Adler, Miklos “Mike”

Child Survivor

Nyiregyhaza, Hungary; Birkenau, Auschwitz, Buna, Nordhausen, Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camps

Miklos “Mike” Adler was born August 6, 1930, in Nyiregyhaza, Hungary to Alberth “Abraham” and Bertha Adler. He had a younger brother, Laslo. 

Alberth was born in Sátoraljaújhely, Hungary, and owned a cheese factory. When he was thirty-one, he married twenty-year-old Bertha Zellenger from Abaújszántó, Hungary. They moved to Nyiregyhaza, Hungary and he opened up a small broom factory. “He had about three people working for him and my mother was doing the paperwork for the company and the collection.

“I went to a Jewish school, Magyar Királyi Israelita. It had eight grades. I also played soccer in school and I was pretty good at sports. I also went to Hebrew school for maybe a month or two but didn’t like it too much. I did have a bar mitzvah.

“The Hungarians had the nyilaskereszt, the arrow cross that was antisemitic. We felt some antisemitism, but not as much until when the Germans came. My father got along with everybody; he had done business with all the farmers around the area. He bought the material for the brooms and sold them in different stores, wholesale. He used to travel from one small village to the other and deliver brooms for people who ordered them.

“The Germans came in April 1944 and put us in the ghetto in one corner of the city, I don’t remember any barbed wire and I used to walk out of there. Sometimes people saw me and didn’t say anything. One time I went out and went back to our original house to pick up something…. In a couple of weeks, they came and moved us to a large farm, Harangod. All the Jews from the city were in a barn. It had no beds; we were on the floor. When they picked us up to go there, they said, ‘Oh you’re going to go to the other side of the Danube to do some work for the war and then you’re going to be back to your property, and they are going to give everything back to you.’ Of course we didn’t go back. We just went from Harangod to Birkenau in Poland in cattle trains, with no facilities or anything. 

“When we stopped and everybody had to get off the train, Josef Mengele was standing on a podium and said, ‘The kids go with their mothers and go to the right.’ I was going with my mother and my little brother. She held his hand and mine, when somebody grabbed my collar and pulled me back and pushed me the other way. I don’t know if it was him or one of his cronies. And that’s how I ended up going to work. My parents and brother went to the right. We found out that most of them were executed there in the gas chambers. 

“In fact, when they asked how old was I, I lied and said twelve because I wanted to go with my mother. I didn’t know what the story was. If they would have let me go, I probably wouldn’t be here.

“Maybe a couple of days, we stayed at Birkenau. They took your clothes and everything you had and did some kind of delousing. They sprayed some kind of powder. Then they transferred us to Auschwitz. Everybody was just naked. And they put tattoos on our arms. We stayed there maybe a week and then I was transferred to Buna in Poland. The camp was fenced in. I was thirteen years old, and I didn’t know anything. When I walked in there, a Polish Jewish boy, Atek, helped me. He was about twenty and had been in the camp for five years. He spoke Polish and worked in the IG Farben company which also had Polish civilians working there. We used to sneak out at night to go to the outhouse and there was also a big warehouse with all the stuff that they took from the Jews, like clothing and jewelry. Atek broke a little thing so we could sneak into the warehouse and take some clothes and whatever we could wear under our clothes. The next day, we went to work in the factory, and he traded the clothing with the Polish civilians who worked there for food, like margarine or potatoes.

“Atek had a brother, Moshe, who was in another barrack. He really helped me. We kept together all the way until we were transferred from Buna almost a year later…. Meanwhile, in Buna there was a capo that helped us in the factory. He was a German criminal and was in a concentration camp because he threw a detective out of the airplane when they were transporting him from one jail to another. We shared the food we stole with him, and he was nice to us…. I also got lucky because we were building a water cooler from wood for the factory. The hot water comes down the tower and cools. The German meister of the factory came on a motorcycle and gave me his motorcycle to clean and take care of.

“While we worked at the IG Farben factory, American bombers and Russian fighter planes came every day around noon time and bombed the factory. Everybody ran to the air raid and bomb shelter. The German workers were in there and me and my friend were going to go in, when the guy standing there, one of those Hitler-Jugend, says, ‘No Jews allowed.’ So, we went all the way to the end of the property, until the electric fence, and laid down behind a ditch. After the bombing was over, we were walking back and the bomb shelter got a direct hit and collapsed. I guess most of the people in there got killed because they were hit by an American chain bomb, where four or five bombs are chained together. And one of those hit the shelter and it blew it up. So, that’s why I’m still here.

