Survivor recalls horrors of Holocaust

Louis Frydman, left, receives a plaque for sharing his story of survival during the Holocaust from Brig. Gen. Randal Dragon, 1st Inf. Div. deputy commanding general, right, during the Days of Remembrance observance May 3 at Riley’s Conference Center.

By Katherine Rosario
1st Inf. Div. Post

When 15-year-old Louis Frydman opened his eyes, he saw a man in a military uniform and a woman in a white dress, and when they smiled at him, he knew he was safe.
They returned him back to his bed to rest, and the only reminder of the past two years was the clothes he still wore – the clothes given to him at the beginning of his journey through nine concentration camps.
“I have no memory of the liberation or how I ended up in the hospital, but they literally brought me back to life, and I am forever grateful to the U.S. Army,” he told an audience during the Days of Remembrance observance May 3 at Riley’s Conference Center.
During the Holocaust, Frydman endured three ghettos, nine concentration camps and three death marches before he was liberated in 1945.
Upon his liberation, he spent nine months in a children’s center operated by the U.N. Refuge and Rehabilitation Agency.
His first mission, though, was finding his brother who was separated from him during a death march.
Without any money or papers, he set off to find him after hearing about a survivor living close by with his last name.
“I looked high and low because I figured that if anybody survived it would be my brother,” Frydman said. “He never looked for me because he left me at a death march, and he was convinced I was dead.”
Frydman, now in his 80s, first spoke about his experiences in the Holocaust 26 years after the liberation.
He was 12 years old in 1943 when his Family was rounded up by the Nazis in Poland and put into the Warsaw Ghetto, he said.
“After taking everything from us including wedding rings, they put it all on a big heap and they put us against a wall and got an order to take us to the gas chambers but the train went to Majdanek instead,” he said.
There his mother made her two sons raise their hands to volunteer to travel to another camp where the Germans needed 800 expert metal workers.
“Even though we were 12-years-old, they took us and killed all the rest of them,” he said.
They traveled to Budzyn labor camp in Poland, a camp not far from where they had left their mother.
“It was the worst imaginable camp because we were dead ducks, we weren’t supposed to live,” he said. “The commander screamed at us for daring to oppose the German Army. We were little kids.”
He and his brother stayed there 13 months until they closed the camp due to the advancement of the Russian army.
From there they transferred to Radom where they did hard slave labor working with metals.
“It was a terrible camp, but compared to Budzyn, it was a resort,” he said. 
His first death march came July 26, 1944, when the workers were ordered to march to Tomaszow. They arrived three days later and stayed a week but both he and his brother can only remember one day.
“There was no food, no open windows, no sanitary conditions,” Frydman said.
They arrived in Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland Aug. 3, 1944, and Frydman described it as the most horrible day of his life.
There were three lines: one for men who could work, one for women who could work and the third was for everyone else – children, older people and hurt or sick people. 
Doctors examined each person to determine their level of fitness and then sent them to a line.
 
“My doctor was Dr. (Josef) Mengele; he was the worst of the worst,” he said. “If you didn’t pass the selection you were sent to the third line.” 
Mengele, also known as the Angel of Death, was most infamously known for his human experiments on camp inmates, especially children.
“The air was angry with burning flesh and smoke was bellowing from the chimneys. Everyone knew exactly what was happening,” Frydman said.
When a Soldier inquired about his fitness, he said he was a good, hard worker and he was sent to the side to be transferred to another camp.
“I said to myself that no matter what I would not go to that line and wait a couple of hours to be killed.”
Out of the 1,500 people inspected that day, 1,000 people were killed.
As he held out his arm, he told the audience, “I don’t have my left arm inked with concentration numbers because I was in Auschwitz only one day, and they don’t give numbers to visitors.”
From Auschwitz, he traveled to three more concentration camps before his second death march.
He was too weak to continue marching and told his brother to go on without him, he said.
While the Soldiers were preparing to kill those who could no longer walk, they were ordered to move the inmates out of the area because an officer from the German infantry, who were setting up nearby, did not want his Soldiers witnessing a mass shooting.
He endured his final march before boarding a truck headed to Dachau concentration camp in Germany.
“I was ordered to stay at Dachau and clean the barracks so when the U.S. Army came they would be impressed with the camp,” he said. “It was totally twisted.”
After his rehabilitation and reunion with his brother, he moved to New York where he received his bachelor’s degree in sociology in 1954 from City College. In 1956, he received his master’s degree from Columbia University, and a doctoral degree in psychology in 1968 from Yeshiva University.
He was appointed as associate professor in 1969 at the University of Kansas School of Social Welfare. He retired from the university in 2002.

Advertisement