Shep Zitler was born in Vilna, Poland. He was seventeen in 1939 when he was drafted into the Polish army. In the beginning of World War II, he was captured by the Germans and sent to a POW camp. He survived five years and eight months in Nazi captivity.
PR I'd like to start by asking your name and when and where you were born, please.
SZ My name is Shep Zitler. I was born in Vilna, Poland, on May 27, 1917. Right during the First World War. Twenty-one years I was living in Poland, till 1939 and the Second World War. I had one brother, four sisters, my mother, and my father and of course brother-in-law. I'm the only survivor since the time of the war, since 1939, but I had a brother who left Vilna in 1933 for Palestine. I had an older sister, brother, older sister. My older sister left in 1936. In her honor they made a photograph in 1936 with the whole family. The photograph shows you my whole family: three other sisters, with their husbands, my parents. None of them died a normal death. All were killed by the Nazis in different ways. Some of members I know how they were killed. For example my niece, oldest sister's daughter, Sterna Morgenstein, a beautiful girl eighteen years old, and she was murdered by the Nazi Weiss in Ponar. It was a forest six miles from Vilna. They took them out and they killed them. Weiss was just talking to her. While her mother and younger brother were already dead in the ditch. They told her to undress and if she wouldn't do it they will stab her eyes out. That's what Weiss told her. She was beautiful. He says to her, You're too beautiful to be dead. And he talked to her. And then from his side pocket he pulls a gun and shot her in the head. He laughed, and he pulled her to the family ditch. How do I know? It was written up. Somebody saw it. My oldest brother-in-law was a famous professor of Polish literature and language in Vilna. That's why they wrote about him. I guess that's how we know. I don't know. But they were all killed.
PR You joined the Polish Army in the summer of 1939.
SZ First, I didn't join the Polish Army. Why join the Polish Army? I hated Polaks and wouldn't join. I was drafted. I was twenty-one and physically okay so they drafted me into the Polish Army. February or March 1939. I was six months in Polish Army, and then my hell started because there was tremendous anti-Semitism, which I didn't feel in Vilna, but I did felt it being in Polish Army. Give you example. There was a Polish lieutenant, six foot, handsome, and he had a sign by his office, For Jews and dogs entry forbidden. Can I tell you a story about Passover? At that time, Poland was a democratic country and all Jews observed Passover. We were then first year draftees. Four miles from the camp there was a sedar. Each day for eight days we marched to sedar. We had a good Jewish meal and came back to barracks. So the sergeant says, It's not my fault. Orders from lieutenant and higher. I have to give you drill. With all the Poles looking at us, for three hours every day, we had a drill. It was not nice, not comfortable. We had a good meal and then we came back and had to drill because we were Jews.
PR That was to harass you.
SZ Absolutely.
PR And the war breaks out.
SZ And the war breaks out, and I didn't know how to fight. My first enemy was the Germans and my second enemy was the Poles. Now I wouldn't say all the Jews from Poland would feel the same way. We came to Poland as Lithuanian Jews. We didn't spoke that well Polish. During the First World War we were part of Russia. My parents didn't spoke that well Polish like people from Krakow or Warsaw.
PR When the Germans attacked in September 1939, at one point you were surrounded with your friend Harry Sanders.
SZ When we were captured around Warsaw, we were surrounded in the forest by a field and behind the field was a little village. We were in the forest. Three days went by and we didn't eat anything. Just, I think, somewhere we found onions, small piece of onions. We didn't have anything to eat. Harry Sanders was a good friend. We made it to liberation and survived together. He's from Vilna. And we were together and we couldn't see anybody, but we could hear the wounded crying: Jesus. Jesus. And then you were so hungry and when it was a little light, we saw a tree I would say twenty feet from our forest. Sanders said, Let's go. We can see little apples. Let go get the apples. I said, Okay. Of course, the apples were not ready to eat, but better to eat them when we don't have anything. But the Germans started shooting. We had bullets right in front of us and behind us. We got the apples and came back to the forest. My friend Harry says, You know, we will win because the Germans don't know how shoot straight. If I would be there, I would have already killed him. Sanders was a very good marksman. Years afterwards I told him this story, but he says he doesn't remember that. I remember it.
PR Once you were captured, the Germans didn't know what to do with you because you were not a Polish-Lithuanian soldier, you were a Lithuanian-Jewish soldier. So you slipped through the cracks.
SZ When the German finally came and surrounded us, they screamed, Hands hoch. Raise your hands. Suddenly I was in Polish uniform and they surrounded us. The point is: the Germans couldn't tell I was Jewish. They couldn't tell. So Poles are looking for Jews especially. They say, Here is Jew. Here is a Jew. Poles say that, and finally they got me as a Jew. They took us over there to Kielce in Poland. About two thousand, more or less, Jewish prisoners of war from Polish Army. Two thousand. Didn't know what to do. At that time Poland was divided. There was confusion. Hitler met with Stalin and divided Poland in half between Russia and Germany. My hometown went to Russians. We know this. That is a fact. But at that time we didn't know it. They told us they will send us back home. Write it down where we belong. At that camp there was only eleven Jews. All from Vilna. We wanted to go home. We were in that camp six weeks. We were hungry. There was not enough food. We eleven were sent to pick potatoes. It was very hard. You had to bend down. The Germans were standing and watching and worked like this for the whole day and came to the barracks and fell asleep. We didn't have strength to take off our shoes. Then they sent us to Germany. We went to our Stalag. We were there for five years and seven months. We were a group of ten of us. Somebody disappeared and we were ten.
