| --- |
| layout: transcript |
| interviewee: rita kerner hilton |
| rg_number: rg-50.030.0002 |
| pdf_url: https://collections.ushmm.org/oh_findingaids/rg-50.030.0002_trs_en.pdf |
| ushmm_url: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn504468 |
| gender: f |
| birth_date: 1926-07-22 |
| birth_year: 1926.0 |
| place_of_birth: warsaw |
| country: poland |
| experience_group: survivor |
| ghetto(s)_encyclopedia: pabianice,lodz |
| ghetto: pabianice, lodz |
| camp(s)_encyclopedia: auschwitz-birkenau,bergen-belsen |
| camp: auschwitz-birkenau, bergen-belsen |
| non_ss_camp: none |
| region: none |
| needs_research: none |
| data_entry: gg |
| accession: none |
| revisit: none |
| tags: transcripts |
| --- |
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| <body><dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="1">RITA KERNER HILTON August 12, 1994 </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3">Q: I need you to start off by telling me your name, where you were born, what year you were born in, and your name as it was then? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="5">A: All right. </sentence><sentence id="6">My name is Rita Kerner Hilton. </sentence><sentence id="7">I was born in <span class="populated place">Warsaw</span> in 1926, July 22, 1926. </sentence><sentence id="8">I lived in <span class="populated place">Warsaw</span> until I was six years old, seven years old, and then we moved to my mother's <span class="populated place">hometown</span> <span class="populated place">Pomortsy</span>. </sentence><sentence id="9">This is near <span class="populated place">Lodz</span>, <span class="populated place">exiled city</span>. </sentence><sentence id="10">My grandfather was a practicing dentist there and since my mother was a dentist, they decided to practice together. </sentence><sentence id="11">That's where I lived until the war broke out and the <span class="populated place">Ghettos</span> and so on. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="19">Q: Tell me a little bit about your life growing up? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="21">A: When I was a small girl, my parents were doing very well financially. </sentence><sentence id="22">My father was a entrepreneur. </sentence><sentence id="23">My mother wasn't working at that time, and we always had a maid. </sentence><sentence id="24">I had a nanny when I was small. </sentence><sentence id="25">When we moved into <span class="populated place">Pomortsy</span>, my grandmother was running the <span class="building">house</span>, but she always had sleep-in help. </sentence><sentence id="26">Since my mother worked in the <span class="building">office</span>, it was in the same <span class="interior space">apartment</span>, I had a babysitter, or whoever it was, a part-time governess who'd come in after <span class="building">school</span> hours and do homework with me and read with me, take me out to the <span class="dlf">park</span>. </sentence><sentence id="27">So, I had kind of a pampered existence. </sentence><sentence id="28">I went to <span class="populated place">sleep-away camp</span>. </sentence><sentence id="29">I had a <span class="spatial object">bicycle</span> which was, you know, they were expensive. </sentence><sentence id="30">So, I did have a very loving, a very pampered existence at that time. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="41">Q: Were you particularly religious? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="43">A: No. </sentence><sentence id="44">My grandfather strongly believed in reformed Judaism, which did not exist in <span class="country">Poland</span> as such. </sentence><sentence id="45">They never kept a <span class="building">kosher home</span>. </sentence><sentence id="46">We did observe holidays. </sentence><sentence id="47">We observed Passover, and he used to go to the <span class="building">synagogue</span> on high holidays, sometimes would take me, but it was different. </sentence><sentence id="48">He strongly felt that if there would be a reformed Judaism then he could probably follow it. </sentence><sentence id="49">He could not follow the orthodox, the rabbis teachings, and argue with some of them about it. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="57">Q: How integrated were you in the larger <span class="populated place">community</span>? </sentence><sentence id="58">Were most of your friends Jewish? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="61">Did you go to a <span class="building">public school</span>? </sentence><sentence id="62">A Well, I went to a <span class="building">public school</span>, which was hard to get in, but this was the best -- I'm talking about <span class="building">primary school</span>. </sentence><sentence id="63">We lived in a so-called new section of <span class="populated place">town</span>, not the <span class="populated place">Jewish section</span>, a new section of <span class="populated place">town</span>. </sentence><sentence id="64">There were maybe about few Jewish kids there, mostly from the prominent families, doctors, lawyers and stuff like this, dentists. </sentence><sentence id="65">And when I first came, I remember one of those days a kid called me a dirty Jew. </sentence><sentence id="66">I was a big girl, I was in first grade, and I gave a smack to the right and a smack to the left, and I never had any problem in that <span class="building">school</span>. </sentence><sentence id="67">When the time came to go to <span class="building">high school</span>, there were three <span class="building">high schools</span> in <span class="populated place">town</span>. </sentence><sentence id="68">A <span class="building">girls" school</span>, a <span class="building">boys" school</span> and a <span class="building">German school</span>. </sentence><sentence id="69">This <span class="populated place">town</span> was very much German. </sentence><sentence id="70">There were a lot settled by the Germans. </sentence><sentence id="71">They were <span class="building">German textile markets</span>. </sentence><sentence id="72">This was a <span class="populated place">textile factory town</span>. </sentence><sentence id="73">And they were having every year there were less Jewish kids accepted there. </sentence><sentence id="74">You had to pass an exam, and you had to be the top of the top of the top to get into that <span class="building">school</span>. </sentence><sentence id="75">If you couldn't get in, you had to commute to <span class="populated place">Lodz</span>, which was a 45 minute ride by <span class="spatial object">street car</span>. </sentence><sentence id="76">You had to go to <span class="building">private school</span> then which was costly. </sentence><sentence id="77">Well, I got into that <span class="building">school</span>. </sentence><sentence id="78">And again the first few days someone said something about being a Jew, but the principal of the <span class="building">school</span>, she was very anti-semitic, but she was very fair, and she did not stand for any discrimination. </sentence><sentence id="79">And again, I had no problem. </sentence><sentence id="80">I had a bunch of friends, but little by little, I mean, there was one girl, later on, she was in <span class="populated place">camp</span> with me, Alena, and we used to fight like cats and dogs, but at the same time we were the only Jewish kids in the same level, Jewish girls on that level. </sentence><sentence id="81">The year before they accepted I think three or four or five. </sentence><sentence id="82">Our year they accepted three, the following year they accepted two. </sentence><sentence id="83">The boys had a harder time in <span class="building">school</span>. </sentence><sentence id="84">There were a couple boys who were sons of prominent doctor and they took his penis and dipped it in ink, and also there was a doctor <span class="interior space">upstairs</span>, a friend of my parents, they had a younger kid. </sentence><sentence id="85">He started going to the same <span class="building">school</span> that I did, but they taunted him and he started losing clumps of hair from nervousness, and they had to place him in <span class="building">Jewish schools</span>. </sentence><sentence id="86">The <span class="building">Jewish schools</span> were <span class="building">state schools</span>, but the principals, the teachers, the kids were Jewish, and there were two <span class="building">schools</span>. </sentence><sentence id="87">One was the better one, and the other one wasn't so good. </sentence><sentence id="88">But still, in order to get to the <span class="building">high school</span>, if you came from the <span class="building">Polish school</span>, your chances of getting into the <span class="building">high school</span> were much better than if you came from the <span class="building">Jewish school</span>. </sentence><sentence id="89">You know, separated, but equal. </sentence><sentence id="90">And I had, as I said, had not too much problems. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="121">Q: Were there social and cultural activities? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="123">A: At one time I know my mother used to go to all those fancy <span class="spatial object">charity balls</span>, a lot of them. </sentence><sentence id="124">And I think closer to the war, there were a couple Jewish charity balls. </sentence><sentence id="125">I think she still used to go to the <span class="spatial object">Red Cross ball</span> and so on. </sentence><sentence id="126">But there were less social contact. </sentence><sentence id="127">My mother had a friend, a <span class="building">school</span> friend, who was of a German decent, a very, very prominent family. </sentence><sentence id="128">They owned big <span class="building">factories</span>, and she married a Polish boy. </sentence><sentence id="129">They were patients for years and years and years. </sentence><sentence id="130">They used to socialize, and then closer to the war, that dried out. </sentence><sentence id="131">We didn't have those contacts as such. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="141">Q: So, let's talk a little bit about how things started to change. </sentence><sentence id="142">Were you aware of what was going on in <span class="country">Germany</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="145">A: Oh, yes. </sentence><sentence id="146">My aunt lived in <span class="country">Germany</span>. </sentence><sentence id="147">They came to the <span class="country">States</span> before the war. </sentence><sentence id="148">They knew it was coming on. </sentence><sentence id="149">Also, there was a group of Polish people who lived in <span class="country">Germany</span>, never had their German passports. </sentence><sentence id="150">They were never citizens, and in 1937, they all sent them out and we used to collect money for them. </sentence><sentence id="151">We used to give them meals and so on, because they were thrown out from <span class="country">Germany</span> without anything. </sentence><sentence id="152">So, we were aware very much of what was going on. </sentence><sentence id="153">But no one believed it was going to happen, what happened, because during the first World War, the Germans were the better friends than the Russians. </sentence><sentence id="154"> People did not like Russians in this part of <span class="country">Poland</span>. </sentence><sentence id="155">So, we were aware, but we never thought they would destroy us all. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="167">Q: What happened when the Germans occupied your <span class="populated place">town</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="169">A: One of the first actions they put a bunch of restrictions. </sentence><sentence id="170">We couldn't use the <span class="spatial object">street cars</span>. </sentence><sentence id="171">We couldn't use the <span class="building">cafe</span> downstairs where everybody used to sit. </sentence><sentence id="172">No Jews were allowed there. </sentence><sentence id="173">We couldn't go to the <span class="dlf">park</span>. </sentence><sentence id="174"><span class="building">Schools</span> were closed. </sentence><sentence id="175">I don't know when they told us to wear the -- before the <span class="env feature">stars</span>, I think we had to wear the yellow armbands. </sentence><sentence id="176">There were scenes <span class="interior space">downstairs</span>, I see through the <span class="dlf">window</span> that they would graba Jew witha and cut the and cut the beard. </sentence><sentence id="177">And usually it was young kids doing it. </sentence><sentence id="178">The Hitler Youth were like a bunch of little puppies jumping on. </sentence><sentence id="179">This was the beginning. </sentence><sentence id="180">Then they started -- see we knew we would not be able to stay in the <span class="interior space">apartment</span>. </sentence><sentence id="181">This was a fancy section of <span class="populated place">town</span>, and it was a very large <span class="interior space">apartment</span>. </sentence><sentence id="182">What has happened was a crazy situation and part of the <span class="interior space">apartment</span> someone sublet it, it was a subleased to people who owned the <span class="building">cafe</span> downstairs. </sentence><sentence id="183">They were German Nationals. </sentence><sentence id="184">And they requested that <span class="region">section</span>. </sentence><sentence id="185">So, we managed to get some <span class="spatial object">furniture</span> out because we were evacuated not by the Germans, but by this owner of the <span class="building">restaurant</span>, the <span class="building">cafe</span>. </sentence><sentence id="186">So, my mother got out some of her extra, one extra <span class="spatial object">chair</span> and a foot drill and some equipment and we got some <span class="spatial object">furniture</span> from that part of the <span class="interior space">apartment</span> out, and we have hidden it. </sentence><sentence id="187">Some Pole took it for us. </sentence><sentence id="188">And we did manage to get some valuables out, which eventually we left with the Poles. </sentence><sentence id="189">We never saw it again. </sentence><sentence id="190">But at that time we -- and we kind of waited, when they are going to kick us out. </sentence><sentence id="191">And sure enough, the order came in 24 hours we had to leave beddings for 12 <span class="spatial object">beds</span>, all the china, all the <span class="spatial object">furniture</span>, all the equipment in the <span class="building">office</span>. </sentence><sentence id="192">Everything had to be left. </sentence><sentence id="193">We were allowed only to take our personal clothing. </sentence><sentence id="194">That's when we moved. </sentence><sentence id="195">That Pole he promised us it would be out of <span class="populated place">town</span>, a little <span class="region">suburban area</span>, very quiet. </sentence><sentence id="196">Nothing will happen to us, and then he -- the Jews were not allowed to have money, "X" amount of German marks, no gold, no silver, no diamonds, and when they started talking about forming the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span> in he persuaded my grandfather that he's going to save for safekeeping, he'll take all his valuables. </sentence><sentence id="197">And Grandfather had all his money in a gold money belt. </sentence><sentence id="198">His total life savings were in those gold coins. </sentence><sentence id="199">American dollars, British sterling pounds, everything in gold. </sentence><sentence id="200">So, he left it with the Pole, and after the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span> was formed, we couldn't get out, but we sent someone to pick it up, and he denied that he had ever had it. </sentence><sentence id="201">We never saw that stuff again. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="235">Q: Did that surprise you? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="237">A: At that time, yes. </sentence><sentence id="238">At that time, he was so -- seemed like my father knew him and we knew him. </sentence><sentence id="239">We stayed with him. </sentence><sentence id="240">We paid rent, but we stayed with him for a couple of months. </sentence><sentence id="241">There was also a situation where we wanted to go to <span class="populated place">Warsaw</span>. </sentence><sentence id="242">My mother decided to smuggle herself, smugglers and go to <span class="populated place">Warsaw</span>. </sentence><sentence id="243">She had some fabrics she felt she'll take it to <span class="populated place">Warsaw</span> and sell it maybe live on it for a while. </sentence><sentence id="244">Our relatives in <span class="populated place">Warsaw</span> wanted ut to move there. </sentence><sentence id="245">They felt that this was not German, this was the protector at this part of <span class="country">Poland</span> at that time. </sentence><sentence id="246">So, she went. </sentence><sentence id="247">She had a fur coat, and covered in fabric and went and was stopped somewhere and all the smuggled goods were taken away. </sentence><sentence id="248">We didn't know what happened, but they let them out. </sentence><sentence id="249">This was a put up. </sentence><sentence id="250">They just wanted to get the goods. </sentence><sentence id="251">So, a few days later she came <span class="building">home</span>, luckily for us. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="267">Q: Now, I'd like to get a sense of the mood when the Germans came in. </sentence><sentence id="268">Were people fearful? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="271"> Were people being abused? </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="272">A: No. </sentence><sentence id="273">The fear was when we were all running to <span class="populated place">Lodz</span> before the Germans came. </sentence><sentence id="274">I don't think people were so fearful. </sentence><sentence id="275">It's hard to say how they felt. </sentence><sentence id="276">We all didn't know what would happen. </sentence><sentence id="277">By 11th of November, this is a Polish holiday, and just before they arrested all the prominent people in <span class="populated place">town</span>, not only Jews, they arrested Poles, they arrested anyone, teachers, lawyers, bankers, whoever had any prominence so they couldn't start any uprising. </sentence><sentence id="278">They wouldn't stir the population against the Germans. </sentence><sentence id="279">And we never saw them again. </sentence><sentence id="280">Some of the Poles were let out. </sentence><sentence id="281">Some Poles were let out, but -- </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="292">Q: You don't know what happened? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="294">A: No. </sentence><sentence id="295">And then, as I said, it was winter, I think it was March, maybe February, when the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span> was formed, the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="298">Q: 1940? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="300">A: Yes. </sentence><sentence id="301">And we didn't have a place to go. </sentence><sentence id="302">There was my grandmother's sister. </sentence><sentence id="303">She had a three or four bedroom <span class="interior space">apartment</span>. </sentence><sentence id="304">By that time, there were two other families living in part of that <span class="interior space">apartment</span> and we wound up in a little <span class="interior space">room</span>. </sentence><sentence id="305">Some other relatives were there. </sentence><sentence id="306">It was just bedlam. </sentence><sentence id="307">Finally, we found out that there was a little <span class="building">house</span> that belonged to a pharmacist, a Polish pharmacist, and they told he has to get out of his <span class="interior space">apartment</span>. </sentence><sentence id="308">So, we shared that <span class="interior space">apartment</span> with a few other families, and that's where Mom opened up the <span class="building">office</span>, reopened her <span class="building">office</span>. </sentence><sentence id="309">This was an open <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>. </sentence><sentence id="310">There were no <span class="dlf">wires</span>, no <span class="dlf">barbed wires</span>, just check points. </sentence><sentence id="311">Jewish police were watching it. </sentence><sentence id="312">The Poles and the Germans would come into the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>. </sentence><sentence id="313">If they didn't know you, you could get out. </sentence><sentence id="314">I had a friend who would go out, but no one knew him in <span class="populated place">town</span>. </sentence><sentence id="315">But I couldn't get out because they knew me, and I could never step my foot out, outside. </sentence><sentence id="316">The <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span> was on two sides of that little <span class="region">section</span>. </sentence><sentence id="317">There was a main <span class="dlf">street</span> going through with the <span class="spatial object">street cars</span>, so we had certain hours we could walk through, walk across the main <span class="dlf">street</span>. </sentence><sentence id="318">You could walk across in the morning. </sentence><sentence id="319">You could cross in the afternoon. </sentence><sentence id="320">Once you went on the one side, you couldn't go back until the hour came that you could do it. </sentence><sentence id="321">They formed a <span class="building">factory</span>. </sentence><sentence id="322">They started having German army coats made, and money was coming in. </sentence><sentence id="323">There were various people who were in charge of the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>, and there was one so-called revolution after another one. </sentence><sentence id="324">One group would kick them out and get other ones, with the help of the Germans. </sentence><sentence id="325">Personally, our family, my mother was having a lot of patients. </sentence><sentence id="326">There were no Polish dentists in <span class="populated place">town</span>, so her patients would come in. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="354">Q: Polish people? </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="355">A: Polish people. </sentence><sentence id="356">We had access to food. </sentence><sentence id="357">We had access to a lot of things. </sentence><sentence id="358">She was making money, and she was helping the whole family. </sentence><sentence id="359">She had aunts and uncles and she was supporting everybody at that time. </sentence><sentence id="360">I worked with my grandfather in an <span class="building">outpatient clinic</span>. </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="361">Q: This was a <span class="building">dental clinic</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="363">A: No. </sentence><sentence id="364">Grandfather before he became a dentist, he was something you called a feltcher (ph).It's almost like a medic. </sentence><sentence id="365">My grandfather was doing it. </sentence><sentence id="366">My grandfather was doing it. </sentence><sentence id="367">So, he was very well educated in medicine basically. </sentence><sentence id="368">Never became a doctor. </sentence><sentence id="369">And there was a need for an <span class="building">outpatient clinic</span>, so this was free of charge. </sentence><sentence id="370">He opened it up under the <span class="building">hospital</span> of the Jewish government, and I worked with him. </sentence><sentence id="371">The afternoons I had tutors, and my mother was very anxious for me to finish my -- somehow not to lose my years of education, so in the afternoon I had a tutor and was doing the <span class="building">high school</span> program as much as we could, but at least I had somewhat. </sentence><sentence id="372">I wasn't left completely wild. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="384">Q: Tell me about the organization of the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>. </sentence><sentence id="385">Who was preventing you from coming and going? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="388">A: There was a so-called Jewish , originally there was one lawyer in charge of it. </sentence><sentence id="389">There was a bunch of people who took over, and there were all kinds of unsavory things. </sentence><sentence id="390">Unsavory in terms of there were rations coming in, the food was coming in, and I think they were selling it in the <span class="building">Black Market</span>. </sentence><sentence id="391">There was another group denounced them. </sentence><sentence id="392">Eventually they were arrested and some of them were hanged later in <span class="populated place">Lodz Ghetto</span>. </sentence><sentence id="393">There was a <span class="building">Jewish police</span>, but they were strictly order police. </sentence><sentence id="394">I don't think they wore hats. </sentence><sentence id="395">They just wore arm bands. </sentence><sentence id="396">They were watching all the end <span class="dlf">streets</span> of the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span> and the crossing <span class="dlf">streets</span>. </sentence><sentence id="397">We had a whole little government which was running with the understanding of the Germans and they were dealing with the Germans. </sentence><sentence id="398">The food and everything else was going through that group. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="410">Q: This group was corrupt? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="412">A: The first one, yes. </sentence><sentence id="413">I mean, I wouldn't say the first one. </sentence><sentence id="414">That one lawyer was not, but the group which took over, they were corrupt, very corrupt. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="418">Q: How did people get chosen for these duties? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="420">A: I don't know. </sentence><sentence id="421">I think they just got a group of people together and went to the Germans and what they did, I don't know. </sentence><sentence id="422">This third group they were a couple of brothers and someone else, and they denounced the second group as corrupt, because I guess they got wind of what was going on. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="426">Q: Were there any women in positions of responsibility? </sentence><sentence id="427"> A I don't think so. </sentence><sentence id="428">Not at that time, no. </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="429">Q: Do you remember how you all felt about these Jewish police taking orders from the German. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="431">A: Well, they were not really taking orders from the Germans. </sentence><sentence id="432">They had to do a job and there were friends among them. </sentence><sentence id="433">I mean, they were not in any way abusing people or killing people, or hitting people. </sentence><sentence id="434">They were just standing there and wouldn't let you go. </sentence><sentence id="435">The Germans and the Poles could come into <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>, and they told you not to go. </sentence><sentence id="436">This is the <span class="dlf">border</span>, this is the <span class="dlf">line</span>, you can't cross the <span class="dlf">line</span>, period. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="443">Q: Did they have any other responsibilities like <span class="building">organizational schools</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="445">A: No, in <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>, there was absolutely nothing, no <span class="building">schools</span>. </sentence><sentence id="446">The only thing we had organized, they organized a <span class="building">hospital</span>. </sentence><sentence id="447">It was an old <span class="building">factory</span>, and we organized it as a <span class="building">hospital</span>. </sentence><sentence id="448">We had a bunch of fundraisers, which were like reviews, and people volunteered to entertain and perform and we would all go to the shows and that would raise money for the <span class="building">hospital</span>. </sentence><sentence id="449">But that was the extent of this cultural events. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="455">Q: Now, you said your mother worked and she had outside patients. </sentence><sentence id="456">Did you have enough to eat? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="459">A: Oh yes. </sentence><sentence id="460">My family, at that time, we had too much to eat, because we had access to everything at much lower prices than the real <span class="building">Black Market</span>. </sentence><sentence id="461">Those items were on the <span class="building">Black Market</span>, but we were going directly from the Poles to us as I guess going to some middle man in the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>. </sentence><sentence id="462">So, we did have enough to eat. </sentence><sentence id="463">Grandma again, had a little girl who helped run this place, and as a result my mother was supporting that family, and the tutor's family, and she had two aunts and one uncle. </sentence><sentence id="464">She was supporting them, giving them money so they could buy their food. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="471">Q: Were times hard for other people in the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>, or was this <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span> not too severe? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="473">A: No, it wasn't too severed. </sentence><sentence id="474">But it was, like those two women who were teaching me, there were two sisters that lived with their mother, and they had absolutely no way of getting any money. </sentence><sentence id="475">They were tutoring me and they were tutoring my other friends, so that was their main way of making money. </sentence><sentence id="476">My mother gave orders that when they came in the afternoon, we served a little snack. </sentence><sentence id="477">I didn't need a snack, but by serving some little sandwiches or something the tutor could eat and she didn't have to eat <span class="building">home</span>. </sentence><sentence id="478">So, there were ways of helping people. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="485">Q: Was your sense for other people, was there food rationing? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="487">A: There was rationing. </sentence><sentence id="488">There was a <span class="building">Black Market</span>. </sentence><sentence id="489">There was rationing, but again it was not so bad like in <span class="populated place">Lodz</span>. </sentence><sentence id="490">I mean, people survived. </sentence><sentence id="491">No one starved to death. </sentence><sentence id="492">The Jewish administration, I think they had some kind of a <span class="building">welfare department</span> because Mom was taking in any patient who couldn't pay, Jewish patient, would get a slip from the <span class="building">department</span> and they would come in and she treated them free. </sentence><sentence id="493">She'd never take any money. </sentence><sentence id="494">I mean people had money, but that was something else. </sentence><sentence id="495">But if they didn't, they were all treated for free. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="505">Q: Were most people in the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span> working, older people or not? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="507">A: I don't think so. </sentence><sentence id="508">I don't think so. </sentence><sentence id="509">That <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span> lasted about two years. </sentence><sentence id="510">People still had things. </sentence><sentence id="511">People were selling things. </sentence><sentence id="512">They were selling linens. </sentence><sentence id="513">They were selling, if they had any jewelry, they were selling, so I don't think at that time, and look, I was a young girl, and I was concerned with working and meeting boys later and so on, and doing some <span class="building">school</span> work, so maybe I did not delve into that too deeply. