Could you tell me your name, please? David Abrams. And is that your name you were born with? No, I was born “Abraham,” - And where were you born? - In Dej, Romania. And when is your birthday? December 8, 1928. And how old does that make you now? May I make a brief statement at this time? I asked to make a brief statement at this time because I wanted to express in my own words what I’m about to do and the reason why I’m doing it. I was only a 15-year-old boy when the Nazis put me on a freight train with my family and over a thousand other human beings– men, women, children, babies still in their mothers’ arms– and they shipped us off to Auschwitz to be disposed of as if we were nothing more than some contaminated waste. By the grace of God and many fateful …show more content…
Our street was not where most of the Jewish people lived. Were there any other incidents of anti-Semitism that you experienced as a child growing up? Yes, a very serious one, but that came already when things started to get bad around 1942, 1943. There was a holiday, a national holiday, and we didn’t put out the flag fast enough. Soon a couple of people came, burst in, and beat up my father pretty badly for not putting on the flag. That’s the only thing that will never leave my mind. They just came in and asked why the flag isn’t put out. It’s a holiday. So my father had just gotten home from the synagogue, and he was about to do it, but they didn’t give him a chance. They just started beating him up. - Who? - These two men. Two passersby from the street, who just passed by our house. But this was already when the time was getting bad, when all the restrictions for Jewish people started and everything. In 1941, when I was born, this area was under Romanian control. In 1941, Hitler gave half of this area to Hungary. They came over and took my town