Simon Unger

My name is Simon Unger. When I was born on July 3, 1922 in Grybow, Poland to Chaim and Leiba Ruchla, I was named Simon Herback Falsch Unger. In Poland, the religious Jews in my town refused to be part of a civil wedding ceremony (as opposed to one by a Rabbi) and as a result, many marriages were not officially recognized. Therefore, the “falsch” in my name meant the equivalent of false. Once the war started, I just went by the last name Unger.

I was the youngest of three children. My two sisters named Pearl and Ethel we much older than me (by 20 plus years). My sister Pearl who was born in 1001 was married and had a son named Ben. My sister Ethel was married to Yeruchim Isenberg and had two daughters- Sarah and Leah.

Our family was very religious. We lived right off the town square next door to the Rabbi. Our family owned a lumber mill and a clothing store.

I attended public school from early morning until 2:00 pm and then yeshiva from 2:00 until 8:00 pm every weekday.

Once the war started, I was sent to a series of labor and death camps. Starting in 1940, I was sent to a labor camp located outside of Grybow digging rocks for construction. I would return to town every night. In 1941, I worked at a labor camp called Tartak with a group of 35 men from my town. Tartak was a lumber and saw mill. In 1942, other than the 35 men working at Tartak, all the other residents were moved in the early spring to a ghetto in Nowy Sacz. These residents who were too old or infirm to walk to the ghetto were brought to a mass grave outside of the town and shot. In 2004, I visited this site and met a man who was approximately year years old on that day and watched the whole thing as the mass grave abutted his property. I believe my parents were sadly among the 300 people who were murdered and put in this mass grave.

I got a job at a railroad station loading lumber and bribed a German officer to find out where trains go loaded with Jews leaving Nowy Sacz in Summer 1942. I found out they are being brought to a town named Belzac but was not told anything additional. It is now known that the 20,000 Jews from the ghetto at Nowy Sacz were among the 600,000 Jews from Galicia gassed at Belzac. The Jews from Nowy Sacz were all killed on three days in August 1942.

Eventually I was moved to the ghetto in Tarnow, closer to Krakow. I worked cleaning homes of wealthy Jewish residents of Tarnow who were allowed to keep their own homes. While cleaning the sewers on a street, I found a condom stuffed with 1000 zlotys, five $100 bills and three diamonds. I was able to use this to buy additional food for myself and my small group of friends.

In 1943, I was part of a group of 280 men from Tarnow taken to the town of Rymanow where we were put to work disassembling a former Russian P.O.W. camp. Rymanow is located closed to Krakow. The labor camp was overseen by Amon Goth, the commandant of the labor camp of Plaszow. Our of the group of 250, only 12, including myself survived and were moved to another large slave labor camp.

In the fall of 1943, I was among the 1400 prisoners who were transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The trip took four days because the train was frequently held for other trains to pass. There were over 160 people in my cattle car.

Upon my arrival at Auschwitz, I remember being asked by Dr. Mengele my occupation. My answer was carpenter and my hands were checked to test this. I was tattooed with the number 161747.

While at Auschwitz, I got very ill from dysentery. One of the original prisoners in the camp was a former colonel in the Polish military who was from my small town of Grybow. He was a gentile. For some reason, this man took it upon himself to help me get into the hospital at Auschwitz and I remained there for two months.

On November 16, 1944, I left Auschwitz for a labor camp in Germany called Oranienburg which was near Berlin. This camp existed largely to provide labor for a very large underground factory being used to produce Messerschmitt aircraft.

From there I was moved to a subcamp of Dachau called Allach at the end of 1944. At Allach, I was also assigned to work at a different underground factory, also manufacturing Messerschmitt aircraft. When I arrived at my barrack in Allach, I was greeted by a man who told me that I would be protected. It was then I realized that this was the gentile who I used to trade cigarettes for food with at Auschwitz. I was liberated at Allach on April 30, 1945 by the 42^nd rainbow division of General Patton’s army.

At Allach, I had developed pneumonia and upon liberation I was moved to an American hospital and eventually to a sanatorium in Amberg, Germany where I stayed for months. I spent four years living in Amberg, improving my English by driving export taxis for American GI’s.

I arrived in NYC on June 12, 1949 abroard the SS Marina Marlene. I was brought to the United States by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. I met my wife in 1955 and we married on May 20, 1956.

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