PR So as a Lithuanian-Jewish soldier...
SZ That's what we find out. We overheard the Germans say, They are Lithuanian Jews, Lithuanian prisoners of war. Because we were really from Poland and in the Polish Army. Through the cracks, as you said. We were lucky.
PR At one point you made contact with a Ukraine girl who sent you a love letter, and it was discovered by the SS.
SZ That was when we were working on a farm. The last year we had the best job. It was on a farm. There was more food to eat. That was whole idea. The Russian girl and I did like each other. She was younger. We spoke a little bit. We couldn't be in touch to see each other. We saw each other if there was rain and we had to walk inside to bring hay or something. There was all kinds of work. We talked a little bit. Very little. She wrote me a letter, a letter in German, a love letter. When the war is over, then we'll meet and have a good time.
PR And that letter was discovered.
SZ By a German. Of course, he thought it was from a German girl because it was in German written. He want to shoot me. He took out a gun. And if she would be a German girl, I would not be talking to you right now. Clara was her name.
PR What saved you in this instance?
SZ He find out it was not a German girl. She was a Russian, and he didn't care. Another time this SS officer came and he wants to shoot me and he took out his gun, but the inspector, a big chief from the farm, came from nowhere, with a big cigar, and he says, Wait, he's a good worker. Don't shoot him. So the SS officer slapped my face and he drove off. That was when the war was almost over, maybe a number of months.
PR During the war, when you were a POW in Germany, did you hear rumors of the extermination of the Jews in the East?
SZ Yeah, we heard it. We were walking, they took us out in middle night to the railway, and there were trains passing and people were shouting. You couldn't go near them because the Germans didn't let us. What did we do? We had to scrub the snow from the railroad. We did hear. By the end, I would say 1944. We heard rumors. They have exterminated in Auschwitz camp. We did hear things like this go around. We didn't hear exactly how it happened.
PR You were with the same group through the war.
SZ All the time, the same ten people.
PR Surely you derived strength from one another.
SZ Well, I would imagine so. I would imagine so. That's right. We were together. Everybody had a partner. My partner was Harry Sanders. We were liberated by the Russians.
PR Was there a moment when you almost gave up?
SZ Well, we didn't care one way. It didn't make any difference. It was all the time. I went through a cycle of hell: five years, seven months. It reminds me that fifteen years ago I was stuck in an elevator. It's a terrible feeling. When we got free, I forgot all about it. Isn't it funny? I think about me being in Germany five years, seven months. Two things I can't understand: how I survived six winters without aspirin, Tylenol. Didn't have it. No good shoes. I did survive. I'm here. I'm here. How I don't know. You can see me. I did survive. How I don't know.
PR When did you learn that your family had been killed?
SZ We learned right before we were liberated. We know it. We were all ten of us from Vilna. We weren't going back to Vilna. Nobody was left. It was no use. We all want to go Palestine. I had a older sister and brother living in Palestine. I didn't know their address. I didn't know what happened to them.
PR When you were a POW in a German camp, you received letters from your parents in Lithuania. Not long ago, after sixty years, you discovered the letters.
SZ Only one year: 1940. Lithuania was under the Russians. My parents were living very comfortable. I got letters. All letters were censured and I cannot understand why I kept them. Nineteen, twenty letters. When I saw the letters, I was shocked myself. I really forgot about the letters. They were sending packages. In the letters I could see how much love there was from my family. My mother was going every day, every day, she wants to become a citizen of Lithuania. She thought if I become a citizen of Lithuania, I could get out of POW in Germany. She couldn't do it. She was trying. She even said it in her letters. There were letters from my cousins. My brother-in-law. So much love. All the worry they had was about me. And I didn't realize it. Sixty years ago I didn't realize it. I was worried about the package. Who cares about letters? I find out they loved me. How they loved me. And how much they were worrying about me and they didn't know anything that was going on about the war.
PR Ironically, you were safer in a German POW camp.
SZ I went to war, I survived, and my whole family was all killed. That's my Holocaust. That's why they call me a Holocaust survivor. They were killed instead of me.
PR After the war, you didn't want to marry.
SZ No, no. Who would want to marry? We were ten people when we were liberated. We decided two things: not to marry; and not to have children. Who wants to see Jewish child tortured like we saw it? But we got married. We had children, and grandchildren. We are giving back to society. Life goes on regardless.
PR So now you travel and speak to schools. We have been together. When you speak to kids, what message do want them to get?
SZ The message is clear. The Holocaust, in my opinion, can't be understand. I want to remember. I owe it to family and people. And if somebody comes and says it didn't happen, and they say, No, I have heard Shep Zitler speaking and I touched him and hugged him and shook hands and the Holocaust did exist. That is the message.