The Number on Great-Grandpa's Arm (2018) - full transcript

( music playing )

Elliott Saiontz:
This is the story
of Srulek Feldman,

my great-grandfather.

He was put
in the Nazi death camps
during World War II.

This is a close-up

of his number
from Auschwitz.

"A17606."

That was his number,
and he told us,

"Back then, your number
was your name."

That was all he was
to them.

( music playing )



Hi, I'm Elliott.

I'm ten years old.

This is a picture
of my family.

I have my dad, my mom,

and there's my brother,
Jared.

This is
my great-grandfather.

He is a Holocaust survivor.

Elliott:
Hey, Poppy!

Elliott:
We see him every summer,

and whenever
we come visit,

we play games...

hang out...

read our books together.

And this is one of his hats.
He loves wearing hats.



Every time I go
to the store,
I buy a hat.

I buy another hat.

I keep buying.

I say,
"Well, how many hats
you need?"

I say, "Well,
I like those hats."

Elliott:
As far as I can remember,
I've been asking him questions.

He's good
at storytelling.

We talk about
all kinds of things.

My favorite topic
to usually talk to him about

would be what he did
before the war.

Who's that?

That's my daddy.

- That's your dad?
- Yeah, my daddy,
and that's my aunt.

- That's Sammy.
- That's Sammy, and then--

- That's me.
- So that must be
you and Sally?

That's my wife Sally.

I had a big family.

Can you tell me a story
about where you're from?

- Where I was born?
- Yeah, where you were born.

- I was born in Poland.
- Where in Poland?

Srulek: Where?
The name of the town:
Sosnowiec.

- Elliott:
Was it pretty or what?
- Oh, yeah. Nice place.

( birds chirping )

Srulek:
We live good there.

- Elliott:
Did you go to school?
- Sure, I went to school.

( children chattering )

What'd you do for fun?

I went to watch
the soccer game.

Very happy life.

We have a good family.

We were very close.

In summertime,
we went for vacation.

It was a good life.

What did your father do
as his job?

He was a cap maker.

He made hats.

That was his business.

He was very successful.

And Saturday,
everybody went to temple.

My father dressed up,
elegant, with a nice hat.

He was a smart man.

He was young,
but he was smart.

Did you ever learn

how to drive a car?

Drive a car?
( laughs )

We have a horse,
not a car.

- We have no cars.
- ( both laughing )

Elliott: Great-Poppy
told me there's always
trouble for Jews,

but your religion
didn't really matter
back then...

till the Nazis came.

Eventually there was
a lot of problems going on,

and Adolf Hitler
made a big speech

and said, "All of the Jews
are causing all the problems.

If we kill all the Jews,
then we're gonna have
no more problems."

Srulek:
They said, "Well,
Hitler's coming to you."

They was very nasty.

( crowd shouting )
Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!

Elliott:
Most of the Jews
were scared.

They didn't want
to get hurt.

Do you remember
seeing any of this?

Like, seeing
the burning temple?

Mm-hmm.

Do you remember
what this was?

Jews were forced to wear
a yellow star.

You have to wear this.

You put it on
right over here.

I used to wear that.

Elliott: Why?

When you walk on the street,
they know you are Jewish.

Did you have to do that
to your store?

- Yeah.
- Write on all
the windows, "Jews"?

Srulek:
Jude. That's a Jew.

Elliott:
There were people
chucking rocks

at Jewish people's stores,
only because they were Jewish.

My great-grandfather,

it was really hard
for him.

He got kicked out of school
because he was Jewish.

Srulek:
The Germans came in,

and they rounded us up.

And they sent us
to the ghetto.

We left everything home.

You couldn't take nothing
with you.

Elliott:
The ghetto
was a little area

where they crammed
a huge bunch of Jews
in there,

forced them to live
in there.

Srulek:
We had maybe...

15 or 20 people
sleeping in one room.

I slept on the floor.

Elliott:
They lost their homes,
they lost their possessions,

they lost their money,
they lost their businesses,

they lost everything.

What happened after
you were in the ghetto?

I was walking
with my friends

on the street.

I was young-- 14.

Then the Germans
with a car pull up,

and they grabbed me,

and they took me away.

- Did they grab
any of your friends?
- Yeah.

- All of them?
- All of them.

And they put me in a room.

My mother and father--

I looked at the window,
I only see my father.

My mother, she didn't come
because she was heartbroken.

My father came in,
he say like that,
"Good-bye."

He told me, "You're young.
You go to work.