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="521">Q: So, you were still doing all of those things? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="523">A: I was still doing all of those things until the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span> was closed. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="525">Q: Now, how at this point you had really lost touch with all of your non-Jewish friends? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="527">A: All right, there was an interesting encounter I had. </sentence><sentence id="528">In <span class="building">high school</span>, we had one girl who was of German decent, and as before they would taunt Jewish girls, the year before the war, they started taunting her. </sentence><sentence id="529">We would not go to the -- they had catholic classes in <span class="building">school</span>. </sentence><sentence id="530">The priest would come in and teach them catholic, you know, the religion. </sentence><sentence id="531">So, we were excused for the hour and the three of us, there was another girl and we used to sit in the <span class="interior space">cafeteria</span> and just sit and kill an hour. </sentence><sentence id="532">They used to send once a week a Jewish teacher to teach all of the Jewish girls, the Jewish religion. </sentence><sentence id="533">So, the kids would taunt her, and I was one of the few people who were friendly with her. </sentence><sentence id="534">And I met her one day in the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>, she worked in the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>, and I was shocked because she hugged me and kissed me on the <span class="dlf">street</span>. </sentence><sentence id="535">Her family declared themselves Tolstoy, you know, the German Nationalist. </sentence><sentence id="536">And she gave me a big greeting, and I was very much surprised. </sentence><sentence id="537">But you see, I took her part and defended her against the Polish girls before the war. </sentence><sentence id="538">But that was the only contact I had with her. </sentence><sentence id="539">I mentioned that woman who was my mother's friend, she married a Pole. </sentence><sentence id="540">When the war broke out they were in the <span class="building">textile business</span> like everybody else in <span class="populated place">town</span>, and Mom decided to invest some money in some wool clothes. </sentence><sentence id="541">Because we figured that during the war the <span class="building">factories</span> will be closed, then that will be worth more money, but she left the fabric -- I mean I don't know how many bolts of fabric she bought, she left if with that family, with him and his family. </sentence><sentence id="542">When it came the time that she wanted to sell it, he was the only one who came with the money. </sentence><sentence id="543">She sent him a message and within a few days, and this was a nice profit, because naturally that thing increased in value and we got it. </sentence><sentence id="544">We got the money. </sentence><sentence id="545">So, he was one of the few. </sentence><sentence id="546">He was good and he was honest and he didn't look to take the stuff and not to deliver. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="567">Q: So, it sounds like in the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span> you were able to carry on somewhat of a normal existence? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="569">A: Basically. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="571">Q: It didn't change things, but you were still able to eat? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="573">A: In my family. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="575">Q: And there weren't too many rough restrictions? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="577">A: Well, no. </sentence><sentence id="578">We had every once in a while the Germans would come in. </sentence><sentence id="579">There were restrictions where you couldn't have certain metals and precious metals and then they started raids, and it was just wild. </sentence><sentence id="580">They would come in from all sides, line up, the ones with the brown shirts and the red armbands, they were lined up at arms lengths, they even took the boy scouts, the Hitler Youth, they lined up and they would go from <span class="interior space">apartment</span> to <span class="interior space">apartment</span> from <span class="interior space">room</span> to <span class="interior space">room</span> and looking for furs and looking for metals and naturally silver. </sentence><sentence id="581">But even cooper and pewter, whatever metals they could melt. </sentence><sentence id="582">There were several incidents like this. </sentence><sentence id="583">They were also at one time, they wanted to evacuate Jewish youngsters. </sentence><sentence id="584">They were looking -- my mother got hold of -- I mean she knew about it a few days before, and I was hidden and some Jewish woman came with the Germans and said there is a young girl. </sentence><sentence id="585">I said I'm in the <span class="building">hospital</span>, I was in the <span class="building">hospital</span>. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="595">Q: What were they going to do? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="597">A: They took them away. </sentence><sentence id="598">We do not know what happened to them. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="601">Q: Were Jews allowed to keep <span class="building">businesses</span> or anything like that? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="603">A: <span class="building">Local businesses</span>. </sentence><sentence id="604">There was a <span class="building">restaurant</span> and <span class="building">shoemakers</span> and things like this, but no business as such. </sentence><sentence id="605">Once they established the <span class="building">factory</span>, they were making money. </sentence><sentence id="606">They were paying them money, the operators. </sentence><sentence id="607">That brought some income to the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span> under . </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="613">Q: I want to back track for a second because I forgot to ask you about how before the Germans arrived in your <span class="populated place">town</span>, your <span class="populated place">community</span> starting to prepare for that possibility? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="615">A: I don't know. </sentence><sentence id="616">I really don't know what way they did and whether they didn't. </sentence><sentence id="617">There were a lot of people like the doctor upstairs. </sentence><sentence id="618">There were Polish, in the Polish army officers, there were Jewish officers, and they were drafted and they went with the Army. </sentence><sentence id="619">Most of them, they wound up in <span class="country">Italy</span> or many of them went up in . </sentence><sentence id="620">We don't know who killed them. </sentence><sentence id="621">I think the Germans, but the Germans were blaming the Russians, and the Russians were blaming the Germans. </sentence><sentence id="622">But this was most of the Polish army was destroyed there, the officers. </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="623">Q: You had mentioned that there was sort of an organizing for this. </sentence><sentence id="624">The masks -- </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="625">A: Oh, the masks because they were afraid to throw down the gas bombs. </sentence><sentence id="626">We were afraid of the gas bombs. </sentence><sentence id="627">There were a few raids in <span class="populated place">town</span>, and we used to sit when there was a raid, we used to sit I don't know what you call it -- in <span class="country">Poland</span> they had the <span class="dlf">drive</span> in like it was a drive in under to go to the <span class="dlf">yard</span>. </sentence><sentence id="628">So, they had this one <span class="region">section</span> and it was supposedly the safest place to be in case of an attack or bomb falling down. </sentence><sentence id="629">There were some dog fights around. </sentence><sentence id="630">We saw a <span class="spatial object">German plane</span> being shot down. </sentence><sentence id="631">The Polish army was a joke. </sentence><sentence id="632">We never realized that. </sentence><sentence id="633">We thought, oh they are so strong. </sentence><sentence id="634">They used to have a song about the march of the Reds. </sentence><sentence id="635">He wouldn't give anything. </sentence><sentence id="636">He wouldn't give a buck, and when we started running away from the Germans we were following the Polish army. </sentence><sentence id="637">They were with the little scrawny horses, with little <span class="spatial object">cots</span> pulling the small arms, absolutely disorganized bunch of nothing. </sentence><sentence id="638">They were like 18th century and here was the smite of German army. </sentence><sentence id="639">So, they were overrun in no time. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="655">Q: So what were these <span class="spatial object">masks</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="657">A: They were afraid of gas. </sentence><sentence id="658">They were supposed to be prevent us from being poisoned by gas. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="661">Q: Did you use them? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="663">A: One time we were sitting down, there was a raid, and everybody was "Oh, they threw a bomb." </sentence><sentence id="664">They were masks like surgeons wear. </sentence><sentence id="665">The whole thing was a joke, but we didn't realize it. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="669">Q: Anything else you all did in preparation for this? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="671">A: No, that's all. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="673">Q: What were the circumstances that you had to leave? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="675">A: They announced that the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span> would be liquidated, and we had like two days to get ready. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="677">Q: This was when? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="679">A: May of "42. </sentence><sentence id="680">In fact, the 15th or 16th of May because my friend, Alena had a birthday that date. </sentence><sentence id="681">They announced -- first of all there was a group of men who will be working in those <span class="building">factories</span>, the <span class="building">coat factories</span>. </sentence><sentence id="682">They will stay for a while. </sentence><sentence id="683">They selected a group of people who would stay in the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span> and clean it up. </sentence><sentence id="684">And they needed medical person also. </sentence><sentence id="685">There was a doctor and he was old and he was a bachelor, and he had a sister who was a dentist, and they volunteered to stay. </sentence><sentence id="686">Our family was ordered to go to the <span class="building">hospital</span>, because there were a lot of patients. </sentence><sentence id="687">The population was told to bring all the infirm, all the sick ones, all the very old ones to the <span class="building">hospital</span>. </sentence><sentence id="688">So, on a given day, and we were allowed to just take what we had on our backs and those <span class="spatial object">bundles</span>. </sentence><sentence id="689">We wore a few layers of clothes and we went to the <span class="building">hospital</span>. </sentence><sentence id="690">On the given day, when we got to the <span class="building">hospital</span>, we were told that there is an <span class="building">old age home</span> somewhere so we carried the patients, whoever was left, and this place was filled to the <span class="interior space">rafters</span> because they brought everybody who was in any way infirm there. </sentence><sentence id="691">That first day, they marched the whole population to that <span class="building">stadium</span>, which was actually at the other end of <span class="populated place">town</span>. </sentence><sentence id="692">And we have been in a <span class="building">hospital</span> that night, so we haven't seen what happened, but we were told what happened. </sentence><sentence id="693">As they approached the <span class="building">stadium</span> there was an <span class="region">area</span> which was like fenced off which was before you entered actually the <span class="building">stadium</span>. </sentence><sentence id="694">They started separating the parents, the old ones, and they started taking the children away. </sentence><sentence id="695">All the children under ten years old. </sentence><sentence id="696">I was told that they threw a baby over the <span class="dlf">fence</span> and said we don't need such . </sentence><sentence id="697">Smashed child's, baby's head on a <span class="dlf">fence</span>. </sentence><sentence id="698">They took them all to the <span class="building">railroad station</span>. </sentence><sentence id="699">They grabbed a bunch of boys, young fellows and they took them to the <span class="building">railroad station</span>. </sentence><sentence id="700">That night, they took all the women who were left to <span class="populated place">Lodz</span>. </sentence><sentence id="701">The following day they came to the <span class="building">hospital</span>, and the group which came were the same boys and they were friends of ours. </sentence><sentence id="702">They were my friends. </sentence><sentence id="703">I knew them. </sentence><sentence id="704">They told us that they were putting people into those <span class="spatial object">cattle cars</span> and then they took the women to <span class="populated place">Lodz</span> by <span class="spatial object">street cars</span> and just the men are left in the <span class="building">stadium</span>. </sentence><sentence id="705">They were the ones who carried the patients to the <span class="spatial object">lorries</span>, <span class="spatial object">carts</span> really, and they announced who couldn't walk should go on a <span class="spatial object">lorry</span>. </sentence><sentence id="706">And my grandmother felt that she couldn't walk all the way down. </sentence><sentence id="707">So, we had kind of a touchy moment because we walked through <span class="populated place">town</span>. </sentence><sentence id="708">I think this was Sunday, because a lot of people were there and some of them would make the sign of a cross when they recognized us, and the whole personnel was walking. </sentence><sentence id="709">There was one woman who was hiding a kid in her <span class="spatial object">backpack</span> and she was walking. </sentence><sentence id="710">She wouldn't go on the <span class="spatial object">cart</span>, and when we reached shortly before we reached the <span class="building">stadium</span>, you had to turn left at the <span class="building">stadium</span> and the <span class="building">station</span> was straight ahead and all the <span class="spatial object">carts</span> with the patients went straight, and the <span class="spatial object">cart</span> with the boys went straight and then we kind of froze for a minute, and the <span class="spatial object">cart</span> with my grandmother and other people went leftward to the <span class="building">stadium</span>. </sentence><sentence id="711">So, they were with us. </sentence><sentence id="712">That night and a man told us again about these awful, awful scenes which took place -- I think that out of population of 8,000 finally 3,000, 3,500 wound up in large <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>. </sentence><sentence id="713">That night they took us to <span class="populated place">Lodz</span> by <span class="spatial object">street cars</span>. </sentence><sentence id="714">The <span class="spatial object">street cars</span> stopped running about midnight, and that's when they were taking us all to large <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>. </sentence><sentence id="715">That second day, were just men and group from <span class="building">hospital</span>. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="753">Q: And the children who hadn't been evacuated? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="755">A: Well, I don't think there were too many children at that time. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="757">Q: Because of that earlier --? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="759">A: That day before, they took them all away. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="761">Q: You had mentioned that earlier in the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span> --? </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="762">A: There were some teenagers, but not too many. </sentence><sentence id="763">I think they sent them to some <span class="populated place">work camps</span>, but not too many. </sentence><sentence id="764">We arrived at <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span> late at night and they put us in some place, just empty <span class="interior space">rooms</span>. </sentence><sentence id="765">We were told that the gypsies were evacuated from that <span class="region">area</span> before and that's just like a <span class="region">holding area</span>. </sentence><sentence id="766">And people were crying and crying about their lost children and their grandchildren. </sentence><sentence id="767">It was just very, very sad about the old people, and some other people wanted to know about what happened to the sick and the infirm. </sentence><sentence id="768">They left them in the <span class="building">hospital</span>, and what happened to them? </sentence><sentence id="769">And that same morning some friends of our starting coming in looking for us, and one couple took care of my mother and me, and one person took my grandmother, someone took my grandfather. </sentence><sentence id="770">We stayed with those people. </sentence><sentence id="771">They shared a couple of days they shared their food with us. </sentence><sentence id="772">They could hardly afford it. </sentence><sentence id="773">Then we got a <span class="interior space">room</span> for the four of us and we started our existence. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="786">I wouldn't call it living, in the large <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="788">Q: One thing that strikes me about all of this is your mother must have been pretty strong? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="790">A: She was unbelievable. </sentence><sentence id="791">She held the family together. </sentence><sentence id="792">She had tremendous resources. </sentence><sentence id="793">Later on, here, she was very unsure of herself and very vague and afraid, and even my husband who knew her younger, younger age, he couldn't understand how absolutely brave and resourceful and fighting for life. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="798">Q: Was that unusual for a woman? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="800">A: To be a dentist? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="802">Q: Not to be a dentist, but to really be taking care of everyone? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="804">A: Well, she had to. </sentence><sentence id="805">There was no one else. </sentence><sentence id="806">She went to <span class="building">school</span> when she was 18 years old. </sentence><sentence id="807">When she finished <span class="building">high school</span> she went to <span class="populated place">Warsaw</span> to study dentistry. </sentence><sentence id="808">There were no <span class="building">dorms</span>, she lived on her own. </sentence><sentence id="809">She rented a <span class="interior space">room</span> and lived on her own. </sentence><sentence id="810">She had to. </sentence><sentence id="811">Her father paid for it, but still, she had to be resourceful. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="820">Q: So, now you're in <span class="populated place">Lodz</span>. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="822">A: We're in <span class="populated place">Lodz</span>. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="824">Q: Conditions, I'm sure, are a little bit different? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="826">A: Conditions are horrid. </sentence><sentence id="827">We had this one <span class="interior space">room</span>, which was our <span class="interior space">bedroom</span>, our <span class="interior space">living room</span>, our <span class="interior space">kitchen</span>, our <span class="interior space">bathroom</span>. </sentence><sentence id="828">The first few nights, Mom and I slept on a <span class="spatial object">straw mattress</span> on the <span class="interior space">floor</span>, and mice came in and started running on our faces, so we had to give this up. </sentence><sentence id="829">So, we shared one <span class="spatial object">bed</span> and Grandma had a <span class="spatial object">cot</span>, and Grandfather had a <span class="spatial object">bed</span>. </sentence><sentence id="830">We all worked. , </sentence><sentence id="831">who was the head of <span class="populated place">Lodz Ghetto</span>, didn't like dentists, so she worked as a nurse in one of the <span class="building">factories</span>. </sentence><sentence id="832">I worked in a <span class="building">brassiere factory</span>. </sentence><sentence id="833">Grandfather was working also like a male nurse in one of the <span class="building">factories</span>. </sentence><sentence id="834">Grandma got a job, old ladies were sorting rags and making <span class="spatial object">bowls</span> out of those colored rags, and eventually some younger women were knitting rugs for the Germans. </sentence><sentence id="835">The problem was that the rags were full of lice and they were sorting them on <span class="spatial object">wire tables</span>. </sentence><sentence id="836">So, she was bringing the <span class="building">lice home</span>. </sentence><sentence id="837">When they give us rations, you have to pick up the rations, the first day because very often they would run out of the things. </sentence><sentence id="838">I think there were 750 to 900 calories a day what we were getting at that time. </sentence><sentence id="839">And just before the winter they decided to give us rations for the whole winter. </sentence><sentence id="840">Our wood and coal and turnips and potatoes and cabbage and beets. </sentence><sentence id="841">So, we had to go and pick it up at night. </sentence><sentence id="842">Mom and I would stand in <span class="dlf">line</span>. </sentence><sentence id="843">The only way to pick this up was to put it on a <span class="spatial object">sack</span> and put it on your shoulders and carry it. </sentence><sentence id="844">You wouldn't let anyone carry it, because they would disappear. </sentence><sentence id="845">We had four people, so we sometimes had to do it in four installments, four nights in a row to pick up that stuff. </sentence><sentence id="846">On the one <span class="spatial object">bed</span> we had the coal and the wood, and on the other <span class="spatial object">bed</span> we had all the potatoes and cabbage and we had the inventory. </sentence><sentence id="847">We knew how many months it was supposed to last, and every couple of nights we would check which potatoes were getting rotten. </sentence><sentence id="848">And this is the potatoes we ate because we knew it had to last for the whole winter. </sentence><sentence id="849">We also got bread, a loaf of bread. </sentence><sentence id="850">So, again, we cut up the bread in sections and little slices so we had for breakfast a piece and for lunch a piece and for dinner a piece and so we were not -- we were always hungry, but some people would eat the bread on the first day or the second day and they were starving the rest of the week. </sentence><sentence id="851">And what else we did, we all got some kind of a -- we didn't make anything warm to drink in the morning but you could buy hot water or coffee, so Grandma was going later to work so she volunteered. </sentence><sentence id="852">Then she started tripping on the <span class="dlf">street</span> and falling down. </sentence><sentence id="853">She would come with a bloody face, whether she was weak or whether she had pressure too long, we don't know. </sentence><sentence id="854">So, we gave that up. </sentence><sentence id="855">During the day we all got soup. </sentence><sentence id="856">If you worked, you got the soup. </sentence><sentence id="857">And you had to work because you would get the money, the German money. </sentence><sentence id="858">The , they were named after Mr. who was the absolute tyrant in the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>. </sentence><sentence id="859">And then at night we made a little something to eat, from whatever we had, whatever rations we had. </sentence><sentence id="860">If we had any vegetables we made it a little bit thick with any starches or whatever they give us. </sentence><sentence id="861">This was the existence. </sentence><sentence id="862">Cold miserable and we all started getting sick. </sentence><sentence id="863">I was getting abscesses on my face and sties in my eyes. </sentence><sentence id="864">Grandfather fell on <span class="env feature">ice</span> and broke his arm, and he started staying in <span class="spatial object">bed</span>. </sentence><sentence id="865">Grandmother had those dizzy spells, and we just tried to exist, and this was two years. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="906">Q: Did you have much contact with people outside of your family? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="908">A: Oh yes. </sentence><sentence id="909">At work, you work. </sentence><sentence id="910">I had a boyfriend, and we used to walk the <span class="dlf">streets</span> because he had no place to go, and I had no place to go, so it was cold and we used to walk the <span class="dlf">streets</span> and talk. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="914">Q: Were there curfews? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="916">A: I think there were curfews. </sentence><sentence id="917">I'm sure there were. </sentence><sentence id="918">We didn't walk at night. </sentence><sentence id="919">We walked on a Saturday. </sentence><sentence id="920">It was a day off, so we walked. </sentence><sentence id="921">Towards the very end of the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>, I got a job in the <span class="dlf">fields</span>, in the <span class="dlf">vegetable fields</span>. </sentence><sentence id="922">There were two kinds of police in the large <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>. </sentence><sentence id="923"> There was this regular order police. </sentence><sentence id="924">They watched the <span class="dlf">exits</span>. </sentence><sentence id="925">They watch order and stuff like this. </sentence><sentence id="926">And there was so-called commando. </sentence><sentence id="927">The head of commando was someone called Mark Kleeger (ph). </sentence><sentence id="928">Those bunch of thugs, they would get orders from Germans to deliver diamonds or deliver or find gold among the Jews, but they were nasty. </sentence><sentence id="929">They would come into someone's <span class="building">house</span> looking for this stuff, and naturally they figure out the person would hide the stuff in sugar or flour. </sentence><sentence id="930">So, instead of taking a plate or a <span class="spatial object">bowl</span>, they would just dump everything out on the <span class="interior space">floor</span> looking for the valuables. </sentence><sentence id="931">They were in charge of the <span class="dlf">fields</span> where they distributed the vegetables. </sentence><sentence id="932">I mean, so if you knew someone and we knew someone and they were there and they put the finger on the scale a little bit or lifted the scale you could get a little bit more. </sentence><sentence id="933">They had special rations. </sentence><sentence id="934">They ate in special places. </sentence><sentence id="935">They would buy their groceries in a special <span class="building">store</span> like all the others of . </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="957">Q: These were <span class="building">Jewish police</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="959">A: That was <span class="building">Jewish police</span>. </sentence><sentence id="960">And as I said, he had those <span class="dlf">fields</span> out near the <span class="dlf">Jewish cemetery</span>. </sentence><sentence id="961">He established <span class="dlf">vegetable fields</span>. </sentence><sentence id="962">We had people working there. </sentence><sentence id="963">And I was getting sick and through connections and through people I got the job in those <span class="interior space">fields</span>. </sentence><sentence id="964">It was a hard labor. </sentence><sentence id="965">So, first of all you got two soups a day instead of one. </sentence><sentence id="966">I had to walk two or three miles to that place, but the fresh <span class="env feature">air</span>. </sentence><sentence id="967">I mean there was nothing much to do, the fresh air and the sun started drying up my face, and then we were working when we were weeding, we would take the weeds <span class="building">home</span>. </sentence><sentence id="968">They were a source of green vegetable. </sentence><sentence id="969">When we were thinning out radishes, we would eat raw radishes. </sentence><sentence id="970">That they couldn't catch us, but when we were doing something with the weeds, weeding the weeds, we used to eat the raw bean and put the greens back into the <span class="env feature">ground</span> so they couldn't figure out who was eating them. </sentence><sentence id="971">We weren't really stealing, we were just hungry so we'd eat a bean. </sentence><sentence id="972">But that helped me later on to survive the rest of it, because all of a sudden my health improved so much. </sentence><sentence id="973">And because I was getting two soups a day, I didn't have to each so much at <span class="building">home</span>. </sentence><sentence id="974">I was getting the extra soup. </sentence><sentence id="975">I would bring it <span class="building">home</span> at night so we had it. </sentence><sentence id="976">And my grandfather was getting weaker and weaker. </sentence><sentence id="977">He couldn't eat. </sentence><sentence id="978">This was really awful, so we kept on saving his bread. </sentence><sentence id="979">And his wish was to live so long that we can pick up his rations. </sentence><sentence id="980">This was his inheritance because he said he lost all his gold, he can't leave us anything else. </sentence><sentence id="981">What we did he died the day before the rations came, and we didn't report it until the following day, we picked it up and then I reported the death, so we had this extra little food and an extra loaf of bread, which later I left if in <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span> because we're still hoarding and we're still afraid to let go and eat everything a once. </sentence><sentence id="982">But the existence in <span class="populated place">Lodz Ghetto</span> was awful. </sentence><sentence id="983">They also had the criminal police, , this was German police. </sentence><sentence id="984">They had their <span class="building">headquarters</span> in a little <span class="building">church</span>, and they would call people in and say what do you have? </sentence><sentence id="985">Our landlord, he was the head of <span class="dlf">fences</span> before the war. </sentence><sentence id="986">A real, very unsavory character, but he had a heart of gold. </sentence><sentence id="987">And he must have had money. </sentence><sentence id="988">They beat him to death. </sentence><sentence id="989">They let him out, he died a day later. </sentence><sentence id="990">But he was like -- his face was like liver. </sentence><sentence id="991">He never told them what he had. </sentence><sentence id="992">They called my mother in. </sentence><sentence id="993">They said we heard you are a rich dentist from . </sentence><sentence id="994">What do you have? </sentence><sentence id="995">And she said, "Well, I have a couple of gold chains, I have a little diamond." </sentence><sentence id="996">And they said, bring it in. </sentence><sentence id="997">So, she brought it in and they let her go. </sentence><sentence id="998">So, they were satisfied. </sentence><sentence id="999">If she would have said she had nothing, they would have tortured her. </sentence><sentence id="1000">This between the and the Jews under commando, this was pretty tight situation over there. </sentence><sentence id="1001">And then they started evacuations. </sentence><sentence id="1002">They were evacuating constantly people. </sentence><sentence id="1003">One of the worst actions was when they took the children out. </sentence><sentence id="1004">Orders came that they have to take the children, they're going to take them to better places. </sentence><sentence id="1005">There will be fresh <span class="env feature">air</span> and <span class="dlf">farms</span> and the people put signs on it and they mobilized all the Jewish police including all the people who worked for the <span class="building">health department</span>, including my mother, and they had to go and collect the children. </sentence><sentence id="1006">The children were being taken voluntarily by the parents, taken down, because they couldn't hide them. </sentence><sentence id="1007">The moment the family would hide a child, the rations would be taken away, so not only the child didn't have the rations, but the family wouldn't have the rations. </sentence><sentence id="1008">Our next door neighbors had hidden a child and they struggled. </sentence><sentence id="1009">Unfortunately she died later, but it was -- and then they were taking the old people. </sentence><sentence id="1010">They would make you line up on the <span class="dlf">street</span> and get out and just select the old people and the children Now, one of the worst actions was around the Jewish holidays, this was "44, I believe. </sentence><sentence id="1011">And we lived on the <span class="dlf">corner</span>, and the lady the one who was our so-called landlady, she was the wife of the guy who was killed. </sentence><sentence id="1012">Before the war she was in <span class="country">Argentina</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1013">So, we started lining up on one <span class="dlf">street</span> and she called everybody up and she said forget it. </sentence><sentence id="1014">This is not our <span class="dlf">street</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1015">Our address is the next <span class="dlf">street</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1016">There were two <span class="dlf">entrances</span> there. </sentence><sentence id="1017">She said, all of you go back <span class="building">home</span> and hide. </sentence><sentence id="1018">Just sit quiet, don't open the <span class="dlf">window</span>, don't stand next to <span class="dlf">windows</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1019">At that time she had hidden some children and my grandparents. </sentence><sentence id="1020">We didn't know where they were, somewhere. </sentence><sentence id="1021">They had all kinds of nooks and crannies in that <span class="building">building</span>, and we had all hidden quietly, and at noon they rang the whistles and they stopped the action. </sentence><sentence id="1022">So, they were ready to call that second <span class="dlf">street</span>, where we were, they called it off, so we were saved. </sentence><sentence id="1023">If she would have -- we walked out and somebody said to us, someone who knew us and said, where are your parents, and my mother said, hidden. </sentence><sentence id="1024">He said, that's silly, they'll find them. </sentence><sentence id="1025">They'll kill them. </sentence><sentence id="1026">And he was not sure about mom, but when we went back, like I said, that action was closed. </sentence><sentence id="1027">I mean stopped, and that's it. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1097">Q: Were you all sort of fatalistic about this? </sentence><sentence id="1098">Was it terrifying to you? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1101">A: It was terrifying. </sentence><sentence id="1102">You didn't know what's going to happen. </sentence><sentence id="1103">Some friends of my mother's he was high official, she had her parents, and they went down when the <span class="dlf">street</span> went down, and he told that he'll be able to release them because he was a very, very high position, and he could never do anything about it. </sentence><sentence id="1104">They took him. </sentence><sentence id="1105">They started having lists and first I knew I was not on the list. </sentence><sentence id="1106">One of my grandmother's sister was on the list, and we tried to get her out, and my friend told her to go, because there was no -- you couldn't support them. </sentence><sentence id="1107">You couldn't do anything with them. </sentence><sentence id="1108">Once they were on the list, the rations were cancelled. </sentence><sentence id="1109">So, who could afford to feed them. </sentence><sentence id="1110">So, they took her, and my grandmother had one brother and two sisters in large <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1111">One of the sister-in-laws died, two children were evacuated, one uncle was evacuated, the girl finally , and she died there. </sentence><sentence id="1112">The other aunt, they took them away and we never heard of them again. </sentence><sentence id="1113">The woman, the last one's husband was either taken away or died, and she was the last one who was evacuated before our family was gone. </sentence><sentence id="1114">So, they all were gone. </sentence><sentence id="1115">I mean, there were relatives in other <span class="populated place">towns</span>, but we never knew what happened to them, but those I knew until "43 what happened to them. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1132">Q: Now, I want to know a little bit more to the organization of this <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1133">I know there were Jewish police. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1136">A: Well, the organization was the head of the large <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span> was s </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1138">Q: Did you have any contact with him? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1140">A: No, he slapped my mother's face once, because he thought she was peddling something on the <span class="dlf">street</span> and he was going in his <span class="spatial object">carriage</span> and there was a peddlar and she ran into our <span class="building">building</span> and my mother was working in the <span class="building">building</span> and he ran after her and slapped her face. </sentence><sentence id="1141">At one time I wanted to get a petition, when I had those abscesses, for some different job. </sentence><sentence id="1142">I never got into him. </sentence><sentence id="1143">I never had any contact with him. </sentence><sentence id="1144">He had his own clique. </sentence><sentence id="1145">His brother, we called Prince Joseph, after Napoleon's brother. </sentence><sentence id="1146">They all had good <span class="building">apartments</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1147">They had special rations. </sentence><sentence id="1148">They all wore high boots like the Germans. </sentence><sentence id="1149">They all rode in those <span class="spatial object">carriages</span> with the horses, and he thought he was a king. </sentence><sentence id="1150">The money was --the only money we could use in <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span> were pictures on it. </sentence><sentence id="1151">We called it . </sentence><sentence id="1152">That was the only way you could buy anything. </sentence><sentence id="1153">He liked the doctors, he didn't like the dentists, so the dentists were person non grata. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1169">Q: Your mother didn't practice dentistry at all in the large <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1171">A: Oh yes. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1173">Q: All right, we'll get to that. </sentence><sentence id="1174">I'll let you finish. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1177">A: If someone displeased him, he would just send them out, either send them out on <span class="spatial object">transport</span> or if someone did something which was according to his rules not right, maybe abuses, they were assigned to the <span class="building">feces brigade</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1178">And this was the most horrid thing you ever saw. </sentence><sentence id="1179">They would collect, there were <span class="spatial object">cesspools</span>, so they would collect the feces from the cesspool in <span class="spatial object">wagons</span> in special <span class="spatial object">tanks</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1180">But those people were pulling those things, and they had to empty them somewhere in the <span class="region">suburbs</span> of the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1181">I remember there was a young couple. </sentence><sentence id="1182">I don't know what he did, and they punished him. </sentence><sentence id="1183">She was a beautiful blonde and she used to pull that thing. </sentence><sentence id="1184">They were covered with feces. </sentence><sentence id="1185">Naturally a lot of those feces were full of disease, so those people never lasted too long. </sentence><sentence id="1186">You probably know the landmark of the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span> was everybody carried a little <span class="building">canteen</span> to work because we got our soup in it. </sentence><sentence id="1187">So we all carried it. </sentence><sentence id="1188">As a matter fact, I got as a birthday present, someone made one that was not made out of tin but made some nice metal so that it didn't have that tinny taste, because the soup would get soured in it. </sentence><sentence id="1189">Even those people who pulled those <span class="spatial object">feces wagons</span>, they would walk around with their bow] or their <span class="spatial object">canteens</span> attached to their belts because somehow on their <span class="dlf">route</span> they would stop and wherever and they would get their soup. </sentence><sentence id="1190">So, as filthy and dirty and miserable as they were, they ate on the <span class="dlf">road</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1191">But those people really, this was like he punished them. </sentence><sentence id="1192">This was worse punishment I think than being evacuated on the <span class="spatial object">transports</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1193">I also had a hard time with grandfather when he was dying. </sentence><sentence id="1194">We had cold water only. </sentence><sentence id="1195">We had to pump the water <span class="interior space">downstairs</span> to bring it up. </sentence><sentence id="1196">And they had <span class="building">laundries</span>, <span class="building">public laundries</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1197">You sent out your stuff, took three months, two months you got it back. </sentence><sentence id="1198">Not that we had valuable things. </sentence><sentence id="1199">They gave us things out when we came to the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1200">Well, Grandfather was sick towards the end and he had uremia, and he had accidents, and in order to change the <span class="spatial object">bed</span> I had to pick him up and put him on another <span class="spatial object">bed</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1201">We'd change the <span class="spatial object">bed</span> and finally when he died -- he wanted to commit suicide. </sentence><sentence id="1202">He had some procaine (ph) and his cousin caught him and he was ready to take it, but anyway, he died. </sentence><sentence id="1203">In order to bury him, one had to provide two clean sheets for a shroud. </sentence><sentence id="1204">We had no clean sheets. </sentence><sentence id="1205">So, I went to these friends of my mother's who lived in <span class="populated place">Lodz</span> before the war, and there were several families there that they all lived in <span class="populated place">Lodz</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1206">And that was the one who lost their parents, and I said, could you lend me two sheets so I can bury Grandfather and we will either buy some on the <span class="building">Black Market</span> later on, or we'll get our bundle and we'll give it back to you. </sentence><sentence id="1207">She said, "No, I'm sorry, I don't have it." </sentence><sentence id="1208">I was devastated. </sentence><sentence id="1209">And finally the people next <span class="dlf">door</span> who were new acquaintances, the ones who had lost the child, she knocked on the <span class="dlf">door</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1210">She said, "I hear you have a problem. </sentence><sentence id="1211">Here are the two <span class="spatial object">sheets</span>." </sentence><sentence id="1212">So, this is how we managed to bury him in clean sheets. </sentence><sentence id="1213">This was towards the end of the war, and they felt that they are going to survive the war and they're going to have their linens and have everything else. </sentence><sentence id="1214">They lost half of their family and they still couldn't understand that those things were not important. </sentence><sentence id="1215"> Tape #2 </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1255">Q: I was mentioning that as far as I understand it, there was a lot of organization in the large <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1256">Cultural activities, little religious programs, <span class="building">theater</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1259">A: I have never attended any of it. </sentence><sentence id="1260">I don't know anything much. </sentence><sentence id="1261">There was a <span class="building">private library</span>, and I used to go for books. </sentence><sentence id="1262">The front was bordering the <span class="dlf">street</span> which was closed. </sentence><sentence id="1263">The main <span class="dlf">street</span> of <span class="populated place">Lodz Ghetto</span> had <span class="spatial object">street cars</span> going like in . </sentence><sentence id="1264">No one lived in those <span class="building">buildings</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1265">I think they had <span class="building">factories</span>, most of them. </sentence><sentence id="1266">There was <span class="dlf">barbed wire</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1267">This was guarded by the Jewish policeman watching that no one should sneak out and so on. </sentence><sentence id="1268">That <span class="building">library</span>, the <span class="building">private lending library</span> was on that <span class="dlf">street</span>, but I know we used to go through the back and stand in <span class="dlf">line</span> and borrow books. </sentence><sentence id="1269">That's the only thing which I had in terms of cultural events. </sentence><sentence id="1270">As I said, I was there for two years, and we had to take care of the old people. </sentence><sentence id="1271">We had to bring the rations, and bring the food and do the fire and bring the water, and bring the slops down. </sentence><sentence id="1272">Everything was on my mother's and my back, and one time she had an infection in her finger, so she couldn't grab. </sentence><sentence id="1273">She had an infection in her palm and she couldn't carry things. </sentence><sentence id="1274">She would go with me to pick up the rations just to guard me and I was carrying it. </sentence><sentence id="1275">I worked, and as I said, Saturdays I would go out, and I met this guy. </sentence><sentence id="1276">I started going out with him on Saturdays. </sentence><sentence id="1277">We would just walk, because he was taking care of his mother and sister-in-law and a child, and he was a policeman, but he was not doing anything how should I say, he didn't beat people. </sentence><sentence id="1278">He was watching, I think he was a sergeant, but they call it in German " " that means people who kept the order. </sentence><sentence id="1279">They were not the criminals and they were not the commander. </sentence><sentence id="1280">Those were the thugs. </sentence><sentence id="1281">They are the ones who are the messy guys. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1305">Q: When you would take walks, what would you see? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1307">A: People very often, you saw people lying on the <span class="env feature">ground</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1308">They found bodies on the <span class="dlf">street</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1309">The children, they used to sell , and there were children, there was a little chant the little children would sell , and they gave us some stuff, some linens, some pots and pans, because they had from other liquidated <span class="populated place">Ghettos</span>, they would get the stuff in and when people were brought in, that was the organization. </sentence><sentence id="1310">They would distribute some of the stuff. </sentence><sentence id="1311">I remember we got this big grey shawl with fringes on it, full of <span class="dlf">holes</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1312">And I ripped the shawl, I took out the fringes and pieced the whole thing together. </sentence><sentence id="1313">I think I made three hats for us, for mother, for grandmother and for me, because it was cold and some mittens. </sentence><sentence id="1314">We grabbed things out of the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>, <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1315">Among other things there was a piece of fabric. </sentence><sentence id="1316">I'll always remember it was an orange piece of fabric and I needed something. </sentence><sentence id="1317">And it was not enough for a dress. </sentence><sentence id="1318">I had a friend who was working with me and she was a dressmaker and she said find some wool. </sentence><sentence id="1319">So we found -- I found some on the <span class="building">Black Market</span>, some yarn, and she made me knit parts of the sleeves and the yoke and the turtleneck, and some trim on the skirt, she made like pockets, and I had a beautiful dress, I mean made out of very small piece of fabric and those scraps. </sentence><sentence id="1320">And the Polish peasant women never wore coats, even working women, they wear those big plaid throws, I mean like big squares. </sentence><sentence id="1321">They were square. </sentence><sentence id="1322">So, I was with Mom, we bought this plaid thing and made a jacket for me, because you had to I needed some clothes. </sentence><sentence id="1323">I was outgrowing what I had, and I needed something. </sentence><sentence id="1324">We managed as I say, things from scraps. </sentence><sentence id="1325">Every little scrap of wool, every piece of scrap of something, you pieced it. </sentence><sentence id="1326">You bought pieces of wool and made a sweater. </sentence><sentence id="1327">You're talking about people in <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span> how short sighted they were. </sentence><sentence id="1328">When I was working for that <span class="building">factory</span>, the <span class="building">corset factory</span>, we would get this was for the German population, and Germans would send in cut out pieces of brassieres, I mean they were all cut, and all the fittings and the little hooks and buttons, whatever, slides for the brassieres or if we did corsets there were <span class="spatial object">stays</span> and <span class="spatial object">eyelets</span>, and we had to count everything and package it in small loads so we would distribute it to the <span class="dlf">assembly line</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1329">I worked in the <span class="building">warehouse</span> where we would distribute. </sentence><sentence id="1330">We even measured thread. </sentence><sentence id="1331">We gave them certain amount of thread so no one could steal anything. </sentence><sentence id="1332">The guy who was in charge of the <span class="building">factory</span> was a manufacturer before the war, and he felt that the <span class="building">factory</span> has to be run in the correct order. </sentence><sentence id="1333">There were times we had absolutely nothing to do. </sentence><sentence id="1334">No <span class="spatial object">shipment</span> came. </sentence><sentence id="1335">There was very little and the <span class="dlf">assembly line</span> was working very slowly and they would come in and they needed a dozen buttons, a dozen stays and we would just give them to the <span class="dlf">assembly line</span>, but the biggest work was when the shipments would come in. </sentence><sentence id="1336">We had to count, like I say, every <span class="spatial object">button</span> and repackage it. </sentence><sentence id="1337">So, the foreman of the <span class="building">factory</span> used to say, "Whatever you're doing, just make believe you're working." </sentence><sentence id="1338">So, we would have a book in the <span class="interior space">drawer</span> and we'd knit under the <span class="spatial object">table</span> and on the <span class="spatial object">table</span> we would have button or stays open up a package and make believe we were counting or whatever. </sentence><sentence id="1339">This guy would come in, you would have to hide from him because he did not believe, he could not bring himself to say, "Look girls, there is nothing to do." </sentence><sentence id="1340">As long as the Germans don't come in and they don't catch you with it, he was petrified. </sentence><sentence id="1341">When the time came for me to get transferred to the <span class="dlf">fields</span>, I needed his release, and he wouldn't release. </sentence><sentence id="1342">With all the connections I had to get to those <span class="dlf">fields</span>, he didn't want to lose one of his workers. </sentence><sentence id="1343">Finally, someone from our <span class="populated place">hometown</span>, who was also director of a more important <span class="building">factory</span>, he was a director of the uniforms, the coats for the German Army, he finally approached him and said, "There's a young girl here. </sentence><sentence id="1344">She's sick. </sentence><sentence id="1345">She needs some fresh air. </sentence><sentence id="1346">This dust in the <span class="building">factory</span> is killing her." </sentence><sentence id="1347">I couldn't breath, I was having attacks of asthma. " </sentence><sentence id="1348">Why don't you release her?" </sentence><sentence id="1349">Finally, I got the release from him, but when I approached him he wouldn't do it. </sentence><sentence id="1350">There were many people like this. </sentence><sentence id="1351">They were so self important. </sentence><sentence id="1352">They felt so important, and they were nobodies nothings. </sentence><sentence id="1353">All of a sudden they became heads of <span class="building">factory</span> or whatever. </sentence><sentence id="1354">And <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span> was one huge <span class="building">factory</span>, starting from electronic equipment, uniforms, which was the most important things, boots, supplies for the Army, going down to the brassieres, hats, artificial flowers, brooms. </sentence><sentence id="1355">And even those rag rugs, braided rugs which were made out of scraps. </sentence><sentence id="1356">They would take torn sheets which they would get from various <span class="populated place">cities</span> when the other <span class="populated place">towns</span> or <span class="populated place">cities</span> were liquidated like in . </sentence><sentence id="1357">That group saw that the good stuff went to <span class="country">Germany</span> or for the German settlers. </sentence><sentence id="1358">The junk came back to <span class="populated place">Lodz Ghetto</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1359">Some of the stuff was torn, they were rags. </sentence><sentence id="1360">They would dye them different colors and make braided rugs out of them. </sentence><sentence id="1361">So, everybody was working and everybody produced something, and we produced and the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span> was getting food. </sentence><sentence id="1362">There was no money. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1420">Q: How were these people selected to be in positions of authority whether it was the police or the <span class="building">factory</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1422">A: I don't know, connections, basically. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1424">Q: Were there ever women in positions of authority? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1426">A: I think so. </sentence><sentence id="1427">I think so, I don't know how many, mostly a <span class="building">men's society</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1428">The guy Kleeger, the one who was the head of the commando, he had a brother who's the most extremely decent guy, and she was a friend of my mother's from before the war, and he was in charge -- this is a specialty of empty <span class="spatial object">containers</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1429">You see, if they brought <span class="spatial object">containers</span> to <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>, let's say they brought brown sugar or they brought flour or something, that department would scrape out the things and there was still food in it and they had to return to those things back to the Germans to refill it. </sentence><sentence id="1430">So, he was in charge of the empty <span class="spatial object">containers</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1431">This was -- he had a high position, but he felt that this was a position which in any way he's not jeopardizing anyone's life and anyone's position. </sentence><sentence id="1432">He wanted to survive, and he survived and his wife, but this was his job, and one day I told you when the commander, his brother's hoodlums were coming into the <span class="building">building</span>, one day he was passing our <span class="building">apartment building</span> and he saw the guys were coming in to check, and he just walked in. </sentence><sentence id="1433">My grandparents were <span class="building">home</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1434">He walked in and just sat down and talked to them. </sentence><sentence id="1435">He was waiting for those guys to come and he wanted to chase them on their way. </sentence><sentence id="1436">He felt they shouldn't anyway, he never said anything later, and they left the <span class="building">building</span> and he later told my mother that he came in because my grandparents said "What was Simon doing here? </sentence><sentence id="1437">He just came to visit us in the middle of the day?" </sentence><sentence id="1438">He came, he wanted to prevent any scenes with my grandparents. </sentence><sentence id="1439">As I said, he was the most decent guy in the world. </sentence><sentence id="1440">His brother survived, I think, either brother or nephew. </sentence><sentence id="1441">He was hiding. </sentence><sentence id="1442">Those people survived that lived in <span class="country">Israel</span>, and we saw them. </sentence><sentence id="1443">There were a lot of decent people. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1462">Q: There was also corruption? </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1463">A: I think there was corruption. </sentence><sentence id="1464">There had to be corruption. </sentence><sentence id="1465">There had to be corruption. </sentence><sentence id="1466">You see, in large <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span> I was such a low level of living that I really don't know what was going on, but we know -- the whole administration and when I read this book about <span class="populated place">Lodz Ghetto</span>, one time he had <span class="building">theaters</span> here and <span class="building">orphanages</span>, he had <span class="building">schools</span>, he was making the famous speech, give me your children, he felt justified in sending out the children because maybe he can save some people. </sentence><sentence id="1467">When finally it came to his evacuation, they gave him a special <span class="spatial object">passenger car</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1468">He didn't go in a <span class="spatial object">cattle car</span>, and he expected that they were going to take him on an inspection of <span class="populated place">camp</span> and he's going to help them in <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1469">And there are three theories what happened to him. </sentence><sentence id="1470">One was that some people from <span class="populated place">Lodz Ghetto</span> killed him when he arrived. </sentence><sentence id="1471">Some of them he was gassed or some German killed him. </sentence><sentence id="1472">So, we don't really know what happened to him. </sentence><sentence id="1473">Now, once they evacuated us, the evacuation --see what happened, they were having more and more lists and more and more evacuations and they would grab people on the <span class="dlf">streets</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1474">I was afraid to go anyplace. </sentence><sentence id="1475">And I had some money coming to me and some vegetables coming to me because the vegetables all of a sudden were ripening, and I was afraid to go by myself to the place that I was working. </sentence><sentence id="1476">And this friend of mine, the policeman, he said he'll take me, because at least we hope they won't grab me on the <span class="dlf">street</span> when I'm being escorted. </sentence><sentence id="1477">At that time, we knew something was going to happen, so we made this big out of some fabric back packs and packed all our valuables and some food. </sentence><sentence id="1478">That was sitting ready to be taken in case they evacuate us. </sentence><sentence id="1479">We never knew in the last few weeks of August, this was the beginning of August "44. </sentence><sentence id="1480">He was late, and that in a way helped me and Mom be together, because by the time he arrived, they took us by that time they just blew the whistles everybody out. </sentence><sentence id="1481">That's it. </sentence><sentence id="1482">So, we went down, and <span class="interior space">downstairs</span> he was there. </sentence><sentence id="1483">He just came. </sentence><sentence id="1484">If he would have been 15 20 minutes before I would have left and I would have never been with my family. </sentence><sentence id="1485">I would have gone with him. </sentence><sentence id="1486">So, he helped us to go to the <span class="building">train station</span> and that's where they put us in the <span class="spatial object">cattle cars</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1487">There were about 80 people in the <span class="spatial object">cattle car</span> and one <span class="spatial object">bucket</span>, one <span class="spatial object">slop bucket</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1488">I don't even know if there was anything to drink. </sentence><sentence id="1489">We all had something to eat, I mean whatever we grabbed. </sentence><sentence id="1490">As I said, we had an extra bread which we never allowed ourselves to eat the whole bread. </sentence><sentence id="1491">We're saving it because what happens tomorrow. </sentence><sentence id="1492">We were so conditioned to it that you have to save something for tomorrow. </sentence><sentence id="1493">And Grandma was embarrassed to go in the <span class="spatial object">bucket</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1494">She couldn't -- and we tried to cover her with the coat and so on. </sentence><sentence id="1495">People were dying on the <span class="spatial object">train</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1496">This was one night when I -- </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1497">Q: I'm sorry to interrupt you but did you have any idea where people were being sent? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1499">A: No, there were all kinds of rumors but no one knew. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1501">Q: Had you heard about this before? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1503">A: We didn't hear of <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1504">We heard about bad things happening, but the only time that I knew something was happening when those boys told us that the people were taken to <span class="spatial object">cattle cars</span>, the old people and the children, and those boys were never heard of again. </sentence><sentence id="1505"> <span class="dlf">Back track</span>, one of my friends was hung in <span class="populated place">Lodz Ghetto</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1506">He was found, he was trying to escape from <span class="populated place">camp</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1507">And this was a boy I saw him when I was 15, I gave him my photograph, and then somebody told me that he was hung, and they found my photograph with him. </sentence><sentence id="1508">Since that time, I was going up the <span class="dlf">ladder</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1509">I had boyfriends who were much older than him, and I became obsessed to get that photograph back, because I felt if that boy felt that way that he had my photograph, it was taken when I was 12 or 13, before the war. </sentence><sentence id="1510">I finally tracked that photograph down and had it, and I told you that the people from <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span> some of them were hung. </sentence><sentence id="1511">The ones who were in charge of the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span> at one time, which I mention it in my book. </sentence><sentence id="1512">So, when we got -- what were we talking about? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1523">Q: The <span class="spatial object">cattle cars</span>, going to <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span>. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="1525"> A Yes, the <span class="spatial object">cattle cars</span>, going to <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1526">We arrived at <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span>, and it was dark in the <span class="spatial object">cattle cars</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1527">All of the sudden the light was kind of blinding. </sentence><sentence id="1528">They lined us all up in fives. </sentence><sentence id="1529">We had my grandmother with us. </sentence><sentence id="1530">They told us to leave this stuff whatever we had. </sentence><sentence id="1531">I just had like a little <span class="spatial object">lunch bag</span>, and I had my photographs there, and I had some money there, and a couple of rings and things like this. </sentence><sentence id="1532">Mother, I think had probably instruments. </sentence><sentence id="1533">If anything, aside from anything else she had was <span class="spatial object">instruments</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1534">She had a red cross arm band, because in <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span> everybody was identified by something. </sentence><sentence id="1535">They had caps and they had bands, and they had different hats with different 1.d. </sentence><sentence id="1536">"s and so on.was big on uniforms but couldn't afford uniforms, so he was giving people hats. </sentence><sentence id="1537">As we were approaching , there were a lot of Polish couple, like trustees working there, the <span class="dlf">ramp</span>, and I didn't realize until later what this Pole did. </sentence><sentence id="1538">He saved our lives. </sentence><sentence id="1539">What he did, is pushed me into the <span class="dlf">line</span> first and separated me from my mother and my grandmother and put some people in between. </sentence><sentence id="1540">Then he put my mother in, again, put some people in between, and then put my grandmother. </sentence><sentence id="1541">He knew where she was going. </sentence><sentence id="1542">He wasn't sure where my mother was going. </sentence><sentence id="1543">He knew where I am going. </sentence><sentence id="1544">And the family was together. </sentence><sentence id="1545">Very often they's say let me go with that loved one and they would oblige. </sentence><sentence id="1546">So, naturally they send me in and then he asked my mother where she is going, and she saw the sign and she said I am going to work. </sentence><sentence id="1547">The <span class="spatial object">sign</span> was , SO she said I'm going to work. </sentence><sentence id="1548">He looked at her, clapped her on her behind and let her go. </sentence><sentence id="1549">And naturally, they send Grandmother to the left, and my mother had nightmares because it was so confusing that we didn't have a chance to look what happened to her. </sentence><sentence id="1550">It was so fast, and so unbelievably confusing, and I think that the <span class="env feature">Pole</span> by separating us, knew what he was doing and he saved us, the two of us. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1578">Q: Was there a general hysteria? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1580">A: No. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1582">Q: People just weren't --? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1584">A: There's a by word of <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span> "shnell (ph)" Everything they did you had to do fast, fast, fast. </sentence><sentence id="1585">You had no time to regroup, you had no time think, you had no time to do anything. </sentence><sentence id="1586">Get off the <span class="spatial object">trains</span>, line up, fast. </sentence><sentence id="1587">That's all you could hear "Shnell, <span class="spatial object">shnell</span>," When they finally regrouped us on the other side of the <span class="spatial object">table</span>, again they formed us in fives. </sentence><sentence id="1588">There were groups of prisoner girls, and they started driving us, practically driving us, fast, running, and while we were running, we encountered a group of subhumans, to us at that time they were subhumans, they wore tops of men's pajamas, but they were not the regular <span class="building">prison</span> garb. </sentence><sentence id="1589">They all had their hair shaved. </sentence><sentence id="1590">They had the wooden lace shoes on. </sentence><sentence id="1591">Their doppers (ph) were plastic or fabric or whatever, or no, they were wood sabits (ph) like Dutch shoes, because it was muddy around. </sentence><sentence id="1592">There were sent in another direction, and they started yelling give me your bread, give me something, they'll take it away it from you. </sentence><sentence id="1593">Give it to us, and they were supervised by the Germans, but basically they were smacking them, and we were shocked seeing that group, and naturally wouldn't give them the bread. </sentence><sentence id="1594">I mean, God forbid, we had to hide the bread for us. </sentence><sentence id="1595">We'll need it. </sentence><sentence id="1596">And finally they brought us into an <span class="region">area</span> where the <span class="interior space">baths</span> were. </sentence><sentence id="1597">This was a real legitimate <span class="interior space">bath</span>, a <span class="region">processing area</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1598">By that time it was getting dark, and they warned us to turn in all the gold and all the diamonds and all the valuables that we have because they'll be taken away. </sentence><sentence id="1599">And rumors were going that they were going to do very personal inspections. </sentence><sentence id="1600">Well, Mom had a <span class="dlf">bridge</span> with two diamonds in. </sentence><sentence id="1601">She had it made in such a way that she could take it out. </sentence><sentence id="1602">The diamonds were taken out of the things and she had it in her mouth. </sentence><sentence id="1603">This was like a final ration in case we need anything. </sentence><sentence id="1604">And I was very upset. </sentence><sentence id="1605">I got panicky and I said I don't want to give these Germans absolutely nothing. </sentence><sentence id="1606">Let's bury them. </sentence><sentence id="1607">And I also had a couple of rings, old rings. </sentence><sentence id="1608">And in the dark, my mother says "Are you sure?" </sentence><sentence id="1609">And I said Mom, I don't want you to give it to them and they are going to look in your mouth and they will find it and they will get, and I don't want them to have it. </sentence><sentence id="1610">And there we put into the <span class="env feature">ground</span>, ground it with our heels, and got rid of the diamonds and got rid of the gold. </sentence><sentence id="1611">There were a couple of other things they took, but this, it's like a feeling, like great we didn't give it to them. </sentence><sentence id="1612">Anyway, they took us to this <span class="building">shed</span> --. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1643">Q: What happened to the <span class="env feature">diamonds</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1645">A: She ground them into the <span class="env feature">ground</span>. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1647">Q: Was that the end of the story with the diamonds? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="1649"> A Yes, but we wouldn't give it to the Germans. </sentence><sentence id="1650">That was fun --, when I think about it now, this was fun, because they didn't get it. </sentence><sentence id="1651">Maybe somebody eventually found it, maybe not. </sentence><sentence id="1652">I don't care. </sentence><sentence id="1653">They were sewed in a little plastic thing -- well, we didn't have plastic. </sentence><sentence id="1654">Anyway, they took us to the <span class="building">shed</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1655">We had to get undressed, get the clothes off. </sentence><sentence id="1656">They took everything away from us and they sent us to the <span class="building">sauna</span> and lucky for me, I don't know why, they didn't cut my hair. </sentence><sentence id="1657">They did shave our hair and they give us tattoos. </sentence><sentence id="1658">It was very late at night by that time. </sentence><sentence id="1659">They were getting a lot of <span class="spatial object">transports</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1660">Rumor was that they wanted us to -- eventually would have gassed us, but they were so busy, the <span class="building">crematorium</span> was so busy that they felt maybe they can do something with us, the able bodied people. </sentence><sentence id="1661">And, they gave us some clothes. </sentence><sentence id="1662">I wound up with a skirt, my mother wound up with a mini, so we switched and the wooden shoes. </sentence><sentence id="1663">Then the last act was they painted a stripe, a red stripe down our backs and that broke me up. </sentence><sentence id="1664">Talking about panic, and we walked naked in front of the guys, in front of the Germans and in front of Polish copos. </sentence><sentence id="1665">Somehow, I took this whole thing without shedding a tear, but when they painted that stripe on my back, I started crying. </sentence><sentence id="1666">Again, one of the Poles walked over to me, hugged me and said, "Don't worry, you'll survive. </sentence><sentence id="1667">You'll be okay." </sentence><sentence id="1668">I mean, I spoke Polish at that time fluently, and I was a pretty girl at that time, and he felt sorry for me so he said, "Don't worry, you'll make it, just don't cry." </sentence><sentence id="1669">So, they sent us out, by now it's late at night. </sentence><sentence id="1670">They didn't have a <span class="building">barrack</span> for us. </sentence><sentence id="1671">They'll send us to the <span class="interior space">latrine</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1672">I don't know if you know what the <span class="interior space">latrine</span> in <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span> looked. </sentence><sentence id="1673">They were <span class="spatial object">concrete benches</span> with <span class="dlf">holes</span> that could accommodate 500 people at once. </sentence><sentence id="1674">There were <span class="spatial object">benches</span> on both sides and then in the middle there was a long <span class="spatial object">bench</span> from back to back there were <span class="dlf">holes</span> with a <span class="dlf">pit</span> underneath. </sentence><sentence id="1675">And that's how we were using as <span class="spatial object">toilets</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1676">Well, that's where we spent the night, in the <span class="interior space">toilets</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1677">Well, I don't have to repeat <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span> stories. </sentence><sentence id="1678">We stood up from 5:00 in the morning or 6:00 in the morning and then they put us in the <span class="building">barracks</span> and we had 14 people, 12 to 14 people to one six by six or seven by seven <span class="spatial object">bed</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1679">They gave us a can of whatever they gave us was in a metal can, no spoon, no nothing, and five people had to eat out of it, so everybody's watching how many swallows you did of that. </sentence><sentence id="1680">And one of the first nights there, once we got into the <span class="building">barrack</span>, they were burning, the <span class="building">crematorium</span> was going night and day. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1713">Q: You knew what it was? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1715">A: We didn't. </sentence><sentence id="1716">But someone woke up and those <span class="building">barracks</span>, like you see in the <span class="building">Museum</span> how they look, they had little <span class="dlf">windows</span> on top and someone must have woken up and saw this red glow in the <span class="env feature">sky</span> and someone started crying all of a sudden 1,000 women started crying and people who were in charge of it, group of Hungarian girls, they started yelling to be quiet because the Germans would come in and so forth. </sentence><sentence id="1717">We still didn't know what happened. </sentence><sentence id="1718">We knew something bad had happened, but we didn't know about the <span class="building">crematoriums</span>, what's happening. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1723">Q: You didn't know what the <span class="building">crematoriums</span> were? </sentence><sentence id="1724">How many people were in your <span class="building">barrack</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1727">A: About a thousand. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1729">Q: From all over? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1731">A: This was probably mostly Polish group run by the Hungarians. </sentence><sentence id="1732">The girls who were in charge had short skirts and they for some reason they all like polka dotted blouses and they had their hair. </sentence><sentence id="1733">They cut my hair some more. </sentence><sentence id="1734">They didn't like my having hair, so they shaved it a little -- they didn't shave it, but they cut it completely. </sentence><sentence id="1735">And Mom developed, we were afraid, because she developed from the wooden shoes a wound on her ankle and that was festering, and two weeks later they had the selection, luckily they put us through a <span class="interior space">shower</span> again, and the paper bandage fell off, so when they selected her, they didn't see her with the bandage. </sentence><sentence id="1736">As much as that was festering and messy, they didn't do anything. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1743">Q: Was your day fairly controlled? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1745">A: Extremely. </sentence><sentence id="1746">We had to get up, I don't know, 5:00 or 6:00. </sentence><sentence id="1747">It was cold in the morning. </sentence><sentence id="1748">You stood on that for hours. </sentence><sentence id="1749">They counted, and counted first from the <span class="building">barrack</span>, then they counted from the <span class="region">section</span>, then they counted -- they had to count the whole <span class="populated place">camp</span> through and had to tally. </sentence><sentence id="1750">If someone died, they had to tally. </sentence><sentence id="1751">If someone died, they had to tally. </sentence><sentence id="1752">If they couldn't find someone, they were looking for them. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1761">Q: This is the whole <span class="populated place">camp</span>, not just your <span class="building">barrack</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1763">A: No, no, they started with counting the <span class="building">barrack</span>, then there was a whole section, then they had to have it to one person, and if they couldn't find her they were looking for them. </sentence><sentence id="1764">Somebody was maybe hiding. </sentence><sentence id="1765">Maybe someone died, maybe someone couldn't get up. </sentence><sentence id="1766">It started over and over and over. </sentence><sentence id="1767">And the morning was cold. </sentence><sentence id="1768">Then they would give us five minutes in the <span class="interior space">bathroom</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1769">Sometimes they put us in one of the other <span class="building">barracks</span> was like a <span class="interior space">washroom</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1770">I don't know how many <span class="spatial object">spigots</span>, but again, it was fast, fast, fast. </sentence><sentence id="1771">There was no toilet paper, there was nothing. </sentence><sentence id="1772">You couldn't wash, you couldn't do anything. </sentence><sentence id="1773">If you managed to put your hand under the <span class="spatial object">spigot</span> and get a little water, they gave us something in the morning, I don't know if they gave us bread at night or in the morning -- no, I think we used to get the bread at night and save a piece to have it for the morning, and they gave us some soup during the day and some kind of a liquid during the day, in the morning. </sentence><sentence id="1774">Once we were standing in the , and one of the girls, whatever she had she had some kind of a jacket with patch pockets, and I said, "Gee, that would be nice to have for bread." </sentence><sentence id="1775">And she ripped out the <span class="spatial object">pocket</span> and said, "Here." </sentence><sentence id="1776">She knew my mother from her <span class="populated place">town</span>, because we would save the piece of bread to have it for the morning, and you were afraid to put it down. </sentence><sentence id="1777">You slept on top of the bread so God forbid someone shouldn't steal if from you. </sentence><sentence id="1778">So, that <span class="interior space">pocket</span> was a great thing to put the piece of bread. </sentence><sentence id="1779">I mean, you know, such little things can mean so much to you. </sentence><sentence id="1780">Anyway, luckily for us we only stayed only two weeks there. </sentence><sentence id="1781">This was <span class="region">hell</span>. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1801">Q: Did you work? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1803">A: No. </sentence><sentence id="1804">Yes, I offered -- I couldn't sleep. </sentence><sentence id="1805">Mom was doing something, checking some things. </sentence></p><p><sentence id="1806">You know they asked who was a medical thing, so she would go down, and they made us sit in those <span class="spatial object">beds</span> and you couldn't lay down. </sentence><sentence id="1807">You just had to sit. </sentence><sentence id="1808">Fourteen people in one of those <span class="interior space">platforms</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1809">Well, I couldn't sleep at night with all the noise and at night they had the slop bucket at the <span class="dlf">door</span> and somebody had to go, they had to go to the slop bucket and when the slop bucket was full, had to be taken to the <span class="spatial object">latrine</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1810">Well, I volunteered. </sentence><sentence id="1811">And one of the escort from one of the other girls, from one of the workers, but they felt themselves above carrying a <span class="spatial object">slop bucket</span>, and at least I could get some fresh air. </sentence><sentence id="1812">Walk, when the <span class="spatial object">bucket</span> was full, I could go walk out. </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1813">Q: Did you see anything strange when you'd walk out at night? </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1814">A: Nothing, it was just dead. </sentence><sentence id="1815">Nothing was seen, no one was walking, except as I said, figures taking the <span class="spatial object">slop bucket</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1816">That's about all. </sentence><sentence id="1817">No one was allowed to go to the <span class="interior space">bathroom</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1818">But, I was waiting for that occasion. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1824">Q: It just sounds sort of eerie. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1826">A: It was very hot in the afternoon. </sentence><sentence id="1827">This was still August. </sentence><sentence id="1828">So during the day, it got hot, and in our <span class="populated place">camp</span> they would send us out again for another count, and by that time it was hot, and we stood there for hours until they tallied. </sentence><sentence id="1829">It was a way of torture. </sentence><sentence id="1830">They were just cruel and people were fainting and people were dying in the <span class="dlf">lines</span> and you were not allowed to help them. </sentence><sentence id="1831">You had to leave them the way they were. </sentence><sentence id="1832">If someone passed out, they passed out. </sentence><sentence id="1833">That's it. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1842">Q: You went out a night, did you see the <span class="building">crematorium</span> flames or smell them? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1844">A: There was a small and there was dust, but we didn't -- there was some white stuff floating, but we didn't know what it was. </sentence><sentence id="1845">The first night the glow was unbelievable. </sentence><sentence id="1846">And we were afraid, I don't know, we were afraid to do anything. </sentence><sentence id="1847">You were not allowed to. </sentence><sentence id="1848">Once I was in the <span class="interior space">bathroom</span>, maybe I wasn't moving fast enough, there was this famous Erma , she later came to <span class="populated place">Bergen-Belsen</span>, blonde, gorgeous cool and she had this big whip and she smacked me with a whip. </sentence><sentence id="1849">Because as I said, the whole <span class="dlf">ward</span> was fast, whatever you did. </sentence><sentence id="1850">You had to line up fast, you had to go to the <span class="interior space">bathroom</span> fast. </sentence><sentence id="1851">They gave you five minutes in the <span class="interior space">bathroom</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1852">Five minutes maybe not even five minutes to get some water to wash up, wash up, maybe you could wet your face maybe take a sip of water and wet your hands. </sentence><sentence id="1853">That's about all. </sentence><sentence id="1854">Conditions were awful. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1867">Q: How were the other guards, the copos, your <span class="dlf">block</span> elders? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1869">A: I don't know. </sentence><sentence id="1870">It's hard to say. </sentence><sentence id="1871">They lived very nicely, especially the <span class="dlf">block</span> elders. </sentence><sentence id="1872">They had little <span class="interior space">rooms</span> with <span class="spatial object">quilts</span> and they had little <span class="spatial object">stoves</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1873">And one with the block elder she would help and then they had a whole bunch of lesser girls and -- our group was Hungarian so there was a communication gap. </sentence><sentence id="1874">Some of them spoke German, some of us spoke German and some of us didn't. </sentence><sentence id="1875">I didn't speak too well German, but I understood. </sentence><sentence id="1876">So, you were afraid of them. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1885">Q: Were they nasty? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1887">A: Sometimes, like I said with the hair. </sentence><sentence id="1888">They couldn't stand the fact that I had hair. </sentence><sentence id="1889">I mean I didn't. </sentence><sentence id="1890">I had short hair, but they couldn't stand that. </sentence><sentence id="1891">They didn't have a razor, so they clipped it and said that's to prevent lice. </sentence><sentence id="1892">Because they saw some workers working on the <span class="dlf">roof</span>, again Polish workers. </sentence><sentence id="1893">I talked to them once. </sentence><sentence id="1894">I don't know how I managed to say something, and I said I could use a stick, and he said fine, tomorrow we'll work on the <span class="dlf">roof</span> and I'll make you a stick for the soup. </sentence><sentence id="1895">It's like a tongue depressor and he dropped that <span class="spatial object">stick</span> for me, so I could dig into the soup. </sentence><sentence id="1896">They didn't like it. </sentence><sentence id="1897">So, the following day, they called me down to the bottom of the thing and said, "We have to cut the hair." </sentence><sentence id="1898">So, they cut some more. </sentence><sentence id="1899">I had no choice. </sentence><sentence id="1900">Because except for the <span class="dlf">block</span> elders and their assistants the rest of them had shaved heads. </sentence><sentence id="1901">How they got there, how they became them, I don't know. </sentence><sentence id="1902">There was a woman who came along, she was a dentist from <span class="country">Poland</span>, and she kind of asked my mother and said, you know, I can get you a job and so on and she was hinting that my mother has anything she should give it to her and she could arrange for her to get a job as a dentist. </sentence><sentence id="1903">At that time we didn't have anything, and my mother was upset. </sentence><sentence id="1904">She said, if I had the diamond, I could have given her the diamond. </sentence><sentence id="1905">I could have gotten a job. </sentence><sentence id="1906">Lucky for us, we didn't have the diamonds and they sent us out to <span class="populated place">Bergen- Belsen</span>. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1927">Q: Why don't you tell me how that came about? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1929">A: About two weeks after we were in <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span>, they lined up, had another selection. </sentence><sentence id="1930">They took us to the <span class="interior space">showers</span>, gave us some clothes, and they took aware our clothes. </sentence><sentence id="1931">I mean if I had a little -- I had a little skirt and a tank top, they took the skirt away. </sentence><sentence id="1932">The <span class="spatial object">tank top</span> was so short, I had a ribbon in the <span class="spatial object">tank top</span> and I had to tie it between my legs otherwise my whole behind was showing. </sentence><sentence id="1933">And they ran us out, and again they had a selection and they were supposed to send us out. </sentence><sentence id="1934">Then something happened, the <span class="spatial object">trains</span> were not there, and they put us in some temporary <span class="building">barrack</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1935">The following day, they ran another selection. </sentence><sentence id="1936">They gave us a <span class="interior space">bath</span>, and they put us on the <span class="spatial object">train</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1937">This was the time I really don't know if <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span> had two <span class="building">stations</span> or not because this is the only time and I went back to <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span>, I remember, we went through the main <span class="populated place">camp</span> of <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span>, because we were in and this was, I saw the red <span class="building">buildings</span>, the permanent <span class="building">buildings</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1938">I saw the band playing. </sentence><sentence id="1939">So, I had a feeling they had some other <span class="building">station</span> in <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span> proper which they loaded us. </sentence><sentence id="1940">They unloaded the <span class="spatial object">cars</span> somewhere else, and they put us there. </sentence><sentence id="1941">They put us in <span class="spatial object">cattle cars</span> again. </sentence><sentence id="1942">They give us a piece a bread and a piece of cheese. </sentence><sentence id="1943">There was one <span class="spatial object">water bucket</span> with water, and there was one <span class="spatial object">slop bucket</span>, and they put us on the <span class="spatial object">trains</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1944">I think we were there either two nights or three nights, and one night they stopped somewhere and they brought a fresh bucket of water, and assigned someone to distribute the water. </sentence><sentence id="1945">Brought a little <span class="spatial object">cup</span> and we were supposed to have a sip. </sentence><sentence id="1946">One woman got so frenzied, she grabbed her shoe and dipped it in there and drank from the shoe. </sentence><sentence id="1947">When they give us the clothes, by that time, I've got those laced up shoes with wooden soles. </sentence><sentence id="1948">One was white and one was black, and I had this men's shirt, long flannel thing, blue satin, significant later, I'll tell you about that story. </sentence><sentence id="1949">We stayed, and as I said the <span class="spatial object">train</span> was on and off and on and off. </sentence><sentence id="1950">At night it would stop. </sentence><sentence id="1951">I remember once we were next <span class="region">side</span> there were real cattle making cattle noises. </sentence><sentence id="1952">This was an absolute nightmare. </sentence><sentence id="1953">Later on when I had my typhous fever, all I had I kept on saying, take the <span class="spatial object">train</span> out of my head, get the <span class="spatial object">train</span> out of my head. </sentence><sentence id="1954">That's all I could hear is that. </sentence><sentence id="1955">It took me years before I wanted to take a <span class="spatial object">train</span> anyplace, because even when I was in <span class="country">Europe</span> and we traveled later, I was very reluctant to take a <span class="spatial object">train</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1956">We finally arrived at <span class="populated place">Bergen-Belsen</span> about maybe the third day. </sentence><sentence id="1957">All the passing and stopping we passed, I think, <span class="populated place">Dresden</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1958">We saw someone tried to climb up. </sentence><sentence id="1959">We could see the bombed out <span class="populated place">cities</span> and we were very happy to see those bombed out <span class="populated place">cities</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1960">I think it must have been the third day. </sentence><sentence id="1961">We felt that another night on the <span class="spatial object">train</span> we will completely lose our identity and it was confusing. </sentence><sentence id="1962">We were getting confused without food, without drink, and with the total darkness for so long, no knowing where we were going, what we're doing. </sentence><sentence id="1963">Anyway, they took us, we came to <span class="populated place">Bergen- Belsen</span>, and until that time <span class="populated place">Bergen-Belsen</span> was not a <span class="populated place">concentration camp</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1964">They had various <span class="populated place">camps</span> of various entities, <span class="populated place">prisoner of war camp</span>, but there was no <span class="populated place">camp concentration camp</span> as such. </sentence><sentence id="1965">Again, they asked people who can't walk who would like to go by <span class="spatial object">truck</span>, and I think one or two people who were very sick, they went. </sentence><sentence id="1966">Otherwise, my mother with the bad leg, she would not go on the <span class="spatial object">truck</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1967">She was afraid, because we knew by now, by that time, when you are sick something bad is going to happen to you. </sentence><sentence id="1968">We finally got into the main <span class="populated place">camp</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1969">It was a long, long <span class="dlf">street</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1970">The front of the <span class="dlf">street</span>, the beginning of the <span class="dlf">street</span>, there was administration places, there was a <span class="interior space">bath</span>, there was a little <span class="building">crematorium</span> which they could burn two bodies. </sentence><sentence id="1971">But this was done for bodies. </sentence><sentence id="1972">It was never done to use it for killing people. </sentence><sentence id="1973">If people died, they would use it. </sentence><sentence id="1974">They gave us a <span class="interior space">bath</span> and we put our clothes in a little <span class="spatial object">basket</span>, and when we walked out from the other side of the <span class="interior space">bath</span>, we got the clothes. </sentence><sentence id="1975">They marched us down to the end of the <span class="dlf">street</span> of the <span class="populated place">town</span>, the very end of the <span class="populated place">camp</span>, and there was this big <span class="building">tent</span> that could accommodate about 1,000 people. </sentence><sentence id="1976">It was clean. </sentence><sentence id="1977">We all got a blanket each. </sentence><sentence id="1978">On the <span class="interior space">floor</span> of the <span class="building">tent</span> was wooden shavings, bales of wooden shavings, clean, never used. </sentence><sentence id="1979">There as a <span class="spatial object">latrine</span> in the back right under the <span class="building">guards tower</span>, big <span class="dlf">pits</span> and there was a couple pieces of wood where you could kind of lean against, but you could use it any time you wanted. </sentence><sentence id="1980">There was a wooden trough with pipe. </sentence><sentence id="1981">We could use the <span class="env feature">water</span> any time we wanted. </sentence><sentence id="1982">They nominated one lady, she was from <span class="country">Germany</span>, she spoke German, as camp director, and her assistant, she was originally from <span class="country">Germany</span>, so they spoke fluently German. </sentence><sentence id="1983">They counted us once a day. </sentence><sentence id="1984">This <span class="populated place">camp</span> is located on the , SO it's like heather. </sentence><sentence id="1985">At that time there was <span class="dlf">fields</span> in back of us, later on they build more and more and more but at that time it was just us and the <span class="dlf">fields</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1986">So, we could sit in the <span class="env feature">sun</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1987">We could drink when we wanted, we could go to the <span class="spatial object">toilet</span> when we wanted. </sentence><sentence id="1988">Even at night, if you wanted to go to the <span class="spatial object">toilet</span>, -- if the guards heard something going on, he would put the light on, the spot light on, if he heard a movement. </sentence><sentence id="1989">So, maybe they eliminated you when you were using the <span class="interior space">bathroom</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1990">When the girls were sitting there, they would just look. </sentence><sentence id="1991">After a while, you lose all inhibitions, and if they want to look, let them look. </sentence><sentence id="1992">That's what we're going to do. </sentence><sentence id="1993">At that time we didn't have any doctors so the first day, the second day, they brought a big <span class="spatial object">chest</span> with some first aid things and some pills, some equipment. </sentence><sentence id="1994">Mom became the doctor. </sentence><sentence id="1995">There was a head dentist, I don't know his name, but he was until the very end, a very, very decent guy. </sentence><sentence id="1996">So, one of the first questions he asked me is "How come your head is shaved?" </sentence><sentence id="1997">They couldn't understand that. </sentence><sentence id="1998">There were SS but they had no idea about the horrors of <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span> or the other <span class="populated place">camps</span>. </sentence><sentence id="1999">They were just half way decent people in the beginning. </sentence><sentence id="2000">The food we got was paradise next to <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2001">Fairly decent soup, we got some kind of coffee in the morning and a nice piece of bread and at night very often they had something, a piece of cheese or some artificial jam or something and Sundays we'd get red cabbage and there was some meat in it and potatoes with jackets and this was the first few weeks. </sentence><sentence id="2002">The next few days they put another <span class="building">tent</span> up. </sentence><sentence id="2003">We got a big group of Hungarian women another <span class="building">tent</span> up. </sentence><sentence id="2004">So, about that time there was 3,000 people in that <span class="building">compound</span>, because there were other groups. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2081">Q: All coming from <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2083">A: I think so. </sentence><sentence id="2084">I think they were coming from <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span> because the other ones were Hungarians. </sentence><sentence id="2085">Can I tell you something interesting about -- by that time, we didn't have a doctor and they brought a bunch of women from the <span class="populated place">Warsaw</span> uprising, gentile women. </sentence><sentence id="2086">They were not with us, but they brought one of the doctors to us to work with us and one of the women somehow when there was another nurse and I and my mother and people were coming in with various ailments, there was one lady who was from <span class="country">Germany</span>, had lost her husband and child. </sentence><sentence id="2087">She was not Jewish. </sentence><sentence id="2088">Her husband was Jewish, and she kind of started becoming administrator to the very end. </sentence><sentence id="2089">She was the administrator of the <span class="building">hospital</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2090">As a matter of fact, we saw her in the <span class="country">United States</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2091">She survived. </sentence><sentence id="2092">So, we would sleep -- it was so cold, but we would sleep, this Polish doctor, and Lisa and my mother and I would take one blanket and put it underneath us on the shavings and would cover ourselves with the three other blankets. </sentence><sentence id="2093">It was much warmer. </sentence><sentence id="2094">And the body head kept us going. </sentence><sentence id="2095">It was getting cold. </sentence><sentence id="2096">By that time, I think my mother started looking at some teeth. </sentence><sentence id="2097">I mean, checking, also everything on the <span class="interior space">floor</span>, we had no place to do but, one day we got notified and some people approached Mom and the other women and a few other ones that this is Yom Kippur and the Hungarians are going to have a service and we are invited. </sentence><sentence id="2098">After dark come in one by one and come in, sneak in. </sentence><sentence id="2099">So, one by one, it was very dark, and you know they closed the <span class="populated place">camp</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2100">Except for the <span class="building">towers</span>, there was no one in <span class="populated place">camp</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2101">They would close it up, all the Germans would just disappear at darkness. </sentence><sentence id="2102">And we all hide under the <span class="spatial object">blankets</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2103">We wrapped ourselves in blankets and quietly walked into the <span class="building">tent</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2104">They lined up the shavings in such a way they were like <span class="spatial object">benches</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2105">In the very <span class="dlf">front</span> they made a out of the shavings covered with blanket. </sentence><sentence id="2106">How they got a candle, I do not know, but they had a tiny little candle. </sentence><sentence id="2107">There as a young girl and an elderly woman and they sang the whole out of memory. </sentence><sentence id="2108">And they sung, and they warned us please do not cry, please do not wail, please do not make a sound. </sentence><sentence id="2109">Don't sing, don't do anything, just be quiet, because the Germans would have shot all of us. </sentence><sentence id="2110">I tell you, this was one, even the Polish woman, she was sitting there with the tears running down her eyes, this Polish doctor. </sentence><sentence id="2111">We all sat, and until today I go to services and when I hear the chant, I see that scene because it was eerie. </sentence><sentence id="2112">Can you imagine, by that time there must have been 1,500 women there, like ghosts sitting in the gray blankets listening to the service, and then again, they let us out one by one, two by two, please don't say anything. </sentence><sentence id="2113">Don't talk when you walk, just sneak into your own <span class="building">tent</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2114">This was unbelievable, the faith, and as I said we all took chances by attending that service. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2148">Q: Since you were not particularly religious growing up, how did the part of that service make you feel? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2150">A: Unbelievable because I knew -- let's put it this way. </sentence><sentence id="2151">We had a record of one of the famous <span class="building">cantors home</span> so I have heard I don't think I ever went to services, because this was such an <span class="building">Orthodox synagogue</span>, so I couldn't go maybe when I was little kid they took me, Grandfather took me, but I never went. </sentence><sentence id="2152">But I always heard this record, because my father liked that <span class="spatial object">cantor</span> and he had this record. </sentence><sentence id="2153">And I used to play with the <span class="spatial object">record player</span>, so I was very much aware of that chant, and I knew it. </sentence><sentence id="2154">I knew the melody, and I knew that this was something very, very important. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2160">Q: Was there a special sense of solidarity? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2162">A: Solidarity, feeling of something, hope. </sentence><sentence id="2163">To do something like this in such circumstances was unbelievable, especially after <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span> where we were so controlled and here we could attend this service. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2166">Q: About the <span class="populated place">camp</span>, were you isolated from all these other groups? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2168">A: Yes. </sentence><sentence id="2169">Well, the way the <span class="populated place">camp</span> was done was like I said, wa one long <span class="dlf">street</span> and there were various <span class="populated place">sub camps</span> on various sides. </sentence><sentence id="2170">We were aware of several of them, and later on I was aware of more of them. </sentence><sentence id="2171">One was called the <span class="populated place">stern camp</span> and one was called the <span class="populated place">diamond camp</span>, and those were the people from <span class="country">Holland</span> and <span class="country">Belgium</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2172">The rumor --they lived with the families at that time. </sentence><sentence id="2173">That's when the children came in. </sentence><sentence id="2174">Rumor was that they paid a lot of money to the Germans to bribe them in terms of giving them diamonds and gold and money, so when they evacuated them, they promised that they'll be kept separate and they'll be kept with the families, and they'll not be destroyed. </sentence><sentence id="2175">Eventually, they separated them. </sentence><sentence id="2176">They sent the parents out and the children were kept and I'll tell you about the <span class="populated place">children camp</span> a little bit later. </sentence><sentence id="2177">They started bringing more and more people to our <span class="region">section</span>, our <span class="building">compound</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2178">It's getting crowded. </sentence><sentence id="2179">One day the <span class="building">tents</span> blew off. </sentence><sentence id="2180">There was a big storm and wind and just the <span class="building">tents</span> collapsed. </sentence><sentence id="2181">So, they put us somewhere temporary, and for a so called <span class="building">hospital</span> they build a little <span class="building">tent</span> in a <span class="interior space">corner</span> and the rest of the people were in the <span class="building">barracks</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2182">And that's the first time I saw myself. </sentence><sentence id="2183">Those <span class="building">barracks</span> had <span class="dlf">windows</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2184">It was just a temporary measure until they could build some more places for us. </sentence><sentence id="2185">I walked one day, and I saw this person walking without hair and wearing this crazy blue striped dress, and I knew that this original model, there's only one. </sentence><sentence id="2186">No one else has this copy of that. </sentence><sentence id="2187">And I couldn't believe that this was me, and I stood there and I looked at my reflection an I touched my face and I touched my hair. </sentence><sentence id="2188">I couldn't believe -- I mean I was like a little baby, like you show a baby a picture and he says that's me. </sentence><sentence id="2189">That's the way I was. </sentence><sentence id="2190">I couldn't believe that's me. </sentence><sentence id="2191">I looked at the <span class="spatial object">dress</span> and said no there's no other one, that's me. </sentence><sentence id="2192">I'm the only one. </sentence><sentence id="2193">It was a shocking experience to see yourself. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2220">Q: How long had it been since you had seen yourself? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2222">A: This was after Yom Kippur, probably two months or so. </sentence><sentence id="2223">It had to be in October because I don't know exactly when Yom Kippur took place, but this was shortly afterward when the <span class="building">tents</span> were blown down. </sentence><sentence id="2224">So, then one of the people who one of the tasks was one of my friend Alena who went to <span class="building">school</span> with me, her mother was a pediatrician before the war. </sentence><sentence id="2225"> During the war, the beginning of a war, she was run over by a <span class="spatial object">truck</span>, so her face -- she was never a pretty women, but her face was damaged, crooked and stuff like this. </sentence><sentence id="2226">Well, she became a doctor, and they sent another one, Doctor Annie. </sentence><sentence id="2227">She was a woman born in <span class="country">Russian</span>, went to <span class="building">medical school</span> in <span class="country">Russia</span>, married a French diplomat and she lived in <span class="country">Germany</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2228">She was Jewish, but she lived in <span class="country">Germany</span> before Hitler, because he was a French diplomat. </sentence><sentence id="2229">She was a socialite. </sentence><sentence id="2230">She never practiced medicine, but this was our other doctor. </sentence><sentence id="2231">By that time they moved us again. </sentence><sentence id="2232">They build some <span class="building">barracks</span> and they built a so-called <span class="building">hospital</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2233">We were moved like three times. </sentence><sentence id="2234">So, this was when Schnabbles (ph) started coming in. </sentence><sentence id="2235">We had one big <span class="interior space">room</span> where the patients stayed in the <span class="spatial object">bunk</span>, and one corner we had the staff, and by that time they brought more nurses, must have been about six nurses, seven nurses and two doctors, my girlfriend Alena was a nurse. </sentence><sentence id="2236">My mother was there. </sentence><sentence id="2237">On the one <span class="dlf">window</span> we had this out <span class="building">patient clinic</span> and in the back was a little tiny <span class="interior space">room</span> and it was a <span class="building">dental office</span>. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2254">Q: Excuse me, this is completely separate from the <span class="building">barracks</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2256">A: They had access to it. </sentence><sentence id="2257">It was part of the <span class="populated place">camp</span>, but this was a separate little <span class="building">building</span>. </sentence></p><p><sentence id="2258">That's when we started seeing the two I don't know what you call it, the German -- they were like medial corps men, or something. </sentence><sentence id="2259">One was a decent guy, his name was Fisher. </sentence></p><p><sentence id="2260">And he liked to grab the girls" boobs. </sentence><sentence id="2261">So, we gave him a name of Fisher Tapper. </sentence><sentence id="2262">Tapper in Jewish is to tap, to grab it, and he liked to grab whenever he could when no one else was looking. </sentence><sentence id="2263">The other one was obnoxious. </sentence><sentence id="2264">He was a young fellow and we called him the pig, so I don't know his name. </sentence><sentence id="2265">And <span class="building">Doctor Schnabbles</span> started coming in. </sentence><sentence id="2266">He was an elderly man, according to rumors again, he was a nose and ear man. </sentence><sentence id="2267">He was checking what patients and what cases we have. </sentence><sentence id="2268">One of the first patients which he started doing something with, was a woman came on the <span class="spatial object">transport</span>, had a compound fracture of her tibia. </sentence><sentence id="2269">The skin was broken, the bone was sticking out. </sentence><sentence id="2270">It was a horror. </sentence><sentence id="2271">They put some kind of a <span class="spatial object">metal frame</span> around it and she had to be operated on. </sentence><sentence id="2272">So, he decided -- first of all, it was cool. </sentence><sentence id="2273">He never would take off his coat. </sentence><sentence id="2274">He did all his surgeries in his coat. </sentence><sentence id="2275">He decided to set the <span class="dlf">leg</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2276">Well, he was not very successful. </sentence><sentence id="2277">So, the pediatrician opened up her mouth and said, "Doctor, don't you think you should do this and that?" </sentence><sentence id="2278">Well, that was the end of her. </sentence><sentence id="2279">She was ugly as it is, he didn't like it with the scars and all on her face, but that put her in disfavor. </sentence><sentence id="2280">We had two guys were watching, he tried to set the <span class="dlf">leg</span>. </sentence></p><p><sentence id="2281">He never did. </sentence><sentence id="2282">The woman was crippled. </sentence><sentence id="2283">She survived the war, I think, but she was in the <span class="building">hospital</span> with us all the time. </sentence><sentence id="2284"> Tape #3 </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2285">A: So, the first time he started setting that <span class="dlf">leg</span>, it never took. </sentence><sentence id="2286">Well, <span class="populated place">Schnabble</span> was looking always for patients, what he could operate on. </sentence><sentence id="2287">He was always checking what we have. </sentence><sentence id="2288">At that time, our staff consisted of Lisa, who the director of the <span class="building">hospital</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2289">We had a scribe because they wanted reports. </sentence><sentence id="2290">How many patients were admitted, what they were coming in for, what sicknesses we had and stuff like this. </sentence><sentence id="2291">There must have been six or seven nurses, and then we had two orderly ladies. </sentence><sentence id="2292">We even had like a little <span class="spatial object">toilet</span> in the back. </sentence><sentence id="2293">Those two women had to take the stuff out, but we had like a little <span class="building">outhouse</span> attached to the <span class="building">hospital</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2294">I don't remember what we had later, but that one I knew we had. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2305">Q: How many doctors were there? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2307">A: At that time, they took the Polish woman away, there was my friend Alena, Doctor and Doctor Annie, the Russian woman, who didn't know much about medicine, but she was there. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2310">Q: How many of the nurses really had any medical training? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2312">A: Very few. </sentence><sentence id="2313">What I had was like a practical nurse whatever I picked up, so did my girlfriend Alena. </sentence><sentence id="2314">There were one or two, there was one Dutch, she came and there was another one, a <span class="country">Belgium</span> that really had training or not, but we did what we could do. </sentence><sentence id="2315">Let's put it this way. </sentence><sentence id="2316">It was more than the other people could do. </sentence><sentence id="2317">And then I had a little <span class="building">dental office</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2318">We had also all kinds of patients and they were there forever. </sentence><sentence id="2319">Some of them died, some of them we let out. </sentence><sentence id="2320">Basically, a lot of surgical things. </sentence><sentence id="2321">I remember there was one young girl who claimed she could never get up and we tried to get her up, and we could never get her up. </sentence><sentence id="2322">Sometimes we climbed up and to get her out of the <span class="spatial object">bed</span> to straighten out that mess, and never knew what was wrong with her. </sentence><sentence id="2323">One day she just died, so evidently there was something wrong with her. </sentence><sentence id="2324">There was another young girl she had a groin abscess which was draining for weeks and months. </sentence><sentence id="2325">I mean the woman with the leg, I remember once I wanted to wash my famous dress, I mean we had nothing. </sentence><sentence id="2326">So, if you wanted to wash a dress you borrowed something from a patient and wore that for a day and washed the dress and the patient was lying naked. </sentence><sentence id="2327">Conditions were pretty horrid, but as I said, they were still feeding us. </sentence><sentence id="2328">We got the bread in the morning, and we, the personnel didn't have to stay and it was getting cold. </sentence><sentence id="2329">We also had a young girl who was a mental patient, whether she was manic-depressant, I don't know. </sentence><sentence id="2330">One day, Schnabble came in and decided to do some kind of a surgery, and we didn't have electricity so they brought carbide lights. </sentence><sentence id="2331">She got frantic. </sentence><sentence id="2332">Something was going on in the other <span class="interior space">room</span> and the lights. </sentence><sentence id="2333">This was a scene like . </sentence><sentence id="2334">She went wild. </sentence><sentence id="2335">We started chasing her. </sentence><sentence id="2336">She was running and she was jumping over the patients. </sentence><sentence id="2337">She was climbing the <span class="spatial object">beds</span> and they were the two, three story <span class="spatial object">beds</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2338">And people, in that frenzy they are extremely strong, and they are extremely violent and they are very agile. </sentence><sentence id="2339">Well, we finally got her and had some shots for her and put a straight jacket on her and got her some shots. </sentence><sentence id="2340">She was petrified of <span class="populated place">Schnabble</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2341">One of the <span class="building">tents</span> was still up and I spent with her about two or three days in the <span class="building">tent</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2342">My mother was petrified that she's going to kill me, but she kept calm. </sentence><sentence id="2343">I mean, you could talk to her a little bit, you couldn't get the story out of her. </sentence><sentence id="2344">After that outburst, that place where we give her the injection, that festered and eventually she died. </sentence><sentence id="2345">She had an infection. </sentence><sentence id="2346">When we knew Schnabble was coming, we used to put the straight jacket on her, because she was so petrified. </sentence><sentence id="2347">When he walked in, we all had to stand at attention. </sentence><sentence id="2348">We couldn't move. </sentence><sentence id="2349">The only person who ever moved was one of the little orderlies. </sentence><sentence id="2350">She was a little woman, blonde nose, no teeth. </sentence><sentence id="2351">She was a young woman, bow legged, and she wanted to show him that she was working, so she would sweep the <span class="interior space">floor</span>, including his feet. </sentence><sentence id="2352">It was a riot, and he used to say, "The only one who works here is this one, the little one. </sentence><sentence id="2353">She's the only one who's working." </sentence><sentence id="2354">As I said, she would sweep over his books, and he liked her. </sentence><sentence id="2355">He never did anything in any way to stop her. </sentence><sentence id="2356">Well, one of the first opportunities he had to send Doctor out, they were sending out the <span class="spatial object">transports</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2357">The <span class="spatial object">transports</span>, at that time, were going in and out, whether this was to a <span class="populated place">labor camp</span> or something, so he sent her out, because he couldn't stand her, because she tried to correct him. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2404">Q: Alena's mother? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2406">A: Alena's mother. </sentence><sentence id="2407">So, they went out. </sentence><sentence id="2408">They did survive the war. </sentence><sentence id="2409">I think they wound up in and went back to <span class="country">Poland</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2410">Her mother died in <span class="populated place">Lodz</span> or , and she survived and she was an artist, and she lived in <span class="populated place">Paris</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2411">I was in touch with her, and then she died of cancer. </sentence><sentence id="2412">So, she was a young woman. </sentence><sentence id="2413">But they survived the war. </sentence><sentence id="2414">By that time, Mom had got some kind of ear infection, and I remember she was in such pain. </sentence><sentence id="2415">She got some medication and she was cold. </sentence><sentence id="2416">So, someone had a pair of <span class="building">prison</span> underpants, stripes. </sentence><sentence id="2417">I remember she put it on her head because this was the only warm thing she could put on her head. </sentence><sentence id="2418">She was sitting in the <span class="spatial object">bunk</span>, lying on the <span class="spatial object">bunk</span> with the underpants on her head like a hat. </sentence><sentence id="2419">At that time, somehow, Lisa, this was the administrator, and the other one that was the scribe, somehow they were trying to do a little , and get my mother out, because they needed a dentist and they were bringing this man dentist, he was Dutch, from another <span class="populated place">camp</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2420">I think at that time, Binko (ph) came around, I don't know what happened, but there was a lot of whispering going on and a lot of talking back and forth, but whether the German dentist --whatever happened, Mom got better and went back to practice. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2437">Q: Tell me about <span class="populated place">Binko</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2439">A: Well, she was a dentist. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2441">Q: What was her full name? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2443">A: <span class="building">Haddasa Binko</span> (ph). </sentence><sentence id="2444">She was a dentist. </sentence><sentence id="2445">She came in couldn't find a job, was looking for a job. </sentence><sentence id="2446">How she became the head doctor, don't ask me. </sentence><sentence id="2447">She must have talked to the right people, Germans probably, and they appointed her the head doctor. </sentence><sentence id="2448">That little <span class="building">barrack</span> was getting too small for us so again they built another one. </sentence><sentence id="2449">By that time we had a separate <span class="interior space">room</span> for the staff. </sentence><sentence id="2450">I think we were doing the outpatient in the same <span class="interior space">room</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2451">I finally beg <span class="spatial object">hospital beds</span> a small little <span class="interior space">room</span> which was my mother's <span class="building">office</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2452">In the back, at that time, they brought in a group of women from <span class="country">Slovakia</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2453">I don't know if they were Jewish or not, with children. </sentence><sentence id="2454">They had little children with them, and they built like an <span class="interior space">annex</span> to our <span class="building">hospital</span>, at the end of our <span class="building">hospital</span> they were getting more firewood to warm up the place. </sentence><sentence id="2455">They were getting some special soups, and they had some little possessions with them. </sentence><sentence id="2456">They had <span class="spatial object">pillows</span>, they had some tea. </sentence><sentence id="2457">Every once in a while we could get when the <span class="spatial object">transport</span> came in, they would bring us a box of junk, medical supplies and all kinds of odds and ends. </sentence><sentence id="2458">I was in charge of all the medical supplies. </sentence><sentence id="2459">Whenever I got any vitamins I would take it to the children, because I felt that this was very important for the mothers, so I became very friendly with them. </sentence><sentence id="2460">Anything with baby powder, whatever they found and the Germans wouldn't use I started packages and so on. </sentence><sentence id="2461">A little cough medicine for children, pediatrics, so I would take it to those women. </sentence><sentence id="2462">Later on they helped me. </sentence><sentence id="2463">Anyway, it was getting cold, it was getting very, very nasty. </sentence><sentence id="2464">The weather was getting nasty. </sentence><sentence id="2465">One day a young woman came with pain -- and you see by that time we had a couple of other doctors, I think. </sentence><sentence id="2466">We tried to avoid telling Schnabble what was wrong with the patient. </sentence><sentence id="2467">We didn't have the means to diagnose. </sentence><sentence id="2468">We had no blood tests. </sentence><sentence id="2469">We had no x- rays, it was just feel and think. