Simon Braitman was born in March 1930 in Maciejowice, near Warsaw, on the Vistula River in Poland. At the age of two, his father decided to leave. He had a tailor shop but felt he could do better in Garbatka, outside of Radom [Annotator's Note: Radom, Poland]. He hired some cousins, his mother's family was all there. He also built a house in 1937. It had three floors and the bottom was the shop. His father made a lot of friends and did well in the business until the Germans attacked in September 1939. They started bombing the area. Their town had one of the largest turpentine factories. They started machine gunning everything. Their house was missed. The family decided to stay in some farmer's stables. The Germans moved in without a fight. There was no Polish Army there. The Germans guarded the factory. They then took all people between 16 and 60 to work on the roads. They worked six days a week. Braitman was only nine so he was not bothered. When the Germans found out about his father's work, the officers had him make them suits. His father did not take their money. The Germans would bring him presents, including chocolates, and his father gave it away. They worked on the roads until it started to snow.

Simon Braitman was nine years old when the Germans attacked Poland in September 1939. About a month and a half later, the Germans killed his uncle in front of the family. He was a baker. Braitman's cousins were his age and younger and watched their father bleeding out of his head. The next day, they started the ghetto. They killed 91 older people including Braitman's grandmothers. They took his father to Auschwitz [Annotator's Note: Auschwitz concentration camp system and extermination camps in German-occupied Poland] along with anybody over 16. The Polish partisans attacked a German train and cleaned it of it's weaponry. Taking the people to Auschwitz was the result of that. This was in August 1942. The Germans made the others bury the 91 people they had shot. Braitman stayed in the ghetto for 90 days. The smaller town ghettos were gathered into Zwoleń [Annotator's Note: Zwoleń, Poland]. He was there with his seven year old sister and five year old brother. His mother knew something was wrong. His aunt was taken to Radom [Annotator's Note: Radom, Poland] to work in a powder factory for German ammunition [Annotator's Note: Chemical Plant Pronit, Pionki, Poland]. His uncle was a policeman for the Jewish community in Zwoleń. The Kaplan family controlled the ghetto. Every few days, a couple of girls were killed in the factory by powder blowing up. Braitman was now 12 years old. His mother dressed him in his father's old clothes to look like he was 16 or 17. He was the first on the truck to go work in the factory in Pionki.

[Annotator's Note: Simon Braitman was dressed to look like he was older so he would be chosen to leave the Zwoleń ghetto and work in the Pionki labor camp in Poland.] In Pionki, he worked in the factory producing powder [Annotator's Note: Chemical Plant Pronit; producing gun powder]. As the Russians were moving closer, they were put on a death march. There were 766 people in Braitman's group. They were lucky. The SS man [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization; abbreviated SS] had sent a letter to Auschwitz [Annotator's Note: Auschwitz concentration camp system and extermination camps in German-occupied Poland] saying they were good ammunition workers. He was marked there with the number 200063. He was only in Auschwitz for 24 hours. None of them were selected for death. They were then sent to Sosnowitz [Annotator's Note: Sosnowitz, Poland] to another ammunition factory. He was making 155mm shells. He worked in front of a 2,400 degree temperature stove. An SS man asked him how many units he had done. Braitman answered 1,300. The man then asked him how old he was. He said 16. The next day he brought Braitman a big loaf of bread. They did not get food in the morning, just soup at noon made from dead horses. It tasted good and that is what he lived on. He then got bread almost every day. Braitman would share the bread with all the men working there. He knew they would take it from him anyhow and this made him the good guy. When people are hungry, they will do anything.

As the Russians were nearing Auschwitz in 1945, Simon Braitman and 765 others were sent to Mauthuasen [Annotator's Note: Mauthausen concentration camp in Mauthuasen, Austria]. They were made to walk at night. As they got to Mauthausen, the weak ones were shot. Only around 330 of them survived the march. They stayed there two weeks and then went to the Gunskirchen death camp [Annotator's Note: subcamp of Mauthausen]. You would only live nine days there, they would give you no water or food. The prisoners ate the grass. Most of those were from Hungary. Braitman was there five days and there were 26,000 dead lying on the ground, when the 71st Division [Annotator's Note: US Army's 71st Infantry Division, 4 May 1945] found them while looking for Germans in the town. Once the Americans smelled the horrible smell, they knew something was wrong. Some prisoners were laying with the dead to keep warm. Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Leiutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] told the generals not to get inside because of disease. The soldiers did not listen and went into the camp. A lot of the soldiers gave them their rations. The ones that were still alive are the ones who survived. They were even trying to eat the bark of the trees which would kill them by choking. The Austrians, which were two and a half kilometers away and claimed they did not know of the camp, were brought in to bury the dead. Some of the prisoners ate the cigarettes the soldiers gave them. [Annotator's Note: Braitman details eating whatever foods he could find, including raw rabbit]. The farmers were complaining that the freed persons were killing all of their chickens, so the Army set up a Displaced Persons Camp.

