catholic, about 30% Protestant, and the remainder were Jews and a few Muslims, not too many of them. During the height of Hungary, Hungary had approximately one million Jews, that&#039 ; s a lot of Jews for one small country. I was one of them, my parents were one of them, my grandparents, we were Hungarians. We considered ourselves Hungarian, whose religion happened to be Jewish. We were not Jews, we were Hungarians whose religion was Jewish. There is a difference. We lived well. We were middle class people, my father worked for the Budapest Transit Authority, he worked in an office. I don&#039 ; t know if you are familiar with Milwaukee transit or Chicago transit authority, but it was similar with the Budapest Transit Authority. He worked there for 30 years. All his coworkers were Christian, they were very good people, very friendly people. I remember going into his office, I learned how to type, I saw the first adding machine there, it wasn&#039 ; t like todays adding machines and calculators, it was a machine that you pull down the levers, and you moved over and that&#039 ; s how you did multiplications. It was a lot of fun to go there, to visit my father. His coworkers said when things started getting really bad, they said &quot ; Don&#039 ; t worry, we will protect you. You&#039 ; re our friends, we will take care of it, don&#039 ; t worry that you are Jewish&quot ; . Hungary cooperated with Germany, Hungary provided for Germany, meat, bread, agricultural byproducts and Germany in return gave protection to Hungary in machinery. It was a good cooperation that was going on. This was going on in the 1930&#039 ; s, were still talking about the 1930&#039 ; s. In 1933 when Hitler came to power, (unintelligible). There were difficulties in the office, Jews were demoted. But at the same time when I talk to my friends they ask me &quot ; was there any thought of us leaving Hungary?&quot ; No. Absolutely not, there was no discussion, no talk, no thinking about leaving Hungary. We were comfortable there, we lived well, we spoke Hungarian, I still don&#039 ; t speak Yiddish. Hungarians who lived in the basic part of Hungary spoke Hungarian, period. Occasionally in school we learned German, we learned many other languages, which is different than American schools. In High School, we had Hungarian, German, Latvian, English, we had Italian, and we had Greek, not Hebrew, not Yiddish, not Jewish. That was religious. We had a class just how you have literature and you have geography and you have gym, we also had a class called religion. I went to a Jewish school ; I think there were one or two non-Jews among my classmates, the rest of us were all Jewish. In the 1930&#039 ; s when Hitler came to power, that&#039 ; s when things got bad. First they brought Hungarian Jewish laws, that meant they were limiting Jewish participation, in any business, in any culture, any culture, education, and culture was very low so that didn&#039 ; t affect us too much, university did not accept Jewish enrollment. If you were a Jew you could difficultly, get into a class occasionally, but not regularly, you couldn&#039 ; t become a doctor, you couldn&#039 ; t become an engineer, an architect, a librarian. They accepted a few to become teachers, they accepted a few to become lawyers. I wanted always to become an engineer, my father wanted me to become an engineer and I wanted to be an engineer. But you couldn&#039 ; t get into engineering school because we were Jewish. There were signs on streets, in front of restaurants and other establishments, signs that said dogs and Jews not welcome. You notice dogs got first billing. They brought a law that you have to prove that you lived in Hungary, or your parents lived in Hungary, paid taxes 100 years before. Just think of yourselves, this is 2007. How many of you could prove with papers that your ancestors paid taxes in 1907? I think a number of you would fail. So what they did if you couldn&#039 ; t prove it, you weren&#039 ; t Hungarian and you lost your citizenship. (Unintelligable) and to live in a country you&#039 ; re not a citizen of is very uncomfortable. There were lawsuits. One of the most famous lawsuits was the Blood Libel suit. He said that, I don&#039 ; t know if you know that we call Easter Passover but we eat unleavened bread, it is a flat bread that is cooked like a cracker, you may have seen it, I don&#039 ; t know, it&#039 ; s called Matzo. And they said that Jews are making matzo by capturing Christian children, killing them, and using their blood to make the matzo. They took that so seriously that there was a lawsuit. There was a family that lost their child, took the Jew to court and said that the Jew took this kid, killed him and used his blood to make Matzo. And people believed this. They exiled Jews out of any kind of public life. But we still lived because this was our country, we lived there, we were Hungarians. We would think this was just a temporary thing, things would change later on. Hitler is a passing fancy, it will go away and things will be right again. It didn&#039 ; t. 1939 came, as you probably know World War 2 broke out September 1, 1939. I was in our apartment, we lived in an apartment building, and we had a small apartment. I was playing chess with a friend of mine and I heard the radio in the other