Martin Petrasek - Martin avoids being sent to Auschwitz
Interview
Martin Petrasek - Martin avoids being sent to Auschwitz
Martin Petrasek - Martin avoids being sent to Auschwitz
Transcript: I heard about a concentration camp in Saret, that they have a big factory, a furniture factory, and whoever works in that factory won't be taken to Poland, to the concentration camps. So I voluntarily went there, especially, I was a pretty good soccer player, and my friend was a very good soccer player, said we are organizing here a soccer team, so come -- you are protected, just leave everything and come, and you will be protected here. Don't, don't, don't think otherwise. So I, in spite of my parents, they tell you are crazy, where are you going? You are going in the hands of the Nazis and you are going to camp. I don't know from where I got that wisdom or the power, and I convinced my parents, you know, that you see, this is the best for me to do. What I'm going to do here? Nothing.
So, I went to that camp, and of course I was not a cabinet maker, so I had a very hard time to prove them that I am a cabinet maker. So that my older brother, he was a cabinet maker, so while I had nothing to do, I used to go where he was working and looking what he is doing, but that doesn't mean that I could do the same thing. I have to lie, of course. I was lying that I am a cabinet maker, and they found that very fast, because I am not. So then start the problem that on the first roll call, they, they, they select me to go to Poland, to Auschwitz, and by mistake, by luck, okay, the commander of the camp, he recognized me that I played soccer, and he said, "Ah, you cannot go, because we need you as a soccer player here, because we have to have a soccer team here and you're one of the good ones."
So the Jewish clerk told him, I was already standing at the [inaudible], on the train, just before the train, I had the number, and the Jewish clerk said, "Herr Commander, but it's too late, I don't have anybody else." So he said to him, "then put yourself in it." "Oh, oh, oh -- we'll find somebody, okay?" So he took me, okay? And that was my first survival in the camp.
Transcript: I heard about a concentration camp in Saret, that they have a big factory, a furniture factory, and whoever works in that factory won't be taken to Poland, to the concentration camps. So I voluntarily went there, especially, I was a pretty good soccer player, and my friend was a very good soccer player, said we are organizing here a soccer team, so come -- you are protected, just leave everything and come, and you will be protected here. Don't, don't, don't think otherwise. So I, in spite of my parents, they tell you are crazy, where are you going? You are going in the hands of the Nazis and you are going to camp. I don't know from where I got that wisdom or the power, and I convinced my parents, you know, that you see, this is the best for me to do. What I'm going to do here? Nothing.
So, I went to that camp, and of course I was not a cabinet maker, so I had a very hard time to prove them that I am a cabinet maker. So that my older brother, he was a cabinet maker, so while I had nothing to do, I used to go where he was working and looking what he is doing, but that doesn't mean that I could do the same thing. I have to lie, of course. I was lying that I am a cabinet maker, and they found that very fast, because I am not. So then start the problem that on the first roll call, they, they, they select me to go to Poland, to Auschwitz, and by mistake, by luck, okay, the commander of the camp, he recognized me that I played soccer, and he said, "Ah, you cannot go, because we need you as a soccer player here, because we have to have a soccer team here and you're one of the good ones."
So the Jewish clerk told him, I was already standing at the [inaudible], on the train, just before the train, I had the number, and the Jewish clerk said, "Herr Commander, but it's too late, I don't have anybody else." So he said to him, "then put yourself in it." "Oh, oh, oh -- we'll find somebody, okay?" So he took me, okay? And that was my first survival in the camp.