Simon Braitman went to Rochester [Annotator's Note: Rochester, New York] and entered high school right away. He graduated Franklin High School. He lived in a Polish neighborhood. His teacher told him he had to speak perfect Polish to graduate. She told him she would be his twelfth grade teacher, but he had to learn English and writing. After he graduated, he entered Rochester Institute of Technology. He got an associate degree. He was wanted in the Korean War. He spent 18 months at Camp Rucker, Alabama. He was supposed to go for six months to Korea then. Colonel Cook [Annotator's Note: unable to verify identity] of the 47th Division [Annotator's Note: 47th Infantry Division] told him that he had to get him out of it because Braitman had not legally become an American citizen. He was then transferred to the 43rd Division [Annotator's Note: 43rd Infantry Division] and sent to Dachau, Germany. He spoke German, Polish, Jewish, and Ukrainian. He stayed in Germany until February. In Dachau, he stayed in the luxury apartments that had been the SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization; abbreviated SS] housing. He was an interpreter and electrician.

Simon Braitman was in the Army in Dachau, Germany. He knew he had an uncle in the same situation as him. He was going by foot through Regensburg and could not walk anymore. Anyone who could not walk, was thrown in a ditch and shot. SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization; abbreviated SS] men told him that a bullet was too expensive, and he would freeze to death instead. Some farmers heard that. As soon as the Germans were gone, the farmers grabbed his uncle and put him in their stables. They fed him for several weeks. They hid him from their neighbors. His uncle had been a leather manufacturer in Radom [Annotator's Note: Radom, Poland]. The Regensburg airport was shut down and he wanted to open a factory there [Annotator's Note: this is after the war ended]. The Air Force gave him a 49-year-lease for one dollar. He made a successful business there. [Annotator's Note: Braitman tells his uncle's story in detail.] Braitman would go visit him when there and his uncle would give him money. Braitman's colonel asked if his uncle could get them a particular wine and he did so twice. [Annotator's Note: He tells how the colonel traded shaving razors for the wine and says not to put it in the interview.] One of the intelligence men in Braitman's outfit advised him how to spend the money he was getting from his uncle. He took all of his men to dinner in Munich [Annotator's Note: Munich, Germany] every Friday and he tipped all of the wait staff very well. He also bought a lot of clocks for his friends back in Rochester. [Annotator's Note: Rochester, New York. Braitman then tells of his uncle having a new factory in France.]

Simon Braitman says that the Jews were marched from Zwoleń to Garbatka [Annotator's Note: both in Poland] by foot and then put on trains to Treblinka [Annotator's Note: Treblinka Nazi extermination camp in Treblinka, Poland], where they died the same day. All of the people from Garbatka went there. He and his father went to Treblinka. They decided there was no way to stay in Poland. The only ones left were in Warsaw. They went to Stuttgart [Annotator's Note: Stuttgart, Germany] to a DP [Annotator's Note: displaced persons] camp. UNRRA [Annotator's Note: United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration] opened a school outside Heidelberg [Annotator's Note: Heidelberg, Germany]. They took all of the disabled people and killed them and buried them in mass graves. This was the site of this school. A Colonel Greene [Annotator's Note: unable to verify identity] volunteered to run the school as did some discharged American soldiers. They had no teachers. A lot of Polish teachers volunteered. They attended school ten hours a day, six days a week, to catch up. He was there about a year and a half. Eleanor Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: wife of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] was mad at her husband and his team because they would not let anybody from a concentration camp get a visa for the United States. A ship went to Miami [Annotator's Note: Miami, Florida] and was not allowed in. It went to Cuba and was not allowed in. Braitman was waiting for his father until 1947 to get his visa. Colonel and Mrs. Green told him not to say he had a father. Any orphan could go to the United States. His father got someone in Montreal [Annotator's Note: Montreal, Canada] to get him into there. Braitman then went to Cleveland, Ohio to an orphanage. He started school in September for two weeks. His friend in Rochester [Annotator's Note: Rochester, New York] called him and told him to come there, so he did.

Simon Braitman got out of the Army in 1953. He went to see the president of Bausch & Lomb [Annotator's Note: eye health products company based in Canada] and told him he had been discharged. They hired him back to start the next day. He spent nine years with them. He started his own business in April 1962. He had an electronic business. [Annotator's Note: Braitman tells how he shipped packages and more in his business that is somewhat difficult to follow and does not pertain to World War 2.] Braitman and his partners remained in business for 53 years before selling to their children.

Simon Braitman cried when he was liberated [Annotator’s Note: by the 71st Infantry Division on 4 May 1945]. He could not really walk so some friends took him to town. They left him in front of a church. He woke up ten days later and was okay. He was at the gate of the camp when the division came in. The movies do not show all of the dead. A filmmaker in Rochester [Annotator's Note: Rochester, New York] went to the Holocaust Memorial Museum [Annotator's Note: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.] and gave them pictures of what happened in the camp. He does not know what happened to the guys who took him to the church. He had found his father alive at the camp. The rest of his family were all killed at Treblinka [Annotator's Note: Treblinka Nazi extermination camp in Treblinka, Poland]. Out of 28 in his family, only four survived. One aunt had gone to a church and knew how to act like a nun and that is how she survived. He goes to the reunions with the 71st. Only a few of the survivors can make it to them. All of them are in their 90s now. He thinks he is in a film that has run on The History Channel.