room saying that war broke out, Germany invaded Poland. I continued playing chess, saying your move, it didn&#039 ; t really affect me, it wasn&#039 ; t going to affect me, it was in a place far away, but it really wasn&#039 ; t that far away, but I thought it was far away it could not affect me. It actually affected my whole life, my whole family&#039 ; s life. Going back a little bit too where we were before, I mentioned that we were really blessed people. We vacationed, probably because my father was working for a transportation company, conducting these, you paid less for transportation these ways, boats, and we visited all surrounding countries. I had a small rowboat and we&#039 ; d go out with the guys to the Danube river rowing. We lived a very nice comfortable life. But all that changed 1939, September. Eventually the Germans felt that Hungary wasn&#039 ; t doing everything the Germans wanted, they didn&#039 ; t give food enough to support the German cause, so on March 19th 1944, and Germany invaded occupied Hungary. All in less than one day, there was no fight, Hungarians were out there with flowers to see the German conquerors, German soldiers. They were very happy about it. Shortly the attitude of the Hungarians towards the Jews was, I was in Hungary visiting a friend of mine about 30 years ago, I haven&#039 ; t been back since. My friend was driving a car, I was in the car, we had a small hit with another car, we didn&#039 ; t get hurt, the car didn&#039 ; t get hurt, it was a small bump, the guy got out of his car, my friend got out, the other guy got out, they examined and saw there was nothing wrong with the car, and the guy returned to my friend and he said &quot ; You dirty Jew&quot ; -- inaudible. To begin with the Hungarian language is a barrier to any kind of communication. That language, I don&#039 ; t know if you&#039 ; re familiar with it, it comes from a Finnish-Yugo Language group. I&#039 ; m jumping back and forth. Hungarians moved to the present day Hungary from way beyond the Ural Mountains, the Ural mountains are in Prussia, it&#039 ; s sort of the divider between Asia and Europe. And the people started moving west. And eventually separated into 3 groups. One group in the North became the Fins, one group went south and became the Turks and one group went across the Carpathian Mountains became the Magyar. In 896 they crossed the Carpathian Mountains and occupied the area inside, and that became Hungary. But that language was so different than any other language that it separated them from the rest of Europe just like the Alps separate Switzerland from the rest of Europe. It gave protection and don&#039 ; t need the outside to those mountains. So the Hungarians moved naturally, and Hitler wanted to occupy all of Europe. Going back to 1944, we were talking about this previous area more, not as much as we want to be to concentrate on what happened during the war. March &#039 ; 44 Germany occupied Hungary, a few weeks later I was ordered into a labor camp, and this was April 7th 1944, and they said just bring the clothing you have on you, bring food for just 3 days, I don&#039 ; t know how they picked that. And come in --/ and the 3 days lasted the rest of the war, the clothing I was wearing had to last the rest of the year, the rest of the war. Eventually we did some work, building roads, digging ditches, after a while the work we did was really meaningless, they told us to dig a ditch here, move the dirt to the left, then move the dirt back into the ditch, they were just making work, it wasn&#039 ; t really necessary. After a while they took us into the Carpathian Mountains and the work became a little bit worse. We were cutting down hundreds of feet high trees and cutting them down and laying them on the road next to each other and making easy driving areas for the German tanks. We were working from 4 in the morning until 10 at night. At that point you have to stand in formation, at attention like this, they counted us left to right, right to left and there was nowhere and those number never came out right. So we just had to stand like that for hours and if you couldn&#039 ; t stand like this for a couple of hours and you collapsed you were either beaten or sometimes you were shot. The food at that point was at that point a cup or black soup, a cup of coffee, and a piece of black bread. The bread was so small that they gave it to one guy and said this is for the 4 of you, you divide it. It was a small piece of bread, soup and coffee. We were doing that for a while up in the Carpathians, no shelter, no roof over our heads, no extra clothing except the ones we came in, my shoes lost their sole, not lost but worn out. And we were poor. I remember August 13, 1944, a day I&#039 ; ll never forget, there was frost on the ground, in August. There was one day, I don&#039 ; t know why but he decided on me, and he said Jew you see that bridge over there? And I said yes sir, and he said well if the Russians move the front we have to move further west, and we will put your whole god damn group on top of that bridge and blow up the bridge together with you. Sometimes I get the question &quot ; Did you try to escape?&quot ; Just think to yourself. You&#039 ; re in Wisconsin. Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, and Michigan they all have the same feelings towards you as Wisconsin, where are you going to go? There was no place to go to, because all the surrounding countries around Hungary were of the same feeling, under Hitler&#039 ; s thumb, as Hungary was, so there&#039 ; s no place to go. Besides it was impossible to escape. One day in spite of all that I attempted to. I went into a farmers house, I went up the second floor into the hay loft, and I hid in the hay, and I looked out and saw the farmer go to the Nazi and say there&#039 ; s a Jew up there, catch him. Hearing this I got out and started running towards the mountains and I got caught, and the soldier led me to a ditch, stuck his rifle into my stomach and said Jew, jump. That saved me later on because I fell into the ditch. Somebody up there, wherever that is, protected me, because another higher ranking officer came over, told the solider to go away that there&#039 ; s more important things than just killing one Jew. And like that I crawled out and rejoined my buddies. As I mentioned it was very cold out there, we decided that there were 6 of us together, and 3 would lay together underground in the mud, and then lay on top of it, and the guys underground would get a little bit warm, and then we rotated every hour or so, so different guys got the warmth too. I keep saying guys because we were only male. Girls, women were someplace else, I don&#039 ; t know, we were only men. After a while I was taken to a brick kiln on the Austrian border. A brick kiln is a round building with a furnace in the middle, and space underneath where they dig the clay, and they threw it on the furnace, it dries out and make a bricks out of it? This time there were no bricks there, there were Jews there. We were lined shoulder to shoulder all the way around, a guy touching me on both sides. On the one side of me was an engineer. He died one night, I couldn&#039 ; t report his death because this way we got his soup the next day. I had two days of soup. We all got sick. We got typhoid fever, we had lice all over. We didn&#039 ; t have food, we didn&#039 ; t have medication, and we didn&#039 ; t have doctors. Many of them died. But at that point we didn&#039 ; t really do much work, the only work was burying our buddies who died in the night. One day I was selected for that role, and this was very good because at least then I got out of that horrible hell hole. Dark, dismal, cold, full of lice, full of sick people. The next job was digging the big ditch, taking the dead ones and heaving them in, poor lime on top of them, then another layer of dead people, then another layer of lime. I remember one day when I was doing this, I don&#039 ; t really remember the circumstances, I got a green apple from somebody, I didn&#039 ; t want, that apple was the perfect fruit, I didn&#039 ; t want them to take it away from me, so I went into the grave, laid down next to a dead one and I ate my green apple. There was one kid with us, he was maybe 14 years old, and he carried with him, under his hat a cigar box, and somebody asked him what is in the box, and he wouldn&#039 ; t tell him. One day he said come here I&#039 ; ll show you what&#039 ; s in the box, so I go over and he opens the box and there were 6 or 8 pieces of I don&#039 ; t really know what, pieces of something in the box. I said what are those? He said those are my toes, they froze off during the weather, I broke them off and I hope that after the war somebody will be able to reattach them. This is the example of the mental condition that one gets. Many people died, I didn&#039 ; t. I wasn&#039 ; t stronger than the rest, I was luckier. Anyway this went on until the beginning of 1945 up to March of &#039 ; 45. Then one day there were fights outside, airplanes and tanks going up and down, like a marvelous war movie but we were a part of it, when the bombs were falling we were in there. When it quieted down, the guards disappeared. The rest of the day nothing happened. The next day a Russian soldier sauntered to the area where we were. I turned to my buddy and I said Sam it looks like were free, let&#039 ; s go eat. Looked to the sun, Budapest was east of there, and we started walking. And two weeks we walked in. When we got there I saw a Russian soldier and I asked him for something to eat. He went back to his unit and came back with a piece of lard. I don&#039 ; t know if you know about lard, it&#039 ; s a piece of fat, solid fat, no meat on it, just solid fat, which is terrible for somebody who didn&#039 ; t eat decent food for a year. We got to the field, pulled out turnips, we ate this solid fat and the turnips. The first night we got into a deserted house, as we slept in the middle of the night there was a knocking and hitting the door. I got up and there was a Russian soldier there, and he talked and I got up and said I don&#039 ; t speak Russian. He shoved his weapon and all of a sudden there stood another Russian at the door, and he started jabbering something I don&#039 ; t know what he said. But at one point he did like this, and automatically I put my hand up to block his hit. Then he left, he was gone. And he hurt me, I took my shirt off there is a cut there on my hand, he knifed me. I&#039 ; m saying this story, to tell you that those Russians, one was good, gave me food, the