“There was an office and there was a pot belly stove. We stole some potatoes from the German soldiers and cut them in slices and put them on the stove, and that’s what we used to eat. All of a sudden, there’s a German guard, and he looks at me and I thought I’d be in trouble because where did I get potatoes. He starts talking to me in Hungarian and asks if I know where my parents are. I said, ‘Why are you asking me about my parents?’ He was from a spot west of the Danube, where there’s a lot of German folks, and he was one of those. All of a sudden, he was nice because you could hear the Russians were getting close to that area. And I said, ‘Were you asking me where my parents are?’ He could have asked me where did I get the potatoes and he just didn’t do anything. So, that’s luck too. Because it could be a few months before that happened and it probably would be different for all of us.

“We could hear the Russians coming towards us and the Germans were moving us away from there. They made us walk twenty miles or more from Buna to Gliwitz, Poland. People were passing out and whoever passed out they beat them up and they just threw them in like they’d been killed. Sometimes the German soldiers walked with us, but when they got tired, they got up on a car and the soldiers changed…. In Gliwitz, they put us into a brick factory. The German soldiers killed a pig, cooked it, and made sausages. They took the German capo to help them and he gave the food to me and Atek and we gave it to his brother and whoever we knew around.

“Then they put us on an open train, like a coal train, to Nordhausen, Germany. You could hardly sit down; you had to almost stand up. They gave us a piece of bread and a can of something, like a stew. It was cold and snowing and we didn’t have any water. We ate the food out of the can and dragged it outside to get some snow to drink…. We went all the way from Poland to Czechoslovakia to Nordhausen. We had no coats, only our striped clothes. Of the thousands of people that we left with from Buna, by the time we got to Nordhausen, there were a bunch of trains full of people who died and were stacked up in the other boxcars. I’d say more than three quarters of the people died from the trip from there to there…. One time, the Americans were bombing the train; they probably thought it was a German military train because they had Germans on the train on each side and they had machine guns. Then they left, and they put us back on the train and they took us all the way to Nordhausen. 

“In Nordhausen and Dora, there was an underground factory, managed by Albin Sawatzki, that built the V1 and V2 rockets to bomb England. In the morning we’d march from the camp to the factory that was in a tunnel under a mountain. Every time we were on our way out, we saw three or four people hanging because they did sabotage. Everybody did; even I did. I was working in that part where they had some precious things, like a radio, the steering, and the rockets. I used to grab a handful of it and throw it in the toilet. Everybody did something and whoever got caught, they hung. 

“We were there about two or three months. In fact, I met one of my neighbors from Nyiregyhaza and I couldn’t recognize him. He only weighed about ninety pounds and he was the same size man as I was…. He told me if you reported you’re sick and went to the doctor and they said you had to go to a hospital, you might as well figure that they would put you in a crematorium and never treat you. There was one German doctor who was my friend and said to go back to work because he didn’t want people to get killed. He not only told me that I was fine, but he also told me to pinch my cheeks every so often so that I looked healthier and that way the Nazi’s wouldn’t have killed me. At the end of the war, this doctor testified at the Nuremberg trial. And he could never go back to Germany. He’s buried at Yad Hashem in Israel. 

“They also had Polish and Russian political prisoners. I even had somebody who tried to molest me. There was no heat in the barracks, and we had nothing. A Polish political prisoner who was passing out the food, always gave me extra food. One night it was really cold. There were two people in one bunk, and he had a bunk by himself. He comes over to me and he says, ‘Come in and stay with me. I have got a blanket.’ And then he tried to have sex with me. I said no, and I walked away and went to the bathroom and stayed there almost all night because I didn’t want to make a big deal about it. I just don’t go for it. I wasn’t afraid because I was strong enough to take care of myself. Of course, he wouldn’t say anything either because he would be in trouble. 

“We didn’t stay very long in Nordhausen. They put us on the train again to Bergen-Belsen and ended up in a camp that used to be a German army camp. But there was no food. No nothing. We didn’t have any food for a week or two. There was a field right in the area that had sugar beets. We dug up sugar beets and that’s what we ate. 

“There were three of us; me and two Hungarian boys. We were talking and we said we’ve got to do something, there’s no food, no facilities. Everything was shut down. So, we decided to try to escape and the three of us went into one of the sewers. I don’t know how far we went. They were shooting into each spot where they had a manhole. We kept going. One of them was really sick and we had to drag him all the way until we came up in the middle of a woods, where there were American soldiers. They had a field kitchen and gave us all their food. Then we got out of there and we started walking around to find things. Eventually somebody said, that in Celle, Germany, they had a British military hospital. We were there maybe a week or so until everybody got their strength back.

“Bergen-Belsen was nearby and the AJDC, American Joint Distribution Committee, ran a refugee camp there. I worked for them for five years after the war in transportation. They got things from the US and distributed them all over Europe for displaced people. I was assistant transport officer to a lady named Jackie. I was fifteen. I lived in the camp that was a German army camp before. They turned on the water, the electricity, and everything and that’s where we stayed for five years…. While I worked there, I also went to trade school, and I played soccer for a Jewish team, Hagibor. 

