1 00:00:23,339 --> 00:00:31,140 In Auschwitz, not only did I decide to believe in God, but also at the exit of Auschwitz, 2 00:00:31,140 --> 00:00:38,140 while for many years my question was the same to God, 3 00:00:38,140 --> 00:00:43,140 why did you allow so many crimes? 4 00:00:43,140 --> 00:01:09,500 For 35 years, I think I am one of the ancients who stayed alive for a miracle, 5 00:01:09,500 --> 00:01:18,500 not only the miracle of leaving the hell of the concentration camps alive, 6 00:01:18,500 --> 00:01:27,500 but also to stay alive after the war to be able to recount what was Auschwitz. 7 00:01:29,939 --> 00:01:41,939 I was born in Salonika, in the Pearl of the Aegean Sea, in 1913, in a Sephardic family. 8 00:01:41,939 --> 00:01:45,939 My mother said that Jacques had to study music. 9 00:01:45,939 --> 00:01:53,939 My father told me that I had to know the German language. 10 00:01:53,939 --> 00:02:06,939 And today it can be said that the violin, engineering and German literature saved my life. 11 00:02:06,939 --> 00:02:16,939 I started my studies in Marseille, then I continued them in Paris, and after four or five years I returned as an engineer, 12 00:02:16,939 --> 00:02:29,939 I already had the obligation to be a soldier in the Greek army and I did my military service for a year and a half, 18 months. 13 00:02:29,939 --> 00:02:52,939 At that time, it was the beginning of the World War, and I remember because it was mobilized with all the young Jews of Salonika, more than 10,000 young people, to reject the Muslim armadas. 14 00:02:52,939 --> 00:03:01,939 But the Germans entered Salonika by force, after ten days. 15 00:03:01,939 --> 00:03:08,939 A commission of SS arrived in Salonika. 16 00:03:08,939 --> 00:03:17,939 This commission of two SS officers, in the space of two months, 17 00:03:17,939 --> 00:03:24,939 took all the Jews of Salonika almost in a prison. 18 00:03:24,939 --> 00:03:35,939 I remember that the great rabbi of Salonika worked with the Germans against the Jews. 19 00:03:35,939 --> 00:03:46,939 And the Jews were subjected, despite them, to be deported from Salonika 20 00:03:46,939 --> 00:03:51,939 to go to a city in the south of Poland 21 00:03:51,939 --> 00:03:56,939 where the Jewish brothers would receive us. 22 00:03:56,939 --> 00:04:05,090 Every three days, a train would depart from Zanonika 23 00:04:05,090 --> 00:04:13,090 full of Jews, between 2,500 and 3,000 Jews, 24 00:04:13,090 --> 00:04:19,089 where in each wagon there were more than 85 or 90, 25 00:04:19,089 --> 00:04:28,089 it could be 100 people, men, women, creatures, sick people. 26 00:04:28,089 --> 00:04:35,089 When I was deported, with my wife, who was expecting a baby, 27 00:04:35,089 --> 00:04:39,089 I was pregnant for 8 months. 28 00:04:39,089 --> 00:04:50,089 On May 8, 1943, the train stopped and arrived at the terminal station. 29 00:04:50,089 --> 00:05:04,730 I went down with my sisters, with my brother, and I saw that the others, that is, my wife, my mother on the right, 30 00:05:04,730 --> 00:05:12,730 saw cars with the sign of the Red Cross that they were waiting for. 31 00:05:12,730 --> 00:05:21,730 I can tell you that none of us could imagine the truth, the atrocious truth, 32 00:05:21,730 --> 00:05:32,730 that it was that those who followed with the car of the Croix Rouge went straight to the gas chamber. 33 00:05:32,730 --> 00:05:46,730 They called them naked, they cut their hair, and immediately closed the doors and threw the gas on them. 34 00:05:46,730 --> 00:05:52,730 This situation lasted about 15 to 25 minutes. 35 00:05:52,730 --> 00:06:11,420 They then took the dead people from the gas chamber and took them to another chamber and the crematorium burned them so that they would not see behind what happened. 36 00:06:12,420 --> 00:06:19,420 The smell of the crematoriums was a terrible thing because it was not far 37 00:06:19,420 --> 00:06:29,420 And as the wind changed direction from time to time, this smell continued day and night. 38 00:06:29,420 --> 00:06:37,420 And we saw the flames, the huge flames that came out of the chimneys. 