other one knifes me on the same day. They were all over. They were Cossacks by the way. Cossacks. Anyway, I walked home with this fellow, in two weeks. I&#039 ; ll go back to that point later on. First I want to talk about my father, I was an only child. My father and mother were home when I was taken. After a while they came into the apartment building, the Nazis, and they said, all men downstairs. All men including kids who were 6 years old, and some who were 80 years old. And they took every one of them including my father. My father was 52 years old. They marched him toward Germany, the last we knew of him when he crossed the border out of Germany, we never found out what happened to him. He was 52. My mother not much after that was taken to the Budapest ghetto. I don&#039 ; t remember much to describe but I&#039 ; ll describe to you what the ghetto is. The whole city at the beginning had lots and lots of Jews. Several hundred thousand Jews. There were many Jews living in Budapest. And they take all the Jews that live in the whole city and they squeezed them into an area of 3-4 square blocks. They put the fences, walls, across the street, so there was no in and out movement from the ghetto. They were all in one small, small area, only about 3-4 blocks in size. My mother lived in a room, not in a house, but one room. A lot of you have bedrooms at home. 28 people. There was a bucket in the corner, there was no medicine, no doctors ; I don&#039 ; t know how they got food. And the war was going on outside, and she lived in that, and obviously many people died. And that made room to move someone else in there, and they got very, very sick. My mother survived that but she became very, very sick after. So going back to when I came home, I found my mother, and her first words to me were God kept me alive so someone should tell you what happened during this last year. We talked, we talked, she told her story, and I told my story. And she died before we finished telling all the stories, she was 49 years old. So my parents, I lost my father at age 52, my mother at 49. I was lucky in age, I was 20 at that time. Which at that age, I was tough enough, I was adult enough, I wasn&#039 ; t too old to do what was expected to survive. My grandparents lived in a suburb of Budapest, many of my aunts, uncles, cousins, so forth lived there. In 1944 they moved them into a ghetto, the next day they moved them with railroad cars to Auschwitz. I sure you have all heard of the name Auschwitz, it&#039 ; s a town in Poland with well-known extermination camps. The railroad cars they moved them in had signs on it, for 8 horses or 40 men. Well the Germans put 100 Jews into that railroad car. No sanitary, no food, no facilities, other than they couldn&#039 ; t even sit down, they had to be standing like that, sometimes it would be 3 or 4 days. They arrived at Auschwitz, the next day they gassed them, and up they went the chimney. After the war I drew up a family tree of ours, that has uncles, aunts, cousins, parents, grandparents, everybody on it, there were over 100 names of family, of those over 100 names, my cousin survived, my uncle, and I. Three. People will say there was no holocaust, my family, then what happened to those people? By the way, the cousin that survived after the war, he tried to leave Hungary to go any place, and he said I looked at the map what was farthest away from Europe, farthest away from Hungary, it was Australia. He still lives in Sydney. The uncle who survived, moved to England, he has since died, so right now the only survivors are my cousin in Sydney and I. I came home and the next day went to the university but I wasn&#039 ; t accepted because of being a Jew before the war. It&#039 ; s sad, sometimes they ask me &quot ; How did you survive?&quot ; &quot ; Why?&quot ; I could tell you all kinds of stories, it&#039 ; s one word, luck. I was lucky, I was luckier than many of the others. I could sit here and talk but I would like to answer some questions that you probably do have about this period. Anybody? Question: Can you describe what was life like with um the other people you were with, were there friendships that were made or was it every person fought for survival or was it anything like. Answer: Yes, we a decided a group, have any of you seen the movie Band of Brothers (unintelligible). Because 3 friends of mine decided when we went in that we were going to be a band of brothers. We shared everything together, the 4 of us were very lucky. All four of us survived. One of them is an orthopedic surgeon in Hungary, retired, one is an architect in Hungary, I, and one became a judge, first he went to Israel, he joined the army, fought in 4 wars, became a judge in the court, became a very high ranking judge in Israel. Since he died, he died has nothing to do with the holocaust. As far as everybody for themselves, I would say we were very cooperative with each other, help each other, there were so fights obviously but we tried to help each other pretty much. Maybe not as how our 4 friends did but everybody had, I remember there was one guy who before the war was a barber, he came with his barber tools and he cut our hair and shaved our faces, and everyone contributed what they could to make our existence a little bit easier, than it would be without