“I was going to go to Israel with Exodus, the ship. I was all packed to go and this friend of mine from the US said, ‘Where are you going? You don’t have anybody there, so just come here. I’m here.’ So, I came to the US and Jackie got me the visa…. They put me in a hotel on 99th Street and West End Avenue in New York City. I wouldn’t even go out and order something because I didn’t speak English and couldn’t order it, so I used to go to the Horn and Hardart cafeteria. I didn’t have to talk, just put in a quarter, and open the door. I went to 42nd Street and for a quarter could see three shows and a movie; that’s how I learned English, in a movie theater. 

“One day, I’m walking up and down the street and somebody called me by my nickname, Mickey. I turned around and there were three girls from Germany, one of them was a girlfriend of my Hagibor teammate. They rented a three-room house and invited me to move in together and they gave me one room. 

“I got a job for $40 a week, plus breakfast and lunch, working for a kosher meat distribution company that made hot dogs and pastrami. We started work at three o’clock in the morning and went on until noon. Before the customers opened up, we dropped off the pastrami and hot dogs to delicatessens and ballpark pushcarts. After that I got another job as an electrician helper for $60 a week because I knew electrical stuff and I was good at it. Then finally I got my job which I wanted as an auto mechanic for about $80 a week. 

“I was in New York City for a little over a year, when a friend of mine, who also was on the soccer team, found me and told me to come to Detroit. I got a job at Dexter Chevrolet and worked on commission until I was drafted and went to the army in ’53. I got discharged in ‘54. I actually got my US citizen papers in Korea. All the guys in my company were joking that I was a Korean citizen. Two of the guys, US citizens, went with me up to a judge in Seoul, who asked them if they knew me, I’m not a communist, and I got my citizen paper.

“Although I’m a certified mechanic, the army put me into communication school where I had to climb telephone poles and hang wires. I ended up with the communications section for the artillery battalion that I was with, in the last five months of the war. When it happened. I was upset because they taught me how to do phones and climb telephone poles and I’m a mechanic. When we got to Korea, I was glad they did that because the other way was worse if you were a mechanic you had to lay on the ground and fix the tanks…. When the war ended, I stayed in Korea for another six months before I came back. 

“I went back to work again for the Chevrolet dealer, then for Grand River Chevrolet. When they closed the place up, it was pretty hard to find jobs, so I decided to buy or lease a gas station. At a real estate place, another man was there and he was talking with a Hungarian accent. Emery Grey was a mechanic, and he was going to get a gas station too. Neither one of us had any money. So, we got together and got the gas station on Fenkell and Schaffer as partners. Then, we got a little shop on Eight Mile Road and Telegraph in Southfield. My partner. went back to the gas station business in Oak Park, and I stayed there for thirty years and did bodywork and mechanical work. Then I got into a partnership with an Israeli Arab man, and we had a shop on Seven Mile Inkster and then we moved to Redford, and I worked there until about 2010.

“I was married and divorced and then I met my wife, Rita, the best thing that ever happened to me. We adopted a daughter Cheyenne. 

“In 2002, we went to Rita’s hometown in Malta and back to Hungary. Everything had changed. There was nothing the same. The street that I lived on was no longer there. I was looking for the house I lived in, but there was nothing there…. I never heard from Atek or Moshe, and the other one that I escaped with, Joe, also came to Detroit. The other fellow I escaped with, Meir Pasternak, went to Israel, and was killed in the ‘48 War.”

They also met a cousin, his uncle’s daughter, Agi Adler Miller, “Her son worked for Google or some other of these places and he found me and called me. She’s a physician and her husband is a psychiatrist in Tel Aviv…. I’ve got another cousin who lives in Virginia. A man came into my shop, and he had a Hungarian accent. He was a professor at Wayne State University and was from Budapest, Hungary. I said, ‘Do you know a Miklos Falvi?’ and he said, ‘Oh yeah, I know him. He was a fencing instructor too. And I’m teaching his daughter to fence in the Olympic fencing championship from Hungary. And he’s in Virginia.’ My mother was his aunt. When I was six years old in Hungary, he was a MD, and he operated on me on my hernia.”

Over the years, Miklos didn’t talk about his story until he was interviewed for the book, “Building America: Immigrant Stories of Hope and Hardship” by Mary Saad Assel and Glenn O’Kray. 

He would like people to understand, “Just to have faith in things and do things that they think is right. And be positive. I was in the camp, and I always thought I would get out of it. That’s why at that time when there was no food or nothing, I escaped with them, and I was always thinking positive.”

Date of Interview: July 23, 2024
Length of Interview: 94 minutes
Interview & Synopsis by: Zieva Konvisser
Videographer: Mark Einhaus
Editorial Comments: Rita Adler 

He would like people to understand, “Just to have faith in things and do things that they think is right. And be positive. I was in the camp, and I always thought I would get out of it. That’s why at that time when there was no food or nothing, I escaped with them, and I was always thinking positive.”