Survival Testimonial 2

Alfred Caro was born July 27,1911 in Samter,Germany the oldest boy in a family of three girls and three boys. His father owned a butcher shop and his mother was a homemaker.He moved to Berlin as a young boy and attended public school,in that time we didn't know the difference in a Gentile and a Jew. His father was one hundred percent German and had fought for Germany in World War 1 receiving several medals.As a young man he was very interested in sports,but went to school to be a butcher and became a masterpiece in cooking.Remembering when Nuremberg laws went into effect and the tremendous changes that followed,everyone looking at each other different now. There was a political investigation going on at this time and one male from each family was required to go in for questioning.He decided that he would go and after being held in a large room with several other Jewish men, none of whom understood why they were being held was transported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp.The living arrangements were horrible,sleeping on the floor,only water in the morning,watery soup for lunch and bread at night.The German officers brutally beating prisoners and tricking them intentionally just to shoot them.When he did not return home his mother went to police headquarters asking questions and ran into an old childhood friend of Albert's.He recognized her and agreed to help her.Albert was soon released from the camp and sent back to Berlin to the police prison where his mother picked him up.He then contacted the Hicem organization and they helped get him a visa.His entire family took him to the train station to tell him goodbye as if they knew this would be the last time he saw them. He spent two weeks in Belgium,and another two weeks in Paris, but found it hard to communicate only speaking German.South America had began taking immigrants and he was put on a ship to Columbia with about five hundred other people mostly Jews.He first worked in a goldmine and later worked in a restaurant.During this time the Red Cross was trying to locate living family members and two of his sisters contacted him only to tell him the rest of his family had been transported and believed to be dead.Soon after he decided to go to New York to live with his sister.That is where he met a widow woman from Alabama that was vacationing with her child.They were married,he moved to Alabama and worked in a small country store she owned.Later he opened a restaurant called the Annistonian,the motto being Often imitated, but never duplicated.Knowing that he was one of the luckiest ones being in the first groups to leave Germany he often wonders why his life was spared. "I never will forgive and I never will forget" "I cannot say in many words how you feel to say goodbye to people, what terrible"