39 00:06:37,420 --> 00:06:44,420 And we all thought that we too had passed through the chimney. 40 00:06:44,420 --> 00:06:57,899 On this first day, everything was very, very difficult, because from 5 in the morning when we began to evacuate the wagon, 41 00:06:58,399 --> 00:07:04,899 until 5 in the afternoon, which was the time when they began to mark the numbers, 42 00:07:06,319 --> 00:07:13,920 we spent the whole day changing to make a free man a prisoner. 43 00:07:13,920 --> 00:07:21,980 Primero, primos nos robaron todo lo que teníamos, anillos, plata, todo, todo. 44 00:07:23,420 --> 00:07:28,779 Entraban en la baraja para dormir y eran tres pisos. 45 00:07:29,560 --> 00:07:31,759 Mi hermano y yo nos fuimos al de tres. 46 00:07:31,759 --> 00:07:43,139 La mañana la trompeta sonaba a las cinco y después inmediatamente el capo chuflaba 47 00:07:43,139 --> 00:07:47,959 y debíamos todos de salir afuera para que te compen. 48 00:07:49,220 --> 00:07:52,199 Y cuando la música empezaba a tocar, 49 00:07:54,079 --> 00:07:58,980 los ingenieros por cien pasaban durante la música 50 00:07:58,980 --> 00:08:03,879 como soldados, hard to time, hard to time, hard to time. 51 00:08:05,399 --> 00:08:09,600 Pasaban cien y saludaban a las autoridades del campo 52 00:08:09,600 --> 00:08:11,259 y salían. 53 00:08:11,259 --> 00:08:15,259 Cada uno seguía a su trabajo. 54 00:08:16,180 --> 00:08:19,980 Trabajábamos porque teníamos un miedo 55 00:08:19,980 --> 00:08:29,100 que los SS nos iban a matar a todos antes de la liberación. 56 00:08:29,939 --> 00:08:35,460 Usted ve que tengo un triángulo, que no hay nada adentro. 57 00:08:36,399 --> 00:08:42,419 Esto era un señal que no debía de salir vivo del campo. 58 00:08:43,019 --> 00:08:57,019 I was imprisoned once, and between the block and the prison, there was a wall where they 59 00:08:57,019 --> 00:09:10,330 put, where they killed. And in this courtyard were the airations of the prisons. The prisons 60 00:09:10,330 --> 00:09:22,279 I stayed there for two nights and two days. Terrible. 61 00:09:22,279 --> 00:09:36,720 And while I was in a factory for 18 months, Union Werke, where we manufactured the bomb. 62 00:09:36,720 --> 00:09:55,720 In this factory, the only German with whom I trusted was the Oberingenieur Bosch who was my boss, who heard me and who knew nothing about what was happening. 63 00:09:55,720 --> 00:10:00,720 And when I told him that I wasn't a murderer, 64 00:10:00,720 --> 00:10:04,720 he wasn't convicted, but only because he was a Jew. 65 00:10:04,720 --> 00:10:07,720 They sent me the number here. 66 00:10:07,720 --> 00:10:13,720 Mr. Bosch helped me as if he were my father. 67 00:10:13,720 --> 00:10:19,720 And he also helped me save 17 people, 68 00:10:19,720 --> 00:10:23,720 calling them to work in the factory. 69 00:10:23,720 --> 00:10:34,720 ¿Por qué? Porque trabajar en la fábrica, bajo el techo, era una garantía de vivir. 70 00:10:42,470 --> 00:10:50,470 Yo estuve en este campo como primer violonista solista de la orquesta. 71 00:10:50,470 --> 00:10:57,470 El buto de la orquesta era de tocar marchas militares. 72 00:10:57,470 --> 00:11:02,470 and the prisoners came out of the camp as soldiers 73 00:11:02,470 --> 00:11:08,470 and they walked to the sound of the music. 74 00:11:08,470 --> 00:11:14,470 And when we arrived from the music service, 75 00:11:14,470 --> 00:11:19,470 there was a Nazi who was a music delegate 76 00:11:19,470 --> 00:11:24,470 and he regularly gave me a cigarette here 77 00:11:24,470 --> 00:11:30,470 The moment I saw him, he came behind me and hit me on the head. 78 00:11:31,470 --> 00:11:41,100 And it's a curious thing that I was interned on the first day, on the 8th. 79 00:11:42,100 --> 00:11:53,500 I was released by the Americans on the 8th of May, which means exactly two years later. 80 00:11:53,500 --> 00:12:07,879 It is true that the most important question that they could tell me is where God was in Auschwitz. 81 00:12:07,879 --> 00:13:04,139 And I ask, where were the men?