it. So that was good. Obviously there were arguments, like there are amongst you that sometimes you want to give someone a piece of who you are. Just argue with not fight. Question: So you were captured for how long? Answer: Exactly one year. I was taken April 17, the week of the 17th 1944-1945 that was another thing that I only managed to be in for a year. Many Polish Jews were in for 3-4 years. And going back to the previous question, those Polish Jews were pretty rough on our Jews because they said we didn&#039 ; t suffer for years like they did, you had your theaters, you had your booze, you were vacationing, you lived well while we were in captivity. And they were not on the -- as our captives. There were incident like that but generally I would say there was -- nature with each other. Anyone else? Question: How do you keep hope alive in such difficult circumstances? Answer: Very good question. When I was taken away my parents were at home, my grandparents were home, my uncles, aunts were at home. I was the first one to be taken away. So as far as I was concerned I had a whole family at home, I must survive. I said the Buda gets me, that&#039 ; s the best I can do, but I must do my best to survive. I had to come back to a big family so that kind of helped my survival. On the other hand when my father was taken away, I don&#039 ; t know anything about it, but I&#039 ; m picturing it in my mind, his only son was taken, I remember the last dinner we had before I was taken, and my father said I raised my child and now I might have enjoyment with him, not from him but with him. I was 20. They take him away from me. But I also heard from my mother when I was taken, came home from the apartment to live there and she snuck after me and saw as her only son was taken away. So I suppose my parents were sure, their joy, their son, I&#039 ; m not sure that I was a joy but, that joy, that hope was taken away from them. So I&#039 ; m sure that the hope that that was was that I had a family to go home to. Question: When did you come to the U.S. and what was your first impression of it? Answer: It was nothing, nothing, all truth. I mentioned that I came home. I got a question, I have been talking to a lot of Chicago area inner city schools. One kind one day asked me, have you thought of revenge when you got out? And my answer was yes, but I didn&#039 ; t do anything about it because my future was more important than any revenge. I remember one day I saw my suit, I had this big funny what they called a Zoot Suit, cuffs on the side, one day I saw this suit on somebody on the other side of the street, probably took it from my house. I swallowed and I kept on walked. I came home one day, the next day I went to the university to register as an engineering student, something I was not able to do before the war because I was a Jew. I went to university, studied engineering and one day I was given the opportunity to apply for it and ended up getting a scholarship to the United States, through an organization you may have heard the name the -- foundation. It&#039 ; s a Jewish organization it gave scholarships to students who were studying in university, that were good students, good records, and they received scholarships, I got one of them. My friends applied for it, he didn&#039 ; t get it, and I got it. Anyway the scholarship brought me out in 1947. At Texas A&amp ; M. I graduated from there in civil engineering specializing in structures and structural engineer, then I applied for another scholarship to, I applied to 3 schools in Wisconsin, Michigan and California for master work. And I decided that whoever accept me first, I go there. Wisconsin was it. I went to Madison, I got my master&#039 ; s degree there and from there I got a job offer in Chicago at a large architectural engineering firm. I came back in &#039 ; 55 and started my own company, it&#039 ; s still in existence in Chicago right now. Question: You had said that one of the times, 30 years ago you had gone back Hungary you encountered some, people, a person that -- are there times since you&#039 ; ve gone back that you experience this -- or has it declined. Answer: My family described this, during the communists, the communist rule of Hungary, it was illegal to be openly anti-Semitic in Hungary. Since the communists, people are allowed to be openly anti-Semitic. Anti-Semitism was always there, they during the communist years couldn&#039 ; t say it allowed but they were still anti-Semitic, as today. I remember seeing advertising posters when I was a little kid, a poster showed a barrel with holes in and blood coming out of the hole, the caption was &quot ; This is Christian God that Jews killed and they put into a barrel and this is his blood flowing out of the barrel&quot ; . The terrible thing is this poster existed and people saw and they said well there must be something to it, they wouldn&#039 ; t say it. Propaganda minister of Germany, Goebbels, said &quot ; if you say something loud and often enough people will believe it&quot ; . Where there is smoke there is fire. Obviously there wasn&#039 ; t, but people believed it. So there was, and it still is there, but the Hungarians did so much better than anyone else around in Europe, mostly because of their language and the issue of background but they believed in the country itself. Anti-Semitism will always exist. I read a few, I&#039 ; d recommend a few books to you, I have no personal interest if you read or don&#039 ; t read it it&#039 ; s just for your own edification. One book you might not read, but you will look at the focus of it--Daniel Goldhagen, he&#039 ; s a Harvard professor. The name of the book is &quot ; Hitler&#039 ; s Willing Executioners.