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3-Transport to Auschwitz
How was the trip from the ghetto to Auschwitz?
It was about 150 people in a cattle car, in a red cattle car, with a little barbed wire near the top. It took 4 days and it's only about 100 kilometers. And when they opened the cattle cars on the ramp in Auschwitz, some people were dead and everybody was hot and hungry. The Germans lined us up. They separated the men from the woman. They had dogs. They had drawn guns. And then they separated the old from the young. And we had never heard of this place. When we mentioned it to somebody who had been there a year or so, they couldn't understand that none of us knew of the existence of Auschwitz.
They took all our belongings. And this happened within an hour. They shaved our hair. Some people were tattooed, but not our transport, the earlier ones. We were led into a shower and somebody mentioned the fact that it could be gas or it could be water. Well it was a little drizzly water. And we were thrown one rag of clothing, like it could have been a dress, it could have been a coat, it could have been a housecoat, it could have been anything. No shoes, no underwear, nothing.
And we were housed in Birkenau in the barracks building. If we were lucky we would receive one meal a day. And we were counted and recounted. Outside. First in the cold in the morning and then in the heat of the day. And later on in the snow for those who remained in the winter. For hours. We heard about gas chambers - we saw the chimneys - but we really did not have a clear vision what this was all about. Because we had no exposure to people who had been there longer. And there were rumors, some true, some not true.
Eventually they picked the stronger ones of these 500 or 600 women. We were shipped off in cattle cars to the bombed free-harbor of the city of Hamburg where I had gone to school. And we did manual labor cleaning up the bomb damage: metal, glass, stone. We were moved around from one site to another. I think the people who used our labor paid something like 25 cents per each woman for each day. But not to us. They paid it to the German government. And they moved us to two or three different camps during that time. [Dessauer Ufer, Sasel, Neuengamme]. There were some women from Czechoslovakia, a few from Hungary. And the last camp - it was pretty close to the end of the war—was Bergen-Belsen. And that was a camp where you could not survive. There were too many dead bodies. There was too much typhus, and no food. We knew then that it was just a matter of days. So if you want to back track, go ahead.
In your book you mentioned that when your hair was shaven off it was very traumatic.
Yes it was. I saw a reflection in a glass pane. And it was an oval head with two big ears, and it looked horrible. I had long brown hair - longer than yours - and I would have preferred a number, but I didn't have a choice.
After arriving in Auschwitz were you directly shipped to Hamburg to work?
No, we were a few weeks in Auschwitz until Dr. Mengele came and with other officers, two I think, and separated the younger ones from the older ones again. The younger ones were shipped to slave labor.
And during the few weeks that you were in Auschwitz, what were you doing?
Nothing, Absolutely nothing. Standing at attention and being counted and recounted for most of the day. And otherwise just absolutely nothing. There was nothing to be done. And you couldn't walk around because the individual barracks were separated by barbed wires - electrical wires - and guard towers.
When you moved around to different camps, how did you feel?
You always told yourself that maybe the next camp would be better. But it was just an illusion. It went from bad to worse. I thought if I would be in the vicinity of Hamburg I could run away or I could find a hiding place or someone. It was not possible. Because I knew the city, I knew the surrounding. It wasn't feasible.
When you were back in Hamburg, did you reminisce at all?
No, because everybody else was from Poland. They had never been outside Poland. And we were housed in the outer harbor. We were housed in barracks. I didn't live like this before the war, so there was really nothing to say.
Did you build strong friendships?
Yes, a couple of people that were very good friends. One lives in Israel, she's blind. One was killed in an automobile accident in Sweden. And another one died. And while we were living a different life, the friendship remained.
How did you feel as a woman in the camps?
It really didn't make a difference whether you were woman or animal or man or whatever. You basically were a number. You were not a person. You didn't have a name. It didn't make a difference.
Can you describe a typical, 24-hour day in Auschwitz?
You got up at 6 or 5 and had to go outside and line up in rows of 5, and be counted and recounted, and stand there for three, four hours. And eventually we got a liquid they called coffee, and maybe a piece of bread, but not everyday. And then we would go back into the barracks for a couple of hours, and then outside again to be counted and recounted. People fainted. People died. People were carried away. Some ended up in hospitals, some not. And that was all there was to a day. There was nothing else.
We read in your book about getting the scarf for your head. Why was it so important for you that you would risk your life?
Vanity. A teenager's vanity.
Can you describe the story?
I was working at a shipyard and we were picking up bricks and we were picking up metal. And I came across a torn piece of a scarf. It wasn't a whole scarf, it was green and rust. And I wanted it more than I had wanted anything else. And to take something was punished by death. And I figured, I've got nothing to lose. I want that scarf—it would go once around my head and cover my ears. And I took the scarf when I thought nobody was looking. And it was not the first theft, it was my second theft. The first one was in the leather factory when I stole some leather for my shoes. And I hid the piece of scarf between my legs. And I took it back to the barracks, I washed it in cold water, and I was the only one who had something to cover her head. Nobody said anything.
When the SS noticed that you had this scarf...
He didn't notice that I had this scarf. What he noticed was that I could speak German. And he asked me to follow him to a bombed out chimney at the end of the shipyard. And he tried to rape me. And he had a hand over my mouth and he thought the scarf had a different meaning because he said, "Menstruating, go away!" And he pushed me away, and I ran. So our understanding of the scarf was totally different. He eventually was replaced by another SS man.
Incidents happened. Some were talked about, some were not. There was one pregnancy, which was aborted, in the camp. But as a rule there were few pregnancies because nobody got pregnant. And even in the camp there were different classes. There were women who made friendships either with a supervisor or an SS, or somebody at the building site, and they benefited by a piece of bread or something to drink. And it was the same in the ghetto. So if you were willing you could buy a lot of things with sex. Of the 500 women that worked near Hamburg, I think all but eight or ten survived the war. Some died in the interim, but most of those survived.
Did you feel anytime in the camps—you talked about Rumkowski and also this other SS—that you were sexually abused?
No. I was verbally abused. I was told, "if I get you a job, what do I get in return?" Which was very common. But it was just a very customary currency.
Can you describe when you went to the infirmary in Neuengamme?
I had blood poisoning from working with a very dirty material. I had an infected hand, and I had a red stripe going up to my elbow. And my friend said, "This is blood poisoning, you have to report it." And with much hesitation I did report it and the next time the SS went to the main camp—which mainly had men, male prisoners—they took me along. They chained me to the truck. And eventually I got into that building and I had to wait at the door, and a young man in prison uniform was scrubbing the floor, but we couldn't communicate, we didn't have one language in common. And when nobody was looking he left a little package of crumpled paper, and it was dry bread. And then I was called in and the German doctor—who was not a doctor, he was a medical corpsman—looked at it and he said we have to open so it can drain. And two prisoners in prison uniforms, whether they were Jewish or not I don't know, had to hold me and without anesthesia he opened the infection and he told me not to scream. I didn't scream, but I did faint. By the time I looked at it, it was bandaged and it was bleeding through the bandage. I was taken back to the camp and the next day I went back to work.
You said in your book that one of the men told you that the war was going to end soon?
No, that's not what he told me. What he told me was that he had looked up my father. And my father had property and would I give him one piece of the property. And I said, "Yes, if you let me get away." And he said he had to think about it. He was very poor, very uneducated, from a very bad neighborhood. And then he disappeared. And I thought he was arrested. But it turned out he had a stomach ulcer. I never heard from him again. I never saw him again. But I got a letter to New York saying, "You owe me a house." I didn't reply.
After you went returned from the hospital, what happened next?
Nothing, I went back to work and eventually it healed. I have the scars, but it healed.
