Jordan Wiertzema - Survivor Testimony 2

                Alfred Caro was born July 11, 1911 in Germany and he grew up in Berlin when he was young. His family moved to Berlin because the city in which he lived became part of Poland. His father was a butcher and ran a fairly successful business. He had a large family with three brothers and three sisters and his mother stayed at home. Before the Nazis took control of the government in Germany he did not distinguish others as if they were Jewish or not. It did not matter at that time; he was friends with Jews and others that were not Jews. Alfred Caro had heard of Adolf Hitler around the 1920’s though he had no idea that he would have any effect on his own personal life. Eventually, his father lost his store and the Jews began to be forbidden to do many things and were stripped of many of their rights.

                He was eventually arrested and brought to a police station where other Jews were held as prisoners for a few days. Alfred Caro and the other Jews were then transported to a labor camp where he would spend the next few months. The quarters in which they lived were small and many people were forced into them. Armed guards watched the camp constantly and killed those who crossed a certain line. His mother pleaded with a German and wished to find out why her son had been taken, and eventually was able to negotiate his release. Once released from the labor camp, he began to think about leaving Germany. Fortunately he was lucky enough to be able to get out of Germany in 1938. He left for Columbia where he started to make a new life. He then moved to America, a survivor of the holocaust.