Paula Burger's Video Library

Paula Burger: He [Paula’s father] – I guess you would call it sort of like commodities, I remember the stories he would tell us, about going and buying like a forest for its trees, or for the wood, or buying futures in an apple orchard, and he would bring back apples in the winter, because we – at the time, in my home, there was no refrigeration – so he would bring apples and freeze them in the winter, and tell us that these came from this orchard and this from that orchard, and telling us different stories about the trees, they would chop down one tree to find out the type of wood, and then basically they would buy it on the knowledge of futures – what kind of wood it would be or what kind of apple crop it would be. Later, I remember he had a store that had food products in it, and I remember – that must have been closer to the war already – because I remember them bringing a lot of candy.

Paula Burger: Well for us, the war broke out somewhere when the Nazis invaded Poland, in ’39. But for us, it didn’t come to us until later, and we would have, I would hear my parents talk about people that they would call refugees. The people they would refer to as refugees were people who came from Poland like Warsaw, Lodz, or somewhere from the big cities of Poland because the war didn’t get—we were further into the interior, towards Russia. It’s probably, maybe not unlike Denver to people from New York, or Chicago, or LA. The town I lived [in] probably was the size of like Colorado Springs, it was—it had a university and a lot of yeshivas, and um, I think the poet laureate of Poland came from there, so it was kind of—but it wasn’t like a big city, so for us it came slower and people had come—run away from the larger cities.

Paula Burger: My father, having grown up in the area and being [in] business and having a lot of friends and obviously, to our luck, you know, some of his friends were not Jewish that helped him. And we would sneak into the ghetto at night. The ghetto was patrolled by German soldiers with guns, walking around. But somehow we would find a place, and I remember going into the ghetto one time, where my father would jump over the fence, and then my mother would hand us over the fence, and then somehow she would get over the fence, and we did this a couple times. Or we wouldn’t have survived, even at that point.

Paula Burger: And so, one time when we went out of the ghetto, my mother and my brother and I were walking toward the house of these people that their daughters would stay with us for a year or so and take care of us kids, and we were walking towards their house, and it must have—in the winter, and my father wasn’t with us. And I remember my mother, she was carrying my brother, and me too, part of the time, and telling me—I couldn’t walk anymore, because I was tired and cold, and I remember the whistling of bullets, so there must have been shooting, or whatever. We must have been running away from somewhere. And she would tell me to keep me going that my father was over there. And that always made me walk a little bit longer. And we stayed with these people for about 3-4 days, and then they made us leave because they were in great danger if anybody found anybody hiding Jewish people, they would be shot immediately. Their children, even the pets they would shoot, and then burn the house down. And so, the people that helped – that were as they’re called today the righteous gentiles, they really were, because it’s really hard to imagine when your life, and your children’s lives and all your relatives’ lives are in danger, you’re really hesitant to do anything. So. And then we would end up in the ghetto again, because we couldn’t survive outside the ghetto.

Paula Burger: My father, knowing the situation we were in, somehow devised a plan to get us out of the ghetto. They used to bring water into the ghetto in those large wooden barrels like maybe now you see—used to see pickles, or something really— those big barrels. At least that was one of the means to bring water in. Somehow, he got the person who brought the water in to sneak us out of the ghetto by putting me and my brother in a barrel and driving us out of the ghetto. I remember my aunt telling us that we were going—to take care of my brother, that this was how we were going to go, in a barrel, and we have to be very quiet, and that if—I knew that the Germans would shoot us if they found us. And they put us in this barrel, and the fear. It takes nothing at all for me to get that fear back, even as I speak to you. Of sitting in this damp barrel, holding on to my brother for dear life, and hoping that he would be quiet, because he was so little, he could cry, and we had to go through guards. And it was lucky that they didn’t look in the barrel, I’m sure they must have looked sometimes. And just to keep him quiet—the fear. Um, I have no idea—logically—how I did it. But, like I said, maybe just remembering how my brother [sic] said that I should take care of him, and when you’re 8 years-old, and your mother makes you feel that important, I guess you become stronger than reality. I don’t know. I have no rhyme or reason to explain that, or why we survived at all. It seemed endless, sitting in that barrel, and knowing that these people would be shot, and we would be shot…

Paula Burger: The partisans was a group of Jewish people that had run away from the ghetto. The only people that were there were adults – young adults – because they were constantly on the move. They were constantly foraging for food, whether by stealing, by gun, by begging, whatever. There was a bigger ratio of men to women, and there were no other children. My brother and I were the only ones. The leader of this group was Bielski, Tuvia Bielski, who I understand there was written about that. I never read the book because I knew I was going to tell you the story and I really wanted to tell you my own memories. Not to read anything because my perceptions and fears and impressions were different – I’m sure they’re different for everybody, as a child I’m sure they’re even more different.

Paula Burger: I was going to tell you about the tank, as a little girl I remember they put us on the tank. But the tank was very warm to sit on. It was a little bit too warm. And the Russian soldiers, who were hardened soldiers who went through a war, saw us, they were all crying.

Paula Burger: From there, our aim was, like I said, to go to Germany. We had travelled through different borders at night, and snuck through under fences, and were said to travel as Greeks, and the only thing we were supposed to say if anybody asked us was “Saloniki,” that we were returning to Greece. And…

Interviewer: You mean, if they asked you your name?

Paula Burger: Right. The only thing we were supposed to say was “Saloniki.”

Interviewer: What is Saloniki?

Paula Burger: Saloniki is a city in Greece. And I guess it had a lot of refugees that were returning to that part of the country. As we were going towards Germany – that was our aim, to get to the American zone – we had gone through Prague, we ended up at some camps where they sprayed us with DDT, that I didn’t know what it was until years later, because it smelled terrible, that powdery stuff with a pump. That was the first time in my life I saw a circus, my father took us to see the circus in Prague. And eventually, at the end of [19]45, we ended up in West Germany in a DP camp.