We don't know
what will happen to us
over here."

And he was right.

You know what happened
to your father?

What happened? No.

I never saw him.
I never knew it what happened.

I never knew what happened
to my mother and my father.

I never saw them again.

Elliott:
The Nazis wanted
to take over all of Europe.

( gunfire, explosions )

And so they invaded
one country after another.

They planned to kill
every single Jewish person
in Europe.

Did it scare you?

Scare me?
Sure, they scared me.

I always hope
I go see my parents again.

( baby crying )

I always think
about them.

Elliott:
When the Nazis captured you
from the ghetto,

what'd they do?

Srulek:
They transfer me.

They put me on the train.

- Elliott: To where?
- To the camp.

( hinges creak )

Srulek:
They sent me from one camp
to the other one.

When I was in
Fallsbruck labor camp,

my father sent me
this hat.

My father did
a lot of business
with the German people,

and they brought this in
for me.

I knew it--
why he sent me
the-- the hat.

Right here he put
the money in, you see?

Right here was open.

When I got it, I open up
and I found the money
right there.

But I couldn't do nothing
with the money.

You couldn't buy nothing
in the camp.

So I took the money out

and I give it
to the head man
from the camp,

then he give me some food
and he treat me better.

Great-Poppy says
the extra food and stuff
that he got from the money

is how he survived.

Srulek:
Finally, they send me
to Auschwitz.

( chatter )

Elliott:
Auschwitz was a death camp
or concentration camp.

Concentration camp
was a place

where they kept them behind
a bunch of electric fences

so they wouldn't escape.

And they had guards
around the electric fence,
with guns,

to shoot them
if they tried to escape.

When I arrive in the camp,

they put this number.

Srulek:
They didn't call me Jack.

They didn't call me my name;
they called a number.

So they weren't
who they really were.

They were just numbers.

When he was
at the death camps,
they were like slaves.

They didn't care for them.

The Nazis made them dig holes
just to make them work.

If they did
one little mistake
and they got caught,

they'd just,
like, shoot them,
kill them.

We dig the ground,
you know?

We don't know for what.

Srulek:
No peace.

You want to lay down
and sleep,

they call you.

There's no peace.

What did you eat there?

Srulek:
Soup, water.

On Sunday, they give you
a piece of bread.

Were you, like, skinny?
Kind of like this?

Skinny,
my feet were skinny,

my whole body
was skinny.

How did you get out
of Auschwitz?

Srulek:
The Germans started
to lose the war,

and they wanted
to run away.

They took us,
and we march.

For six months,
walking, walking,

every night,
every day and night.

Without food.

Without shoes.

A lot of people
couldn't make it.

Elliott:
Thousands and thousands
of people just died.

If you stopped
or, like, went off course--

shot you, dug up a hole,
threw you in the hole.

Srulek:
We walk until May.

May 5, I was liberated
by the Russians.

When the Russians left,
the Americans came in.

Elliott:
After the war, he went back
to his hometown.

No one was there.

Did you find anyone?

In my hometown,
I didn't find nobody.

That's why I left.

Elliott:
He went to Germany,
to live there,

in a displaced persons camp,

and he got married.

- ( foghorn blows )
- And then he went on a boat.

When he got to America,
the funny thing is,

he thought his name
wasn't fancy enough,

so he changed his name
to Jack.

And then opened up
Jack's Fish Market.

Elliott:
Hi, Poppy.

- You see the fish?
- Yeah.

Srulek:
That's Poppy's store.

What time is it?
It's time for lunch.

- Elliott: I like the grouper.
- Srulek: You like grouper?

And you,
what you like?

Salmon.

Salmon!

Let me find out
if they have salmon.

Man:
This is the only place
that we know

that you can get
something to eat

if you ain't got
no money.

This is his number
right here.

And he knows
exactly what it means
to be hungry.

So therefore,
if anybody's hungry,
he will feed them,

if you got money or not.

( chattering )

Elliott:
His stories have, like,
changed a lot of people--

the way they think,
the way they act.

You need to know it
to understand,

to stop it from happening
in future generations.

Elliott:
They say in, like,
a year or two

there's gonna be, like,
no survivors left,

and so we're trying
to get all their stories,

all the information,
before they pass away.

He's a hero
to most people...

for how he survived
and stuff.

I know
he's my family's hero.

( music playing )

Srulek:
I had nice day today.

I enjoy very much with you,
to be with you.

When you coming
to see me again?

- Tomorrow.
- Tomorrow?

- Yeah.
- Oh, okay.