&quot ; It&#039 ; s a very big book, like 900 pages, it&#039 ; s full of photographs, full of documents, Xeroxed documents. Amongst them, a photograph of a German soldier holding a rifle to the head of a little kid, and what&#039 ; s terrible about it is someone took this picture, sent it home to his girlfriend, the back of the picture said look what we are doing -- be proud of it. Some of the other pictures are them take a knife and shaving the side of his hair and face, no soap, just cutting it off with a knife. A lot of the photographs document what the S.S. did all on their own, Hitler could not have done it-- he&#039 ; s not the only bad man. He could not have accomplished what he did accomplish without the full cooperation of German, not German those were other who were just as bad and they weren&#039 ; t Germans. Question: Could you spell the authors name? Answer: Goldhagan Vopat: It&#039 ; s on reserve in the library. Kennedy: Don&#039 ; t buy it, its best you go to the library. Another one that I got the last couple of years, the author is, Kertesz. I used to teach engineering at Purdue and Illinois Institute of Technology, in those days there were no overhead projectors, just three large blackboards like this. Speaking and lecturing from six to nine, at nine o&#039 ; clock I couldn&#039 ; t talk from all the chalk dust. This is the author&#039 ; s name, the name of the book is called &quot ; Fateless&quot ; , they made a movie out of it, that is a rather (unintelligible). He got the Nobel Prize for literature a couple--two or three years ago, he lives in Germany but published it in Hungarian, it&#039 ; s a Hungarian book. &quot ; Fateless&quot ; is the name of the book. Another interesting book I read, the authors name is this, Pogany, the name is &quot ; Am I My Brother&#039 ; s Keeper?&quot ; It&#039 ; s a true story, documented about a Jewish family. Half of the family converts to Catholicism, one of them becomes a Catholic priest, the other one-- some of them stay as a Jew, some of the become Catholic, non-practicing Catholic. When Hitler came, they were equally tortured. The Catholic priest escapes out of Hungary, goes to Italy, and lives through the war in a monastery. The rest of the family is in Hungary. The mother of the family clutches a crucifix as she walks into the gas chamber in Auschwitz. The only difference was that we were wearing 4 inch diameter yellow star of David. They wore white star of David. That was the difference. It&#039 ; s a very interesting book. The discussion between the Catholic priest brother and the one who goes through camps and decides in the camps to reconvert and becomes a Jew again. By the way, sometimes people ask me about a name on my arm, but I do not have a number on my arm because those things were only in the major extermination camps like Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, Bergen-Belsen and a few others, but besides that there were hundreds and hundreds of minor small sub camps, I was in one of them, that were not extermination camps, meaning they didn&#039 ; t exterminate you like my grandparents were. Arrived, gassed, (unintelligible) and up the chimney. There were supposedly labor camps that turned into concentration camps, we didn&#039 ; t get numbered, and didn&#039 ; t keep track of what happened to us, no one kept track of--At least no knowledgeable (unintelligible) on what happened to the others, the other (unintelligible). There were marches and people who couldn&#039 ; t march fast enough, straggled, stayed back, and the easiest thing was they shot them, and they stayed on the roadside, died there. Vopat: Mr. Kennedy, you said that you knew, your father knew and family knew when you were going to be taken? How did that happen, what did they do? Answer: They received a letter, you are to report to a certain place. Bring food and the clothes you were wearing. Vopat: Who was it from? Answer: The government, the Hungarian government Vopat: The Hungarian government? Kennedy: The Hungarian government. The Hungarian government at that point did everything the Germans wanted. During that time, they were just as bad, maybe even worse in some instances than the Germans. I remember we were in the Carpathian Mountains and we were working, and we didn&#039 ; t know about D-day. One day we found out there was a landing in Western Europe and we were told that &quot ; we are sweeping the Americans into the ocean&quot ; . We said well, if they are sweeping them into the ocean that means Americans must have landed and that&#039 ; s the only reason we found out about D-day at all. We were kept out in the forest, no contact with anybody. The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System video Interviews may only be reproduced with permission from the University of Wisconsin-Parkside Archives &amp ; Area Research Center. 0 UWPMC018_Kennedy_2007.xml UWPMC018_Kennedy_2007.xml