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2497">Q: Were people coming in for all kinds of conditions? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2499">A: Everything, and I can tell you, describe the conditions. </sentence><sentence id="2500">There was one thing, dental condition, which I think it's called , where pieces of gums and lips would rot, decompose, and they would come in sometimes with a whole mouth missing, lips missing. </sentence><sentence id="2501">I remember once three sisters came. </sentence><sentence id="2502">One was completely gone. </sentence><sentence id="2503">The other one had quite an advanced case. </sentence><sentence id="2504">The third one had just started, and every once in a while we got vitamins. </sentence><sentence id="2505">I mean we got all kinds of crazy things, which were odds and ends from various shipments, because the rest of the supplies -- oh yes, they used to give us once in a while paper bandages, and peroxide and some vitamins maybe and some aspirins. </sentence><sentence id="2506">We did get some stuff, but it was little odds and ends like vitamin C. You had to use ; the one who got the shot of vitamin C was the one who had the least advanced case of that cancer of the mouth, because we felt one or two shots may prevent that thing to spread further and maybe we could save. </sentence><sentence id="2507">The oldest one, there was no way of saving. </sentence><sentence id="2508">She was, for all practical -- maybe here in the <span class="country">United States</span> with heavy doses of vitamins and heavy doses of medication, maybe one could save her, maybe, maybe not. </sentence><sentence id="2509">But certainly you couldn't save her. </sentence><sentence id="2510">This was what we had to do. </sentence><sentence id="2511">There was another thing which later came up, much later. </sentence><sentence id="2512">A patient would come in with a little blister and the blister would get bigger and bigger and bigger. </sentence><sentence id="2513">Unless that blister was opened and drained very often half of the body was covered with the blister. </sentence><sentence id="2514">What did this? </sentence><sentence id="2515">I don't know, because I'll tell you later about the British doctors who were there and we used to tell them what to do with it, because they had no idea what to do with it. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2533">Q: How did you figure it out? </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2534">A: We found that when they came with the blister and when we pierced the blister and drained it, and had some dressing we put it on, maybe some antiseptic powder, whatever we had we tried, somehow we could close the blister if it wasn't too advanced case of it. </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2535">Q: Did you have enough supplies? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2537">A: No, I'll tell you about that later. </sentence><sentence id="2538">Anyway, that one time this was one of the most horrid stories I ever saw. </sentence><sentence id="2539">A young woman came in and the suspicion was that she had appendix inflamed. </sentence><sentence id="2540">It just happened that Schnabble walked in and he heard what was going on. </sentence><sentence id="2541">What do you have. </sentence><sentence id="2542">See, we had to give them reports, and at one time this one medical guy used to stay the doctors have to stay at the <span class="dlf">stairs</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2543">When he comes in in the morning to pick up the reports, he doesn't want to get off the <span class="spatial object">bicycle</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2544">You had to hand him that while he was on the run. </sentence><sentence id="2545">He was awful, screaming, yelling. </sentence><sentence id="2546">Anyway, Schnabble came in and found out that girl is complaining about appendix. </sentence><sentence id="2547">He decided he is going to operate. </sentence><sentence id="2548">Felt her around, I think he put rubber gloves on or whether his leather gloves, again, he wearing his coat. </sentence><sentence id="2549">We set up the surgery in the <span class="building">dental office</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2550">He ordered his help, the Russian boys should bring some wood, so they brought some wood. </sentence><sentence id="2551">It was raining. </sentence><sentence id="2552">It was sleeting, so I started a fire in that little wooden <span class="spatial object">stove</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2553">He assigned my mother to the anesthesia. </sentence><sentence id="2554">She was his favorite anesthetist. </sentence><sentence id="2555">The anesthesia consisted of a little <span class="spatial object">mask</span>, a little <span class="interior space">cage</span> that goes and you drip ether drop by drop from the <span class="spatial object">bottle</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2556">No other support, nothing. </sentence><sentence id="2557">Annie was helping him, two guys were standing there, and I think he had one other girl, a nurse to assist, and I was the dirty nurse at that time. </sentence><sentence id="2558">He opened her up, couldn't find her appendix. </sentence><sentence id="2559">He saw something and he said, well, I don't know that looks suspicious, he was ready to cut this out. </sentence><sentence id="2560">This was the <span class="spatial object">bladder</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2561">It looks like a <span class="env feature">fish bladder</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2562">He poked around. </sentence><sentence id="2563">He decided he can't find the appendix. </sentence><sentence id="2564">He took all the intestines out. </sentence><sentence id="2565">And the conditions are not sterile exactly. </sentence><sentence id="2566">I mean the fire which was going there, it's full of soot and he can't find it. </sentence><sentence id="2567">Put everything back together, took everything out again. </sentence><sentence id="2568">He still can't find her appendix. </sentence><sentence id="2569">At that time he barked to one of the guys, go bring <span class="populated place">Alenluf</span> (ph). </sentence><sentence id="2570">Alenluf was a Greek doctor, I don't know if he was the main <span class="building">compound</span> or where he was, but he was in the <span class="populated place">men's camp</span>, and I understand he was a very known surgeon. </sentence><sentence id="2571">Well, a guy went on the <span class="spatial object">bicycle</span> and Doctor Alenluf was running after him. </sentence><sentence id="2572">In the meantime, we kind of kept covered and kept the ether slow, not to have her in a deep sleep. </sentence><sentence id="2573">I grab Alenluf's coat and put a pair of rubber gloves on him. </sentence><sentence id="2574">That's what I manage because by now he's very impatient. </sentence><sentence id="2575">Alenluf looked in and found the appendix which was not infected at all, and closed her up. </sentence><sentence id="2576">She developed peritonitis. </sentence><sentence id="2577">For three days that woman was in a coma screaming and he was coming in. </sentence><sentence id="2578">He sent morphine. </sentence><sentence id="2579">He sent painkillers. </sentence><sentence id="2580">He also sent diet soup for her and white bread, but she couldn't eat anything. </sentence><sentence id="2581">It lasted three days, and she died. </sentence><sentence id="2582">But this was a horror. </sentence><sentence id="2583">And you can't say anything, and he's pulling out all of her intestines out on the <span class="spatial object">table</span> and back into the <span class="interior space">cavity</span> and back on the <span class="spatial object">table</span> and back in the <span class="interior space">cavity</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2584">It was a horror. </sentence><sentence id="2585">And you have to stand there with a poker face and don't say a word, nothing. </sentence><sentence id="2586">You can't react. </sentence><sentence id="2587">And even this Doctor Alenluf, very gingerly worked and did whatever he had to do, and he didn't say you did wrong, nothing. </sentence><sentence id="2588">He just did his job and that's it. </sentence><sentence id="2589">This was one of the worst things which I witnessed. </sentence><sentence id="2590">Now the funny thing happened with those slovak women. </sentence><sentence id="2591">We had a bunch of syringes and we had various -- like I said, you asked about supplies, we would write that we need so and so many bandages and so many aspirins, we need so much -- they would cut it down in half, but they would bring us stuff. </sentence><sentence id="2592">And we had some pain killers and we had something if someone had an attack of something. </sentence><sentence id="2593">We also had babies. </sentence><sentence id="2594">There were babies born. </sentence><sentence id="2595">We had one woman once who knocked on the <span class="dlf">door</span> in the middle of the night and said she's in labor, and our administrator went over, Doctor Annie went over to the <span class="building">tower</span> and said, look we have a woman in labor. </sentence><sentence id="2596">None of us is a midwife. </sentence><sentence id="2597">So, they came in. </sentence><sentence id="2598">The two guys, and they went from <span class="building">barrack</span> to <span class="building">barrack</span> and they found a midwife and the baby was delivered. </sentence><sentence id="2599">I think Schnabble showed up so he called him Joseph Von Jordan, because there was a <span class="dlf">ditch</span> over there and he said this is <span class="env feature">River Jordan</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2600">And the following day he sent a few diapers and something, there were a few of them, but the baby eventually died because the conditions were so bad that those infants could not survive. </sentence><sentence id="2601">But, they didn't take away the babies. </sentence><sentence id="2602">They didn't kill the babies. </sentence><sentence id="2603">They didn't do any harm to them. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2671">Q: There were a number of babies in the <span class="populated place">camp</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2673">A: Yes. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2675">Q: Were they <span class="populated place">family camps</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2677">A: That was later that we got into. </sentence><sentence id="2678">At that time there were just a few newborn, we had a few of them and those slovak women who had their children with them. </sentence><sentence id="2679">Anyway, one day I needed my syringes to be sterilized and walked through and the Slovaks had a fire going, and I said, "Would you let me do the syringes here?" </sentence><sentence id="2680">She said, "Oh, you're so busy. </sentence><sentence id="2681">Why don't you let me do it. </sentence><sentence id="2682">I'll watch it for you, and I'll do it." </sentence><sentence id="2683">I said "Fine." </sentence><sentence id="2684">I came back. </sentence><sentence id="2685">She burnt every one of them. </sentence><sentence id="2686">Now, this could be considered sabotage. </sentence><sentence id="2687">I mean you know you had to really be so careful because here you are burning eight <span class="spatial object">syringes</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2688">I was beside myself. </sentence><sentence id="2689">I was afraid that Schnabble would come in and want to do something, give them an injection, whatever if he said something we had to do it. </sentence><sentence id="2690">Well, I didn't know what to do. </sentence><sentence id="2691">Finally I got this guy Fisher on the side and he was from <span class="region">Northern Poland</span> originally, and we were afraid to speak in front of him because we were afraid he understand Polish and I told him. </sentence><sentence id="2692">I told him what happened. </sentence><sentence id="2693">I said, look I was busy and I took it to them and they burned it and they didn't pay attention. </sentence><sentence id="2694">He started bringing, the same day he came in the afternoon, he brought one syringe. </sentence><sentence id="2695">Whether he stole them, how he got them within a week I had the whole set of syringes back and he never denounced me. </sentence><sentence id="2696">He never said anything to <span class="populated place">Schnabble</span>, nothing. </sentence><sentence id="2697">So, even in those conditions there were people who were a little compassionate. </sentence><sentence id="2698">By that time things were getting bad, more <span class="spatial object">transports</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2699">I believe this was the time they brought the commandant from <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span> and he was cruel. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2723">Q: What was his name? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2725">A: I think Horss. </sentence><sentence id="2726">And that she's the head and she was blonde and some others. </sentence><sentence id="2727">I mean this nasty crew from <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span> came. </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2728">Q: Do you know about what time, what year that was? </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2729">A: This was in "44, had to be around winter of "44, because it was getting cold when we lived in <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span>, when we had those surgeries. </sentence><sentence id="2730">Also, when they were bringing the soups to the <span class="building">hospital</span>, there were a bunch of wild women running around and trying to take the soups, the <span class="spatial object">kettles</span>, so we had to with sticks and stand guard, to escort the people who brought the soup, because they would just eat them and run with them. </sentence><sentence id="2731">We needed them for the patients. </sentence><sentence id="2732">The <span class="populated place">camp</span> was getting bigger and bigger, and one day they said they were going to move all of our patients, and the whole <span class="populated place">camp</span> first, on the other side of main <span class="dlf">street</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2733">This was originally a <span class="populated place">prisoner of war camp</span>, and they had some permanent <span class="building">buildings</span> which were <span class="building">hospital buildings</span>, and they moved first the <span class="populated place">camp</span> and then they moved the <span class="building">hospital</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2734">Our group was assigned to main <span class="building">building</span> number one. </sentence><sentence id="2735">It had an <span class="interior space">operating room</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2736">It had a <span class="building">dental office</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2737">It had some <span class="dlf">wards</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2738">We had like an <span class="interior space">outpatient room</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2739">So, the first order of business was that the <span class="interior space">operating room</span> had white tile floors and <span class="dlf">walls</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2740">So, the first thing they did, they removed all the tiles, the ceramic tiles, because the commandant wanted that for his <span class="interior space">bathroom</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2741">I believe we had electricity. </sentence><sentence id="2742">I can't even remember. </sentence><sentence id="2743">They must have had electricity because my mother had this <span class="spatial object">sterilizer</span> that was an electric sterilizer or she had spirit or something to sterilize the <span class="spatial object">instruments</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2744">The <span class="building">dental office</span> was so beautifully equipped that when the <span class="building">Red Cross</span> would come in an examine the <span class="populated place">camp</span>, that's where they would take them, because there was all the equipment you wanted to have. </sentence><sentence id="2745">No x-rays, but everything else. </sentence><sentence id="2746">There was enough novocain that we were afraid if we used up the novocain, the war would never end. </sentence><sentence id="2747">Then there must have been a <span class="interior space">room</span> for the nurses, and then there was <span class="interior space">room</span> where the doctors lived and Mom took me with her and I shared a <span class="spatial object">bed</span> with her because they wouldn't give me a <span class="spatial object">bed</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2748">I was a nurse and they wouldn't give me a <span class="spatial object">bed</span>. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2769">Q: So, all along you were living in the <span class="building">hospital</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2771">A: Right, right. </sentence><sentence id="2772">And that <span class="interior space">room</span> was Doctor Annie and a couple of other doctors, Lisa was the administrator, Theresa who was the scribe, then they sent in another dentist, the Russian dentist, Larissa. </sentence><sentence id="2773">One day, the commandant children governor who was a Seventh Day Adventist, was German, they were arrested. </sentence><sentence id="2774">She came down with typhus. </sentence><sentence id="2775">This was much later, so she was put in with the doctors in that <span class="interior space">room</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2776">That was his orders that she should be kept in that <span class="interior space">room</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2777">We had one <span class="interior space">surgical ward</span> where people had all kinds of wounds, surgical wounds. </sentence><sentence id="2778">Sometimes we had to cut something, and we were getting very little supplies, and I took it upon myself -- because I was working always with Doctor Annie in the <span class="building">outpatient clinic</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2779">I very seldom worked the <span class="dlf">wards</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2780">I did very well with the outpatients in whatever had to be done. </sentence><sentence id="2781">Whenever we got supplies I used to go in to change the dressings and you almost needed a gas mask for it. </sentence><sentence id="2782">This was stinky, festering thing and we didn't have enough bandages. </sentence><sentence id="2783">We didn't get them enough. </sentence><sentence id="2784">We couldn't change them every day. </sentence><sentence id="2785">Maybe once a week, once in ten days they would bring us the supplies and there was some peroxide and maybe some ointment, maybe some powder to dust on the wounds, and I used to get so many blessings when I used to change the dressings. </sentence><sentence id="2786">This was the main <span class="building">hospital building</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2787">The next one was the nicest <span class="building">building</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2788">That's where the children were. </sentence><sentence id="2789">By that time, they took away or send them out or whatever happened to the parents of the Dutch and Belgium children, so they formed an <span class="building">orphanage</span> there, and the Slovak women lived there with their children, and then the few mothers as long as the babies were alive, they lived there. </sentence><sentence id="2790">That's were Doctor lived. </sentence><sentence id="2791">That place was heated. </sentence><sentence id="2792">They gave them some food. </sentence><sentence id="2793">They were getting the white soup for the children. </sentence><sentence id="2794">They were getting the white bread, and I have a feeling they must have inoculated the children for typhus, because I was not aware of many of them having typhus fever. </sentence><sentence id="2795">I know they were inoculating people because at one time Binko and I and another nurse went to one of the <span class="populated place">subcamps</span> or whatever and those people had passports from <span class="country">Argentina</span>, from <span class="country">Brazil</span> from <span class="country">Australia</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2796">Whether they were real passports, whether they were false passports, we don't know because many of them were Polish Jews. </sentence><sentence id="2797">But we went out there when the epidemic started and we were inoculating the whole group there. </sentence><sentence id="2798">Then there were two other <span class="building">barracks</span> where one was not so bad and then there was one which was worse condition and then there was one number 5 where I think there were 500 people dead and 100 dead every day. </sentence><sentence id="2799">They would bring the people -- they would just bring them in blankets and leave them there. </sentence><sentence id="2800">I mean, people who were in the different <span class="building">barracks</span> would just bring them in the blankets, and if there was any hope for them, they were separated and put somewhere else, but those were people like in a <span class="building">hospice</span>, they were just dying there. </sentence><sentence id="2801">I was very friendly with the head nurse and she had she used to say to me after I had typhus fever come and I'll give you some bread because they didn't eat. </sentence><sentence id="2802">She would get and she had a count of 500 so she got 500 pieces of bread according to the count. </sentence><sentence id="2803">She said, they're not eating, and you may as well have another piece of bread and get some strength. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2837">Q: The dead people, they just dumped them outside? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2839">A: That I'll tell you. </sentence><sentence id="2840">When we first came in there was a little <span class="interior space">morgue</span> not far from the <span class="building">hospital buildings</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2841">A little <span class="building">concrete structure</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2842">Well we started taking the people out. </sentence><sentence id="2843">Everybody was taking them out. </sentence><sentence id="2844">Well, after a while that place would not accommodate the bodies and they didn't have time to take them. </sentence><sentence id="2845">It got to a point that it was like a tremendous <span class="dlf">field</span> of dead bodies, and that's what the British finally saw. </sentence><sentence id="2846">Families would walk by and look and who do I know there. </sentence><sentence id="2847">If the blanket wasn't soiled, we would save the blankets for other people and if they were soiled we left them there. </sentence><sentence id="2848">The <span class="spatial object">pile</span> was growing taller and bigger and bigger and taking more <span class="interior space">room</span> and they had no -- they could not keep up with removing the bodies. </sentence><sentence id="2849">Toward the end when there was this tremendous epidemic, they would give people extra soups, they were giving them all kinds of privileges. </sentence><sentence id="2850">They would dig <span class="dlf">ditches</span> and burn the bodies. </sentence><sentence id="2851">They just could not keep up with it. </sentence><sentence id="2852">When the British liberated the <span class="populated place">camp</span>, the <span class="populated place">camp</span> took the British General, whoever it was, showing the <span class="populated place">camp,</span> and naturally they avoided that <span class="region">area</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2853">So, there was a bunch of noisy girls and he said, never mind, come here, come here. </sentence><sentence id="2854">We didn't speak English, but they said you have to see this place. </sentence><sentence id="2855">And the British were flabbergasted seeing that, and they made the German officers remove those bodies. </sentence><sentence id="2856">They came so beautiful the first day. </sentence><sentence id="2857">They came with their hair done, and their uniforms were so nice and clean and they had to handle those bodies, and the deeper they were going, the more decomposed those bodies were. </sentence><sentence id="2858">Believe me, at the end of the day, they looked as raggedy as most of the prisoners. </sentence><sentence id="2859">This was horrid. </sentence><sentence id="2860">Anyway, the <span class="populated place">camp</span> was getting bigger. </sentence><sentence id="2861">There were <span class="spatial object">transports</span> coming in every few days, and they needed help with the <span class="spatial object">transports</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2862">When the <span class="spatial object">transports</span> came in, the able bodies would get a <span class="interior space">shower</span> and they would place them in <span class="populated place">camp</span>, but there were some sick people coming in and they were checking who was sick and who is not, so they would need a doctor to ascertain whether the person could be saved. </sentence><sentence id="2863">A few were nurses, and I felt so badly, the girls were going out every night one I said, "I'm going. </sentence><sentence id="2864">I have to help them. </sentence><sentence id="2865">I just can't let them work both nights." </sentence><sentence id="2866">So, we went out. </sentence><sentence id="2867">By the time we got there, most of the able bodies they were processed. </sentence><sentence id="2868">There was this big <span class="interior space">room</span> with all kinds of <span class="spatial object">bundles</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2869">They made the people leave the <span class="spatial object">bundles</span> and there were sick people. </sentence><sentence id="2870">Some of them were lame, but we managed to undress them and put their clothes in those little fish net bags and once they went through the thing, the steam would kill the vermin, and they could go on the other side and find their own clothes. </sentence><sentence id="2871">There was one woman who was in a coma, and the Germans kept saying, "Throwing her out. </sentence><sentence id="2872">She's half dead, she's dead." </sentence><sentence id="2873">I kept on shoving her around that place behind some things because I felt by the time I finished, maybe she'll revive. </sentence><sentence id="2874">Whether she was in a diabetic coma, what, a fairly young woman well dressed, and every time they saw me, they said "Come on take her out. </sentence><sentence id="2875">Let's take her out. </sentence><sentence id="2876">Let the guys take her out." </sentence><sentence id="2877">So, I was hiding her behind <span class="spatial object">bundles</span>, behind anything. </sentence><sentence id="2878">Unfortunately the end of the evening we couldn't do anything but slap her face. </sentence><sentence id="2879">I tried to give her some <span class="env feature">water</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2880">Whatever we tried to do it couldn't revive her, so they took her out. </sentence><sentence id="2881">That <span class="spatial object">transport</span> was so full of lice. </sentence><sentence id="2882">We got so bitten by lice. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2927">Q: Where were most of these <span class="spatial object">transports</span> from? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2929">A: They were from <span class="country">Hungary</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2930">I think <span class="country">Poland</span> by that time was clean. </sentence><sentence id="2931">They finished with those. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2935">Q: They weren't necessarily coming from <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2937">A: No, no those people were coming with their own clothes and whatever the <span class="populated place">camp</span> wore. </sentence><sentence id="2938">They were not from <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2939">They were not from <span class="populated place">camps</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2940">They were wherever they lived in. </sentence><sentence id="2941">Anyway, then it was getting almost light and they said all right we're finished with you. </sentence><sentence id="2942">We can take you back to the <span class="building">barracks</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2943">And we said, "You know, you bathed everybody, you deloused them, and here we are crawling with insects. </sentence><sentence id="2944">We are bitten all over the place and why don't you let us have a <span class="interior space">shower</span> and delouse us, our clothes, otherwise we'll bring the whole stuff back to <span class="populated place">camp</span>." </sentence><sentence id="2945">They said that's a good idea and they even stoked the fires and we had a nice warm <span class="interior space">shower</span>. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2955">Q: How often did you <span class="spatial object">shower</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2957">A: We never showered. </sentence><sentence id="2958">The first time when they brought you to <span class="populated place">camp</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2959">This was the second one. </sentence><sentence id="2960">Maybe once they took us out. </sentence><sentence id="2961">I don't remember. </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2962">Q: So, you never washed? </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2963">A: Well, we washed. </sentence><sentence id="2964">Maybe once they took us to <span class="spatial object">shower</span>, maybe when we're changing <span class="populated place">camps</span>, I think they marched us. </sentence><sentence id="2965">This was a pleasure, this <span class="interior space">shower</span>, and they took our clothes and they deloused them. </sentence><sentence id="2966">Three weeks later I came with the typhus fever. </sentence><sentence id="2967">I came back and I said boy I was bitten and this one doctor was with me and three weeks later, as I said, to the day, I came down with it. </sentence><sentence id="2968">At first they didn't know what was wrong with me. </sentence><sentence id="2969">So, by this time we didn't have Schnabble. </sentence><sentence id="2970">We had a young doctor who was wounded at the <span class="region">Russian front</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2971">His arm was injured and he was working in <span class="populated place">camp</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2972">They heard that I might have typhus fever, so he and the dentist came to examine me, because they have never seen typhus before, and they figure out that I have it. </sentence><sentence id="2973">By that time, the doctors in the <span class="interior space">room</span> that I slept with they decided they don't want anyone with the typhus fever, so they kicked me out on the <span class="interior space">ward</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2974">But I had my own <span class="spatial object">bed</span>, and I was lying next to a girl who used to be a patient of mine. </sentence><sentence id="2975">She had t.b. </sentence><sentence id="2976">but I tried to keep her on calcium. </sentence><sentence id="2977">The theory was that calcium was good for t.b. </sentence><sentence id="2978">and we had calcium, she would get it. </sentence><sentence id="2979">Again, she was a young woman. </sentence><sentence id="2980">You tried to help people who were not too far gone. </sentence><sentence id="2981">We felt if we could help them, keep them going for a while, maybe they can keep on going. </sentence><sentence id="2982">By that time, the epidemic started. </sentence><sentence id="2983">The typhus epidemic. </sentence><sentence id="2984">It was by the end of the war, this must have been February or March and by the end 90 percent of the people had typhus. </sentence><sentence id="2985">My fever was building up about three weeks. </sentence><sentence id="2986">It's like with pneumonia. </sentence><sentence id="2987">It build up, if the patient can survive the crisis. </sentence><sentence id="2988">Well, Mom would warm up water in the <span class="spatial object">sterilizer</span> and wash me and bring water and wet my lips. </sentence><sentence id="2989">And those Slovak ladies made me a little <span class="spatial object">pillow</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2990">I'll never forget it. </sentence><sentence id="2991">This tiny little <span class="spatial object">pillow</span>. </sentence><sentence id="2992">They collected some feathers because they thought I was so nice to them, and they brought me this. </sentence><sentence id="2993">And I kept on saying "Get the <span class="spatial object">train</span> out of my head, get the <span class="spatial object">train</span> out of my head. </sentence><sentence id="2994">I can't stand the <span class="spatial object">train</span>." </sentence><sentence id="2995">And when they would bring the turnip soup into the <span class="interior space">room</span>, it was wretched. </sentence><sentence id="2996">I couldn't stand it. </sentence><sentence id="2997">Finally one night, I must have reached the crisis, and called this woman next <span class="dlf">door</span> and said "Get me my mother." </sentence><sentence id="2998">So they woke up the night nurses, got my mother and she came running in and there was a doctor and again we had some supplies. </sentence><sentence id="2999">We had something to support the <span class="spatial object">heart</span>, just a <span class="spatial object">stimulator heart</span>, and they gave me a shot of it, because I felt I don't know. </sentence><sentence id="3000">I think I was dying. </sentence><sentence id="3001">Then I got better. </sentence><sentence id="3002">In the interim, I just want to bring out the difference between two doctors. </sentence><sentence id="3003">I haven't seen those surgeries because I was so sick. </sentence><sentence id="3004">This young German doctor performed some surgeries. </sentence><sentence id="3005">Again, he wanted to learn. </sentence><sentence id="3006">He did them in the <span class="interior space">operating room</span> under sterile conditions and he always had this Greek doctor with him. </sentence><sentence id="3007">Sometimes he would I mean people told me about it. </sentence><sentence id="3008">Sometimes he would hesitate what to do and he would look at the Greek doctor and the Greek doctor would say, "Well, don't you think you should do this," but very diplomatically, and he never offered advice until the guy looked at him. </sentence><sentence id="3009">He didn't know where he was going. </sentence><sentence id="3010">So, they did perform some surgeries on those people. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3059">Q: So there was actually a somewhat serious effort to cure people? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3061">A: I don't know if it was serious to cure people of if this was a way for him to learn. </sentence><sentence id="3062">I mean they never had the chance to -- if he is a very known professor and he is a young doctor and maybe he should learn. </sentence><sentence id="3063">And he and his pal, the dentist, used to sit in the <span class="building">dental office</span> most of the day. </sentence><sentence id="3064">He also had some massages done. </sentence><sentence id="3065">First one masseuse and then the other friend of mine, the one who was the head of that very <span class="interior space">sick ward</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3066">She would come in because he needed physical therapy on his arm. </sentence><sentence id="3067">The first time we had the inkling that things were going bad for Germans they were discussing it very quietly. </sentence><sentence id="3068">The Russians are so and so many kilometers from <span class="populated place">Berlin</span> and they were afraid of Russians. </sentence><sentence id="3069">My mother overheard a conversation. </sentence><sentence id="3070">Whether that was done to let us know, or they just forgot about her working because she ignored them, that's when we knew things were happening. </sentence><sentence id="3071">By the time, close to the liberation, there was cholera there. </sentence><sentence id="3072">There was a raging epidemic of typhus. </sentence><sentence id="3073">There was all kinds of sickness and less supplies and less food. </sentence><sentence id="3074">One day this other doctor, I think it was called up over lined us up -- we didn't have water, I don't think we had bread. </sentence><sentence id="3075">He said times are very bad but you cannot abuse your patients, you have to take care of them. </sentence><sentence id="3076">He was trying to give us a pep talk how to take care of our patients. </sentence><sentence id="3077">How ridiculous. </sentence><sentence id="3078">One day one of the guards -- I somehow suspected whether they were experimenting with our lives. </sentence><sentence id="3079">One day a young woman came in and she had a turban, a very tightly wrapped turban around her head and she said she's itching. </sentence><sentence id="3080">We took off the turban, her head was so covered with lice, like you see, you have a big <span class="env feature">ant hill</span> and you kick it apart and you see the ants coming out. </sentence><sentence id="3081">I'm talking about big <span class="env feature">ant hills</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3082">I mean, you couldn't see the hair. </sentence><sentence id="3083">So, we cut it and put some disinfectant. </sentence><sentence id="3084">We had some anti-lice things, burned the hair outside, the whole thing, and I was wondering if by any chance if they did not decide that this is a fast way of doing it. </sentence><sentence id="3085">Because they were all inoculated. </sentence><sentence id="3086">The Germans were all inoculated. </sentence><sentence id="3087">After the war, I think some of them got typhus, when they were handling the bodies, but they were very well isolated and inoculated. </sentence><sentence id="3088">Whether they tried this, I don't know because I don't know how anyone could have lived with that mess, and the way the turban was wrapped around her head, it was a young woman. </sentence><sentence id="3089">It was -- I've never seen anything like it. </sentence><sentence id="3090">I'm telling you you see a <span class="dlf">ant hill</span>, a big one, and this is what is creepy. </sentence><sentence id="3091">So, as I said, toward the end, there were so many sick people. </sentence><sentence id="3092">So many people dying, and you couldn't do a thing for them. </sentence><sentence id="3093">Yes, there was an effort to save them, every once in a while they had the surgeons that wanted to do something, but I don't think this was so much an effort to save them. </sentence><sentence id="3094">I have a feeling that this was an opportunity for the doctors to learn. </sentence><sentence id="3095">Schnabble was just learning whatever he wanted to do. </sentence><sentence id="3096">I don't know what happened to him. </sentence><sentence id="3097">He disappeared. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3135">Q: You mentioned a name "Kramer." </sentence><sentence id="3136">Isn't Kramer someone who also came from <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span> and replaced Horss? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3139">A: I don't know whether he replaced Horsss. </sentence><sentence id="3140">I don't know. </sentence><sentence id="3141">I think Horss was caught in <span class="populated place">Bergen-Belsen</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3142">| really don't know. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3147">Q: This Kramer then was head of the <span class="populated place">camp</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3149">A: I know there was someone by the name of Kramer gave us a pep talk. </sentence><sentence id="3150">I never seen <span class="building">Horss</span>. </sentence></p><p><sentence id="3151">I know of him, but I have never seen him. </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3152">Q: Before we get to the end, I just want to ask you a couple questions. </sentence><sentence id="3153">It sounds like you had contact with people, prisoners from a lot of different <span class="region">surroundings</span>, is that true? </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3154">A: Yes. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3156">Q: Not so much from the other <span class="populated place">camps</span>, but just with <span class="spatial object">transports</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3158">A: The <span class="spatial object">transports</span> were coming in and this woman became the main <span class="populated place">camp</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3159">They would break out the <span class="dlf">fences</span> between some other <span class="populated place">camps</span> and that became a huge, huge, huge <span class="populated place">camp</span>. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3162">Q: So, then a lot of the <span class="populated place">subcamps</span> got combined? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3164">A: Right. </sentence><sentence id="3165">The Dutch and the <span class="populated place">Belgium camp</span>, that was combined with ours. </sentence><sentence id="3166">The <span class="country">Indonesia</span>, no. </sentence><sentence id="3167">What happened to the prisoner of wars or whatever, we took over those parts of the <span class="building">building</span>, I don't know what happened to them. </sentence><sentence id="3168">I know the Russians were there. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3174">Q: When you were more integrated were the conditions and relationship also integrated or did certain people just stay with their own. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3176">A: I think they stayed more or less within their own <span class="building">barracks</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3177">They had to stay and they were allowed to come to the <span class="building">hospital</span>, but otherwise, I don't think there were any social activities there at that time. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3180">Q: Did you develop strong relationships with the other people you were working with? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3182">A: Some of them, yes. </sentence><sentence id="3183">And there were a lot of strong relationship in terms of there was one of the nurses and she was very friendly with a couple of girls. </sentence><sentence id="3184">She lived --she didn't live with us. </sentence><sentence id="3185">She lived with a couple of girls. </sentence><sentence id="3186">One of them was the head, a block elder, and she lived with them. </sentence><sentence id="3187">They were like sisters. </sentence><sentence id="3188">That was the thing. </sentence><sentence id="3189">People were developing relationships and if they were like sisters, they could help each other. </sentence><sentence id="3190">Some of the doctors, there were two, one of them died, so we were friendly later on, my mother and I, and we have seen her after the war and were together in <span class="country">Sweden</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3191">We maintained contact with those people because we were together and there were a lot of relationships like this. </sentence><sentence id="3192">People would adopt each other. </sentence><sentence id="3193">Those were ones who had the easiest way of surviving, because when one was very sick, the other one helped them. </sentence><sentence id="3194">We had friends, two sisters, one is now in <span class="country">Brazil</span>, one lives in <span class="region">California</span>, and they were together, and one of them I don't remember which one, she was so sick that the older sister would chew a piece of bread, because the bread was hard and she would chew a piece of bread and shove it in the sister's mouth to make her so she could swallow it, and that's how they made it. </sentence><sentence id="3195">So, there were all kinds of pieces of kindness. </sentence><sentence id="3196">And when I was so sick that that girl who I used to take care of before, she was the one who basically, because the nurses wouldn't do much for me. </sentence><sentence id="3197">They were busy. </sentence><sentence id="3198">But she was conscious, she was not very sick. </sentence><sentence id="3199">That's why they placed me there and she kept an eye on me. </sentence><sentence id="3200">If I needed anything, the sicker I was getting, she would take a sip of water and put it in my lips or wet something and put it on my lips and she was in a way taking care of me. </sentence><sentence id="3201">She didn't do physically anything, she was in <span class="spatial object">bed</span>, but she was kind of keeping an eye -- she was the one who alerted them that I was coming down with the crisis, so she did help me. </sentence><sentence id="3202">Mom got typhus later. </sentence><sentence id="3203">I mean all the doctors got sick. </sentence><sentence id="3204">1 mean everybody was sick. </sentence><sentence id="3205">The sign was if you spilled your water like we had this French doctor, she had a <span class="spatial object">bed</span> above us, and the sign was that if you started taking water at night to <span class="spatial object">bed</span> and then spill it over head she had typhus. </sentence><sentence id="3206">We knew that she had. </sentence><sentence id="3207">There were certain symptoms. </sentence><sentence id="3208">I could recognize someone with the typhus just looking at them. </sentence><sentence id="3209">Later on, the British doctors, they had no idea what's wrong with a patient. </sentence><sentence id="3210">I said the trembling, the lip trembling, people didn't even have the spots, there were certain symptoms you could just recognize they had typhus. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3240">Q: Certainly you've read stories and heard stories in <span class="populated place">camps</span> about people that the need for survival -- </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3242">A: There was stories about it that there were. </sentence><sentence id="3243">I never witnessed it but there were stories about cannibals. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3246">Q: People would steal from each other? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3248">A: Oh, yes. </sentence><sentence id="3249">It was known. </sentence><sentence id="3250">If someone was unconscious they put a piece of bread in front of them so they would steal it. </sentence><sentence id="3251">This was, as I said, the will to survive. </sentence><sentence id="3252">But it got so bad that they were walking to <span class="populated place">camp</span>, they were walking to the <span class="building">hospital</span> and they were just defecating. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3258">Q: This was another interesting thing I read in your testimony. </sentence><sentence id="3259">When I read about <span class="populated place">Bergen- Belsen</span> I guess towards the end it sounded as if, not from your testimony, but from elsewhere, that nobody really took care of anybody? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3262">A: Basically, no. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3264">Q: The authorities of the <span class="populated place">camp</span> really didn't make any provisions to feed, to clothe, to <span class="building">house</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="3266"> A <span class="dlf">Well</span>, they were housed. </sentence><sentence id="3267">There were <span class="building">barracks</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3268">Clothes, whatever they came with, and there were some people working. </sentence><sentence id="3269">As I said, when the people came in with their own clothes, the good stuff was taken away. </sentence><sentence id="3270">They had big <span class="building">warehouses</span> when the war ended. </sentence><sentence id="3271">The prisoners broke into those <span class="building">warehouses</span> and everybody was carrying all kinds of clothing. </sentence><sentence id="3272">One of the funniest thing this Russian dentist with his boyfriend and my mother didn't know what happened, she was just recuperating from typhus and this guy walked in in a top hat, tuxedo with tails and a white scarf around his neck. </sentence><sentence id="3273">He was one of the Russians. </sentence><sentence id="3274">They were the first ones to break into the <span class="building">warehouses</span> and he thought he looked very snazzy in that outfit, this was after the war. </sentence><sentence id="3275">But the war was a <span class="dlf">field</span> of dead. </sentence><sentence id="3276">There were people dying by the thousands every day and they would just dump them out and there was no way no matter what the Germans tried to do to bury them, and they would bring crews to the prisoners. </sentence><sentence id="3277">They fed them extra, they forced them to work. </sentence><sentence id="3278">There was tasks that they could not keep up. </sentence><sentence id="3279">I think there were two <span class="dlf">graves</span> when they finally cleaned out the <span class="populated place">camp</span>, one I don't know how many thousands of people buried in those <span class="dlf">graves</span>, <span class="dlf">mass graves</span>. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3294">Q: What percentage of people do you think came through the <span class="building">hospital</span> at one time or another? </sentence><sentence id="3295">You were treating women, correct? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3298">A: Yes. </sentence><sentence id="3299">I don't know. </sentence><sentence id="3300">I don't know. </sentence><sentence id="3301">We had <span class="dlf">lines</span> every day. </sentence><sentence id="3302">As a matter of fact, after we were liberated they took everybody to <span class="populated place">Bergen</span>, but in the meantime the British helped us clean up some of -- they whitewashed some of the <span class="building">buildings</span>, and I stayed another month or so, maybe another few weeks. </sentence><sentence id="3303">No, we liberated the 15th of April, the 8th of May I was still in the old place and they gave us new blankets and we were still admitting people and still taking care of it because the healthy ones they could process and take to <span class="populated place">Bergen</span>, which was a <span class="populated place">military camp</span>, and they placed them there. </sentence><sentence id="3304">The sick ones, they had a whole procedure they had to -- and they were magnificent. </sentence><sentence id="3305">They would take them in and they would bathe them on stretches and they would shower them and they cleaned their heads. </sentence><sentence id="3306">And they were basically British soldiers and dress the wounds and place them in <span class="building">hospital barracks</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3307">This was a very slow process. </sentence><sentence id="3308">In the meantime, people were coming in. </sentence><sentence id="3309">They needed help now, and by that time we had some supplies. </sentence><sentence id="3310">So, we were admitting some of them and we were treating some of them on an outpatient basis, but at least we had some bandages and supplies. </sentence><sentence id="3311">We had some medications. </sentence><sentence id="3312">If they had a headache, we could give them aspirin. </sentence><sentence id="3313">I mean things like this, and they were still getting sick. </sentence><sentence id="3314">They were still getting typhus. </sentence><sentence id="3315">That thing was still raging, and the British soldiers were all inoculated and toward the end there was a rumor they were going to evacuate the <span class="populated place">camp</span>, like they did in <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3316">There was a march. </sentence><sentence id="3317">There was a group that went on <span class="spatial object">trains</span>, and I think the <span class="spatial object">trains</span> were bombed, and I think some of the Dutch Jews perished that way. </sentence><sentence id="3318">Anyway, there was a rumor that the <span class="populated place">camp</span> is mine and they are going to evacuate the <span class="populated place">camp</span> and whoever can walk and the rest of the people will go, and the girls came over to me, the nurses that wanted to distribute some of the medicine what you have and the syringes and everything and they said, "Are you going to walk?" </sentence><sentence id="3319">I said, "No, I'm not leaving Mom, and she can't walk. </sentence><sentence id="3320">I'm staying no matter what happened." </sentence><sentence id="3321">Well, that night we had bombs and they bombed this was <span class="populated place">Lindenberg</span>, the Allies bombed a nearby <span class="populated place">town</span> and a day or two later we saw all the Germans walking -- the British didn't come in yet, but they were walking with the white arm bands and for some reason I was sent out to either get the soup or get some supplies and I was passing the <span class="interior space">baths</span>, the <span class="interior space">sauna</span> and our favorite the guy, the pig, this German, he was burning paper in this <span class="interior space">sauna</span>, in the <span class="spatial object">furnace</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3322">They were very nice. </sentence><sentence id="3323">They were still in charge, and they came in and they wore the arm bands, didn't discuss anything, but at the same time the day the British came in there was a cook, a German cook in one of the <span class="interior space">kitchens</span>, and they were supposed to be working. </sentence><sentence id="3324">He said, I have another few bullets and I'm going to shoot all the Jews. </sentence><sentence id="3325">He killed a girl, wounded one, and the British were not in, the Germans were half way in and out. </sentence><sentence id="3326">By that time we were guarded by Hungarians. </sentence><sentence id="3327">The guards were all released, outside guards. </sentence><sentence id="3328">And there was a group of Hungarians and they were guarding the <span class="populated place">camp</span> with the guns. </sentence><sentence id="3329">This was a German, and they felt, they swore that they are going to get themselves some Jews. </sentence><sentence id="3330">One of the girls was brought in. </sentence><sentence id="3331">She walked out, she said, "We are free. </sentence><sentence id="3332">We are liberated." </sentence><sentence id="3333">Bang, and she was gone. </sentence><sentence id="3334">What has happened, when the British came in the 15th of April the <span class="spatial object">tank</span> went through, waved the flag, everybody say hooray and they went out and we are still prisoners until they finally came in and started checking. </sentence><sentence id="3335">Well, it was in the afternoon, they just went in until they could organize themselves. </sentence><sentence id="3336">Then they discovered the bodies so they called all the officers and the soldiers and they had to remove the bodies. </sentence><sentence id="3337">Some of the girls were nuts. </sentence><sentence id="3338">They were distributing the food in metal cans and they were rusting. </sentence><sentence id="3339">One of the girls saved the rations which was pretty awful and rotten and become spoiled and she wanted one of the Germans to eat it. </sentence><sentence id="3340">And the Germans were guarded by the British because otherwise the mob would have torn them apart. </sentence><sentence id="3341">There was a language problem, but this one somehow managed to convey to the British soldier that she doesn't want to do any harm. </sentence><sentence id="3342">She just wants that German to eat that food, and he made him eat it. </sentence><sentence id="3343">The funny thing is, I went once to see this removal of the bodies. </sentence><sentence id="3344">It was a frantic scene. </sentence><sentence id="3345">The girls were screaming and yelling and hollering and they wanted to pull on the Germans. </sentence><sentence id="3346">I went once to see it, but I just couldn't do it. </sentence><sentence id="3347">I also went out, I think one day after they liberated us and I went out -- the <span class="dlf">gates</span> between the <span class="dlf">compounds</span> were open. </sentence><sentence id="3348">The main <span class="dlf">street</span> was open. </sentence><sentence id="3349">That's where you saw this unbelievable mob of people walking with all kinds of clothing because they broke into the <span class="building">depots</span> and whatever they could wear, the funniest outfits and funny things, and people were milling, looking for friends and that's how I went to the <span class="building">men's place</span>, the <span class="populated place">men's camp</span> to look for people from my <span class="populated place">town</span> and people who I knew, and I found this one boy who had a very bad eye infection and got him doctors and got him to a <span class="building">hospital</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3350">He lost his eye but he survived. </sentence><sentence id="3351">He's alive. </sentence><sentence id="3352">He lives in <span class="region">California</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3353"> Tape #4 </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3410">Q: We started talking about liberation. </sentence><sentence id="3411">I wondering if the Germans were sensing what was happening and if there treatment of you changed, if you could feel their fear? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3414">A: Well, once the bombing took place nearby, a couple of days before the British came in, and that's where the <span class="building">German headquarters</span> surrendered and therefore the Germans were wearing the white armbands. </sentence><sentence id="3415">They were ready for take over and by that time, except the crazy shooters, the ones we were in contact with, they were okay. </sentence><sentence id="3416">Even the one that was screaming, he was always quiet. </sentence><sentence id="3417">I saw him burn the papers and I don't remember why I went out, either to pick up some supplies because we still could not walk between the <span class="dlf">compounds</span> on the main <span class="dlf">street</span>, but for some reason I was sent for something, I think we were sent to the <span class="interior space">kitchen</span> for soups. </sentence><sentence id="3418">By that time they were not delivering and that's why I went with a group of girls, and that's when I saw him burning those papers frantically. </sentence><sentence id="3419">They were packing and he didn't even see us. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3426">Q: They weren't trying to convince you how nice they were or anything like that? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3428">A: No, I don't think so. </sentence><sentence id="3429">I understand that the dentist somehow got some testimony of various prisoners. </sentence><sentence id="3430">They never approached us. </sentence><sentence id="3431">This was one person I would have given him a clean bill of health. </sentence><sentence id="3432">He was arrested, but then he was released because he really didn't do anything ever. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3438">Q: Do you remember how you felt when the British arrived? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3440">A: Unbelievable feeling of relief. </sentence><sentence id="3441">Just went out to see them and we all went out to see them. </sentence><sentence id="3442">First the people came in and said the <span class="spatial object">British tank</span> went in. </sentence><sentence id="3443">I think I've seen the <span class="spatial object">British tank</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3444">They were shooting, so we were afraid to walk around. </sentence><sentence id="3445">The Germans were still shooting and the Hungarians were still watching. </sentence><sentence id="3446">You couldn't go outside of the <span class="populated place">camp</span> and after they finally took all the guns from those Germans, then you went out. </sentence><sentence id="3447">That's when I went to the main, on the main <span class="dlf">street</span> and I saw this unbelievable motley crew of people. </sentence><sentence id="3448">Some of them were still dying. </sentence><sentence id="3449">Some of them were hardly moving. </sentence><sentence id="3450">There were bodies around, but whoever could move, they were moving. </sentence><sentence id="3451">They were walking, and they were smiling. </sentence><sentence id="3452">And unfortunately, there were so many people who died still after the liberation. </sentence><sentence id="3453">It was incredible. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3468">Q: How did the British treat you? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3470">A: The liberators treated us very nice. </sentence><sentence id="3471">The first day they decided we are starving so they brought soup, and the soup was very rich, and we all ate the soup and all got deathly ill. </sentence><sentence id="3472">Our bodies could not absorb this fat, so everybody got sick. </sentence><sentence id="3473">We overate that soup. </sentence><sentence id="3474">It was a thick, I remember, with a coat of fat on top. </sentence><sentence id="3475">They were very anxious to help us. </sentence><sentence id="3476">The British would as I aid the British soldiers as such they were beautiful towards the patients. </sentence><sentence id="3477">The British officers they were just -- later on they were funny, we had to fight them, but in the beginning they were just very compassionate it. </sentence><sentence id="3478">Then they realized that the food they were giving us we can not take this very rich food, so they started giving us like a diet food for a while until we could adjust. </sentence><sentence id="3479">They were giving us those little K rations. </sentence><sentence id="3480">They were giving us cigarettes and chewing gum and some lemonade and some cookies and were giving some tins of those cookies. </sentence><sentence id="3481">I decided to smoke a cigarette. </sentence><sentence id="3482">Mom said, I don't want you to smoke until after the war. </sentence><sentence id="3483">The war was still on, so the 8th of May and I was sitting and the <span class="spatial object">cannons</span> and you could hear the war was over and there were announcements and stuff like this. </sentence><sentence id="3484">I took a package of those -- I had a whole bunch of those little player cigarettes and I was smoking one after another. </sentence><sentence id="3485">She said, I told you not to smoke. </sentence><sentence id="3486">She was so sick, she said I told you not to smoke. </sentence><sentence id="3487">I said, "Mom, the war is over. </sentence><sentence id="3488">I'm smoking." </sentence><sentence id="3489">This was like an act of rebellion. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3510">Q: How come you remained in the <span class="populated place">camp</span> for a while after the British liberated you? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3512">A: They needed some people to be still there because as I said, the transfer of the patients was such a slow one they needed us. </sentence><sentence id="3513">It took them a while, maybe a week, ten days, two weeks. </sentence><sentence id="3514">I don't know. </sentence><sentence id="3515">And she was so sick, so I stayed. </sentence><sentence id="3516">I couldn't move her. </sentence><sentence id="3517">By the time we got to <span class="populated place">Bergen</span>, they didn't have any more <span class="interior space">room</span>, so there was this huge officers" <span class="building">casino</span> and they converted this to a <span class="building">hospital</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3518">This was the end of everybody in <span class="populated place">Bergen</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3519">And they had this huge <span class="interior space">ballroom</span>, it held about 170 <span class="spatial object">beds</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3520">The place was gorgeous. </sentence><sentence id="3521">It was a round <span class="building">building</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3522">They called it the <span class="building">round house</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3523">Out of the <span class="interior space">ballroom</span>, there was a magnificent <span class="dlf">terrace</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3524">And <span class="env feature">Rhododendron</span> blooming around, it was just gorgeous. </sentence><sentence id="3525">There were a couple <span class="interior space">rooms</span> where they had the <span class="building">casino</span>, but they removed all the <span class="spatial object">tables</span> and they patients there. </sentence><sentence id="3526">I think the paper I gave you was signed by this doctor who became the head of this thing. </sentence><sentence id="3527">At that time our staff consisted of British doctors. </sentence><sentence id="3528">They were volunteers, second or third year medical students. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3546">Q: Your <span class="building">hospital</span> was transferred to the <span class="populated place">town</span> of <span class="populated place">Bergen</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3548">A: Well, there were a lot of <span class="building">buildings</span> to the <span class="building">hospital</span>, but this was the very, very end of it, because they were transferring people all the time, but this was the very end. </sentence><sentence id="3549">There must have been about 250, 300 patients at that time. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3552">Q: Did they burn down or do anything with the old <span class="interior space">quarters</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3554">A: I'll tell you that. </sentence><sentence id="3555">So, we had <span class="interior space">rooms</span> there. </sentence><sentence id="3556">Mom started working a little bit there was a <span class="building">dental office</span> there, but she had swollen legs. </sentence><sentence id="3557">She was just working a few hours a day. </sentence><sentence id="3558">They had the most beautifully equipped <span class="interior space">kitchen</span> I have ever seen. </sentence><sentence id="3559">I don't know if many fancy <span class="building">restaurants</span> here have <span class="interior space">kitchens</span>, fully electric, they could cook a few hundred eggs at the same time. </sentence><sentence id="3560">They had <span class="spatial object">frying pans</span> they could turn upside down by touching a button. </sentence><sentence id="3561">It was just unbelievable. </sentence><sentence id="3562">There were naturally, a couple of elderly Germans running that <span class="interior space">kitchen</span> for us. </sentence><sentence id="3563">They claimed that they never knew anything about it. </sentence><sentence id="3564">As I started telling you there was the British doctor who was the head. </sentence><sentence id="3565">A few British nurses, we had British volunteer students at that time. </sentence><sentence id="3566">A bunch of us, a few French nuns came from <span class="country">France</span> and they brought in a bunch of German nurses, and there was one <span class="interior space">ward</span> with people with t.b., </sentence><sentence id="3567">diarrhea, as sick as they come. </sentence><sentence id="3568">The British assigned our girls to that <span class="interior space">room</span>, and the <span class="interior space">room</span> that had 170 <span class="spatial object">beds</span> they were basically convalescing, and they gave the German nurses this. </sentence><sentence id="3569">And we went on strike. </sentence><sentence id="3570">The rationale was that since some of the very sick people cannot don't know what's going on and the Germans may harm them and we will be much more compassionate to them. </sentence><sentence id="3571">Our argument was that we all went through typhus. </sentence><sentence id="3572">We are all very weak, and there's no reason for us to be exposed at this point to t.b. </sentence><sentence id="3573">and diarrhea and we should be assigned the convalescent, which was a much lighter load and let the Germans work there. </sentence><sentence id="3574">So, we went on strike. </sentence><sentence id="3575">We had a translator girl who spoke English and finally got through his head that this was the right thing to do. </sentence><sentence id="3576">But he was very much afraid what will happen. </sentence><sentence id="3577">We said we will supervise. </sentence><sentence id="3578">We'll check, and the nurses were busting because they were all registered nurses. </sentence><sentence id="3579">We were all a motley crew. </sentence><sentence id="3580">We didn't have uniforms, I mean, like a butcher's apron. </sentence><sentence id="3581">We had nothing, and we were watching what they were doing. </sentence><sentence id="3582">Another thing I was very happy to do, they would send the women from the <span class="populated place">town</span> from <span class="populated place">Bergen</span> to clean the <span class="building">hospital</span> and we had this was the <span class="interior space">ballroom</span>, it had a gorgeous <span class="interior space">parquet floor</span> and we made them wash the <span class="interior space">floor</span> twice a day. </sentence><sentence id="3583">They would come in the morning to clean, and they would come in the afternoon to clean, and God forbid that they left a dry spot. </sentence><sentence id="3584">Wash it, the German word was . [ </sentence><sentence id="3585">couldn't speak German very well, but this was a funny feeling, you know, I was in charge. </sentence><sentence id="3586">So, little by little our big <span class="populated place">ward</span> would empty because they were getting better and getting out. </sentence><sentence id="3587">The British, I started telling you about the British soldiers even before when they had this blister disease. </sentence><sentence id="3588">Once, I remember one of the young fellows came and he was getting ready, he found a patient with a blister thing and he was getting ready for a serious surgery. </sentence><sentence id="3589">I took him on the side, I said you are the doctor, I'm not, but we have had such experience with it, you don't have to do serious surgery, just make sure you lance it and drain it and then if you have -- they didn't have antibiotics but I think sulfur or whatever they had, something to dress the wound and she'll be okay, because she didn't have tremendous blisters. </sentence><sentence id="3590">He did it. </sentence><sentence id="3591">They were still students. </sentence><sentence id="3592">A lot of them got sick. </sentence><sentence id="3593">They left and we had a group of Belgium medical students, volunteers and they were not treated by the British very well. </sentence><sentence id="3594">They used to mooch the cigarettes from us because we used to have all the cigarettes from the British. </sentence><sentence id="3595">We were getting those packets every day. </sentence><sentence id="3596">Somehow they resented that. </sentence><sentence id="3597">Those guys, I think they were older, and they were just very good, trying to help the people and take care of them. </sentence><sentence id="3598">The British burned <span class="populated place">Bergen-Belsen</span> as they emptied it. </sentence><sentence id="3599">They left one <span class="building">building</span> standing and I don't know when there was a ceremony and we were invited, taken in by <span class="spatial object">trucks</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3600">I think there is a picture at the <span class="building">Holocaust Museum</span> of that ceremony. </sentence><sentence id="3601">This was when they raised the words of General Glen Hughes who was the Second British Army. </sentence><sentence id="3602">He said that now they can raise the British flag because this awful place doesn't exit any more and the ceremony was that they threw flame throwers burned the last <span class="building">barrack</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3603">Whether the <span class="building">administration building</span> still stands, I don't know, but this was the last thing and they raised the British flag over it because they never raise a British flag over a place as horrid as <span class="populated place">Bergen-Belsen</span>. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3654">Q: Did they burn it just for the horror of it, or did because they wanted to burn off the disease? </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3655">A: They wanted to burn off the disease. </sentence><sentence id="3656">They were burning them as soon as they were empty. </sentence><sentence id="3657">They were afraid. </sentence><sentence id="3658">I mean the whole German population. </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3659">Q: So, your life started becoming a bit more normal? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3661">A: Right. </sentence><sentence id="3662">We were there until July and they had a movie and the survivors could go to the <span class="spatial object">movies</span> during the day. </sentence><sentence id="3663">The British soldiers it was there for the British soldiers at night, but I was working during the day, so I was invited by the Belgs -- the Belgs could go at night, so they would invite me to go to the movies. </sentence><sentence id="3664">I was a young girl. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3669">Q: Do you remember what the first movie is you saw? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3671">A: I think with Esther Williams. </sentence><sentence id="3672">A funny thing happened. </sentence><sentence id="3673">One day they said they are going to hand someone, some Nazi somewhere nearby. </sentence><sentence id="3674">Let's go, let's go see it. </sentence><sentence id="3675">So, I said to Mom, I'm going. </sentence><sentence id="3676">Where are you going? </sentence><sentence id="3677">I don't know, to <span class="populated place">Ludenberg</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3678">So one of the girls said oh we have a <span class="spatial object">truck</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3679">There was one woman and three or four of us that went. </sentence><sentence id="3680">There was no hanging. </sentence><sentence id="3681">We couldn't get a way back. </sentence><sentence id="3682">There was no way of getting back. </sentence><sentence id="3683">Finally we found there was some <span class="populated place">camp</span> under the Poles and four or five women invited us. </sentence><sentence id="3684">They had some food. </sentence><sentence id="3685">They gave us their <span class="spatial object">beds</span> and we stayed with them at night. </sentence><sentence id="3686">They gave us food, and the following day we are trying to get in the worst way to go back to <span class="populated place">Bergen</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3687">We are standing on the <span class="dlf">corner</span> and there is a mob of people looking for <span class="spatial object">transport</span> and we tried to get anything you can. </sentence><sentence id="3688">At that time, there was who became the head of <span class="populated place">Bergen</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3689">He married Ms. Bimko. </sentence><sentence id="3690">He knew my mother. </sentence><sentence id="3691">They used to play cards together, whatever. </sentence><sentence id="3692">He knew her. </sentence><sentence id="3693">There was another guy, a British officer, who used to hang around, used to play <span class="dlf">bridge</span> with a bunch of people in our <span class="building">hospital</span> and he heard that I disappeared, that I went somewhere and there was no way of calling. </sentence><sentence id="3694">There was no way of doing something. </sentence><sentence id="3695">And they had a vague idea of where I went with those women, but where did we go, <span class="populated place">Ludenberg</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3696">They were all very concerned and I'm standing on the <span class="dlf">corner</span> with those few women who is passing by but this British officer. </sentence><sentence id="3697">His name was Eric, on a <span class="spatial object">motorcycle</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3698">| started hollering, Eric. </sentence><sentence id="3699">He said you know the whole world is looking for you. </sentence><sentence id="3700">I said, well, we can't get back. </sentence><sentence id="3701">No one wants to take us back. </sentence><sentence id="3702">We can't communicate. </sentence><sentence id="3703">We can't go back. </sentence><sentence id="3704">So, he stopped the <span class="spatial object">truck</span>, on after another finally found out where they are going whether they can take us back. </sentence><sentence id="3705">He said they'll take us back. </sentence><sentence id="3706">So, we get on the <span class="spatial object">truck</span> and there are some soldiers in the back and they are driving and driving and they take us somewhere else and we said Where are you taking us?" </sentence><sentence id="3707">As I said, we couldn't speak English. </sentence><sentence id="3708">Finally they explained to us that at a certain time those soldiers have to be on the <span class="building">base</span> otherwise they'll be AWOL, which I didn't know what the word means, but they explained that they had to be back. </sentence><sentence id="3709">Once they will be taken back to their posts, then we'll be taken to <span class="populated place">Bergen</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3710">This was one of the high drinx after the war, what I did. </sentence><sentence id="3711">Trying to be normal, being almost a normal teenager. </sentence><sentence id="3712">I was 19, but still being a normal, all of a sudden an act of rebellion , get out do something adventurous, naughty. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3755">Q: Free? </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3756">A: Free, that's exactly what it was. </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3757">Q: How did you get to <span class="country">Sweden</span>? </sentence><sentence id="3758">Why did you decided to go there? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3761">A: Well, what has happened at that time, Swedish government invited "x" amount of people to go and they needed doctors and nurses and dentists to go along to take care of the patients, so we signed up. </sentence><sentence id="3762">They took us to , and that was also funny. </sentence><sentence id="3763">They had to clean us out, so they had two <span class="building">tents</span>, one for the men and for one for the women and this friend of ours was a doctor got very friendly on the <span class="spatial object">train</span> going to and he came through and he said, "You know, the women were washing me." </sentence><sentence id="3764">And they made the German men, wash the women. </sentence><sentence id="3765">They wanted to punish the Germans in a way, I don't know. </sentence><sentence id="3766">They didn't try to punish us. </sentence><sentence id="3767">We just decided the hell with it. </sentence><sentence id="3768">They're not meant to us. </sentence><sentence id="3769">I mean, this was the thing, don't get shocked. </sentence><sentence id="3770">Don't get shocked, they're not men. </sentence><sentence id="3771">They're Germans, they're not even human beings. </sentence><sentence id="3772">Let them wash us and that's all, because they really had to scrub us and they took us on a <span class="spatial object">boat</span> at night. </sentence><sentence id="3773">They gave us army coats and we sat on the <span class="interior space">deck</span> at night, wool blankets or something else. </sentence><sentence id="3774">It was very lovely. </sentence><sentence id="3775">They fed us. </sentence><sentence id="3776">They put us first in a place called . </sentence><sentence id="3777">It was a <span class="building">school</span>, and they kept us in quarantine. </sentence><sentence id="3778">They boys were hanging through the <span class="dlf">windows</span> looking for us, looking for girls, making dates the moment they let us out. </sentence><sentence id="3779">There were all kinds of dates, and then they took us to another <span class="populated place">camp</span> in . </sentence><sentence id="3780">They started assigning people to work, so we were assigned to <span class="region">Northern Sweden</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3781">This is, you see, talking about groups against groups. </sentence><sentence id="3782">Even in <span class="populated place">camps</span> they were fighting. </sentence><sentence id="3783">After the liberation, there were incidents between the Poles and the Jews. </sentence><sentence id="3784">In <span class="country">Sweden</span>, the <span class="populated place">camp</span> that we were assigned to, my mother knew a man who really liked her and he said, oh I know a dentist, we need a dentist here and there were 200 Jews and 400 Poles in the <span class="populated place">camp.</span> </sentence><sentence id="3785">They requested Mom by name. </sentence><sentence id="3786">We didn't want to go to <span class="region">Northern Sweden</span>, but we had to go because they were requesting her not just a dentist, they wanted her. </sentence><sentence id="3787">By that time, there was a nurse, so I was signed up as her assistant. </sentence><sentence id="3788">We got there and the Jews were going. </sentence><sentence id="3789">What has happened? </sentence><sentence id="3790">They were fighting. </sentence><sentence id="3791">There was such incidents, such fighting, such name calling, that they took the Jews out and took them to another <span class="populated place">camp</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3792">The Poles were so nasty and so anti-semitic. </sentence><sentence id="3793">So even there, after that happened, they were charming to us, I mean I was a Miss, but the Jews could not live in that <span class="populated place">camp</span> with the Poles. </sentence><sentence id="3794">So, even then, and this is July August in "45, they still didn't have enough. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3833">Q: You decided to go onto <span class="country">Sweden</span> rather than go back to <span class="country">Poland</span>? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3835">A: We definitely didn't want to go to <span class="country">Poland</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3836">I had an aunt here who left <span class="country">Germany</span> before the war. </sentence><sentence id="3837">We wrote to her the first letter, turned out she got it. </sentence><sentence id="3838">We gave it to some British soldier to send it out, but she couldn't write to us in <span class="country">Germany</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3839">The moment we got to <span class="country">Sweden</span>, the first we went and put an application to the <span class="country">United States</span>, so our order was very long. </sentence><sentence id="3840">We registered before even contacting, establishing contact with the family, and I found a crazy thing happened. </sentence><sentence id="3841">My mother had some cousins and we knew one of them in <span class="populated place">New York</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3842">They were in the <span class="building">advertising business</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3843">He came to <span class="country">Poland</span> before the war, and we wrote a letter to David Glicksman in <span class="populated place">New York</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3844">Well, David Glicksman changed his name to David Gipson. </sentence><sentence id="3845">His brothers didn't, but he changed it. </sentence><sentence id="3846">He lived in <span class="populated place">Manhattan</span> and there must have been some kind of a <span class="building">dead letter office</span> in <span class="populated place">New York</span>, and after the war they must have been opening those letters and tracing people down. </sentence><sentence id="3847">The letter was written in German. </sentence><sentence id="3848">He got the letter. </sentence><sentence id="3849">My aunt lived in <span class="populated place">Washington</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3850">He called her up. </sentence><sentence id="3851">A few days before I had an uncle, my mother had an brother in <span class="country">France</span> who survived, and he contacted the family so we got established a contact and in a few days money was coming in and packages were coming in and telegrams were coming in and May 1946 we came here. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3869">Q: Let me just ask you a few general questions. </sentence><sentence id="3870">We just a have a couple more minutes. </sentence><sentence id="3871">It seems like your early days, your affluence, your family education, all of that really helped you survive the war years? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3875">A: I think so. </sentence><sentence id="3876">I think so. </sentence><sentence id="3877">The fact that Mom was a dentist so she always either made money or later on we were in the position to be sheltered a little bit more. </sentence><sentence id="3878">The fact that I worked with Grandfather during the years in <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>, I really was very good at <span class="building">outpatient</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3879">I wanted to be a surgeon. </sentence><sentence id="3880">I was very interested in medicine, and I was good at it, but when I came here I found out that I had to go back to <span class="building">school</span> for a couple of years and by that time, I didn't have the means to go to <span class="building">medical school</span>, and I really didn't want to go to be a nurse. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3887">Q: When things were really, really difficult during those years, and there was a lot of depravation, what do you think sustained you? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3889">A: I think the <span class="spatial object">family unit</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3890">The fact that we had the grandparents. </sentence><sentence id="3891">We had to take care of them. </sentence><sentence id="3892">The first few years in <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>, we had to take care of the older people, no matter what. </sentence><sentence id="3893">I mean we took care of my grandfather and he was such an unusual person. </sentence><sentence id="3894">He was a felcher and then he was grown up and then he went to <span class="building">dental school</span> and became a dentist. </sentence><sentence id="3895">He was extremely educated, self, well read and self educated extremely wise man, very much a head of his time. </sentence><sentence id="3896">He believed in all kinds of inventions. </sentence><sentence id="3897">He believed in all modern gadgets. </sentence><sentence id="3898">The first modern gadget came in , I think my grandmother had one of the first electrical irons. </sentence><sentence id="3899">Things like this, he was very much. </sentence><sentence id="3900">He said there are <span class="spatial object">ships</span> waiting in <span class="country">America</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3901">Any moment they'll liberate us. </sentence><sentence id="3902">They'll come in with food. </sentence><sentence id="3903">They'll invent a pill that you won't have to eat anything. </sentence><sentence id="3904">You'll just be able to take a pill and it will keep you going for a day. </sentence><sentence id="3905">Little did he realize the to eat was very pleasant. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3923">Q: And the family unit sustained you because you lived with your mother? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3925">A: I lived with my mother. </sentence><sentence id="3926">As I said, when the times she was sick, I would take care of her, when I was sick, she would take care of me. </sentence><sentence id="3927">We watched each other. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3931">Q: Did that sort of help you not to feel so isolated from the world? </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3932">A: I think so. </sentence><sentence id="3933">I had her. </sentence><sentence id="3934">I was very close to her. </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3935">Q: When you think back, fifty years ago, your experiences, is there one haunting image? </sentence><sentence id="3936">Is there something you think? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="3939">A: There is anger. </sentence><sentence id="3940">I get angry. </sentence><sentence id="3941">I watch something and I said how dare they do that to us. </sentence><sentence id="3942">How dare they made us subhumans. </sentence><sentence id="3943">I mean we're human beings and what audacity to treat us the way they treated us. </sentence><sentence id="3944">What nerve they had to kill us. </sentence><sentence id="3945">I mean it's such it doesn't mean if I meet a German I'm nasty to them, but I have a deep burning anger of why they did it. </sentence><sentence id="3946">What human being has a right to do to other human beings. </sentence><sentence id="3947">I mean we watch those things and we see those children. </sentence><sentence id="3948">What right do people have to do it. </sentence><sentence id="3949">But he was such a systematic deliberate and also the question of dehumanizing us. </sentence><sentence id="3950">People say why did you subject yourself. </sentence><sentence id="3951">They did it little by little. </sentence><sentence id="3952">Layers, they took layers, they took our <span class="interior space">apartment</span>, they took the <span class="building">house</span>, they took the privileges. </sentence><sentence id="3953">They kicked us out from the <span class="building">house</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3954">They put us in the <span class="populated place">Ghetto</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3955">From the good conditions we wound up pour and no way of taking a <span class="spatial object">bath</span> and no way to <span class="spatial object">shower</span> yourself, living in that one <span class="interior space">room</span> and gradually worse and worse and worse. </sentence><sentence id="3956">It wasn't like they took someone from a very fancy <span class="building">house</span> and put them in <span class="populated place">camp</span>. </sentence><sentence id="3957">Those people didn't survive, for the most part. </sentence><sentence id="3958">They broke down immediately. </sentence><sentence id="3959">They did it deliberately and gradually. </sentence><sentence id="3960">One step at a time, one humiliation. </sentence><sentence id="3961">The fact when we got to <span class="populated place">Auschwitz</span> and they undressed us and we had to march in front of men. </sentence><sentence id="3962">And the women, there were religious women, elderly women, young girls, and I was a young girl. </sentence><sentence id="3963">I never undressed myself in front of any one. </sentence><sentence id="3964">Here I had to march naked in front of a bunch of men. </sentence><sentence id="3965">This is all humiliation. </sentence><sentence id="3966">This is all making people subhuman. </sentence><sentence id="3967">This is slowly and slowly and slowly so you had no we didn't have the strength to fight them. </sentence><sentence id="3968">There was no way of fighting them. </sentence><sentence id="3969">I mean sure there was uprising in <span class="populated place">Warsaw Ghetto</span>, but there was no movement in <span class="populated place">Lodz Ghetto</span> like this and saw to it. </sentence><sentence id="3970">There was no such thing as revolution and I get angry. </sentence><sentence id="3971">I get very angry. </sentence><sentence id="3972">That's why I'm doing this, why I'm speaking to people. </sentence><sentence id="3973">I want to leave the history. </sentence><sentence id="3974">I want that to be part of my history. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="4012">Q: Is there anything else you want to say? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="4014">A: No, do you have any questions. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="4016">Q: There was no thought of resistance or rebellion at ? </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="4018">A: No. </sentence><sentence id="4019">We were busy. </sentence><sentence id="4020">We were busy and then the sickness. </sentence><sentence id="4021">It was overwhelming, just like a flood. </sentence><sentence id="4022">There was no <span class="dlf">dike</span>, you could put your finger in and you couldn't do anything. </sentence><sentence id="4023">You tried to do something, but there was nothing. </sentence><sentence id="4024">We had no means to help the people. </sentence><sentence id="4025">If they survived, they survived. </sentence><sentence id="4026">If they didn't survive, you couldn't do anything. </sentence><sentence id="4027">Some cousin, my mother's cousin | found in one of the <span class="building">barracks</span>, tried to get her something. </sentence><sentence id="4028">The fever took over, the typhus took over and she died. </sentence><sentence id="4029">I mean, you were helpless. </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="4030">Q: But you must have felt you helped people. </sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="4031">A: Oh, you tried. </sentence><sentence id="4032">As I said the question was if someone wasn't very sick we could help them. </sentence><sentence id="4033">If we had the means, if we had the dressing, we had the pill we could give it them, maybe they'll survive. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="4037">Q: Thank you very much. </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| <dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="4039">A: You're welcome. </sentence><sentence id="4040"> </sentence></p></dialogue> |
| </body> |
| </html> |
