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4-More in Lódz, Rumkowski, & Transport to Auschwitz

In your last interview you talked about intellectual resistance.

There was some, in spite of the fact that musical instruments were taken away. But there were painters in the ghetto. There were people who composed songs. And there were several now well-known writers who wrote about life in the ghetto. And by keeping these records, by writing this down, just in case somebody will ever read it, it is a form of resistance.

Did you yourself partake in any of this?

No, I did not. I had a friend who became a very famous writer. But had I written anything down, it would have disappeared in Auschwitz. I would not have kept it, I couldn't have kept it. And since he was born in Lódz, he buried it in the ghetto. And he came back after the war and uncovered it. So the resistance was a passive resistance – in verse, in prose, in poetry, in many ways, but it wasn't the kind of resistance that you found in Warsaw.

Can you tell us more about the corrupt nature of the administration, and particular instances that seemed to reveal to you that it was corrupt?

People in administrative position got double and triple food rations. That was number one, which in a way was unfair. In a way maybe it is understandable, I don't know. If you wanted a job, or if you were looking for a change in jobs, you had to know somebody to put a word in for you. In the ghetto there was a saying, "You have to have shoulders," that means somebody's shoulders to stand on. All you have to have, if you would translate it, is protection. Somebody to speak for you. If you were young, and fairly good-looking, the answer was, "What will you give me in return?" So, yes, there was corruption. There was nothing in the ghetto that was not corrupt. You paid for everything, one way or another.

How about the ghetto policemen, can tell us a little about the corruption involving them?

The ghetto police basically consisted of three different departments. The most powerful was the Sonder, or "Special Department." They received the orders from the German to round up twenty thousand Jews. They could be brutal because they were afraid. They had orders, and if they didn't turn the people in, they were in trouble. They shouldn't have beaten. I don't know what the answer was. The head of the ghetto followed German orders. Today you would call it collaboration. He called it, "Our only way is work." He believed by acceding to German demands, and German orders, the rest of us would live. But the price we paid was too high. Much too high.

So the Ghetto in its dealings, in its approach to human conditions, was inhuman. I remember a friend, he's still alive, very old, who was taken to a party in Rumkowski's house, and it must have been '42 [1942], I'm pretty sure. And at that party, there was vodka, and caviar, and anything you wanted to eat; we were starving.

So, when you heard about this party, could you not help but feel enraged?

Yes, but what are you going to do about it? And he had control of the police force. When somebody suggested a strike, or any other civil disobedience, as you might call it, he would send the police out and put the people in jail, and beat them up. So, the consequences were very clear.

Did you know any Nazi guards who were, in the slightest bit, friendly or helpful? Did any guards provide Jews with information?"

No, no information. I knew of one guard who helped a friend of mine by occasionally slipping her a loaf of bread. She is still alive in Israel. She never could find him. She had his name, and she knew where he came from but she never found him. He might have been killed. That's the only instance that I knew.

So, there weren't any Nazis that were friendly or helpful towards you?

No.

During this time, you found a factory where they provided education for the children, and you had Karin sent there. Can you describe the factory?

There was a hat factory that in a back room had little children, anywhere from six to twelve or thirteen. They would have Hebrew lessons, math lessons, and they were listed as workers, but they didn't work. They got a daily soup, and I managed through friends of friends to get my sister into that hat factory. She at least got her soup.

You also said that, by this time, she was not talking.

No, she was not talking because I would ask her, "How was school, how were the other girls, did you meet any friends?" She wouldn't answer.

Did you try anything to help her to speak?

I tried by talking to her, and that was the only means I had, and I had hoped that the other children in the school would be an incentive to make her talk, but she didn't.

As you were enduring all of this, did you at any point wish that you weren't Jewish?

No, that was really useless. You are what you are, and there were people that were baptized, there were people that claimed not to have been Jewish, it didn't make a difference. It never really entered my mind.

How about any of your family or friends, did you ever hear anybody utter anything like that?

Yes, those who either had a Jewish mother, or Jewish father, they were very resentful. I have a friend in Petaluma, who has a big Auschwitz number, and I don't know who was Jewish in the family. I know that his aunt and uncle were Jewish because I knew them, and he is very resentful to this day: "I never was Jewish, I never knew anything about it, and I’m not a full Jew on both sides of the family," and it's a topic I find difficult to discuss with him.

You commented that Rumkowski had said, "If I can save a hundred souls, it'll be worthwhile," and you said that you didn't believe in that. Can you elaborate on that?

That was a conversation that I had with Rumkowski, in which he asked me to talk to my uncles in Palestine, and see that they help him after the war. Of course being afraid I said yes. And during that conversation, he said, "If I could save a hundred Jews, it will have been worthwhile." He did not specify anything else. I found that remark offensive. I found this remark unreasonable, and I still do.

Can you talk a little bit more about why you think that?

Because this particular ghetto had between a hundred, and a hundred and sixty thousand Jews. Why would you think it is fair? What is reasonable, if you can save a hundred, out of all of them. Is that a reasonable number? Or is there a reasonable number all together? Like Maimonides would have said, "You save them all, or you save none." There is no arbitrary figure of a hundred.

Did you not know at this time, also, when you were still in the ghetto,what was going on with other camps?

No, nothing. There was no mail into the ghetto, there was no mail out of the ghetto. There was no communication.

Did you have any idea, or thought about what the intention or purpose of the camp was?

We were told, on purpose, that they were sent to work camp, but we didn't know where. And since we had no contact to the outside, we had no underground sewers, we did not know. I have a death certificate from my sister, and it's dated 1947, and it states that she was killed in Auschwitz. We know now that this is not right. She was killed in Chelmno, as were all the others. But in 1947, we did not know that.

When did you find this out?

Probably around 1950, or later.

What did you think did happen to your sister before you were liberated and you were still in the ghetto or camp?

I thought that maybe they really sent them to a work camp, or another camp, and that there would come a day when we would find some of them, or most of them.

So you assumed she was probably alive?

That's what I thought.

Cattle Car

Can you explain to us what the cattle cars look like?

What does a cattle car look like? The cattle car looks like any cattle car you see at a railroad siding, in California. It's barn red, it has a big sliding door, and towards the roof it has a small slit like a letterbox, covered with barbed wire. And they put us into the cattle car like cattle, there was not enough room to sit, or to stand. And the cattle car which you see at the museum in Washington, is not one of the original cattle cars. It's a donation from the Polish government, it's a miniature, and it's not one of those that you regularly use. But it's effective for their exhibit, and probably smaller. It's easier for them to handle. If you put a hundred people, a hundred fifty people into a cattle car, there isn't enough room to stand, or to sit, and not to lie down. They closed the cattle cars from the outside. It moves slowly, and you don't know where it's going to stop.

You had no sense of where you were going?

Nothing. We had never heard of Auschwitz, never.

Can you describe those days leading up to - and the day of actually leaving and being put on the cattle car?

The Germans said that they would liquidate the ghetto, we did not know why. The story now is that the Russians stood outside the ghetto and did not want to risk any lives to come in. They liquidated the ghetto street by street, and we had to report to the railroad siding, and to the cattle cars, and it took roughly thirty days for the whole ghetto to be emptied. Eight hundred young people were hidden, and were liberated by the Russians. The rest, which exceeded a hundred thousand, went through Auschwitz. The old ones, and the very young ones, and a lot of women were killed in Auschwitz. The rest of us stayed in Auschwitz, and then were later on sent to various slave labor camps throughout Germany.

Can you recount the days leading up to to leaving Lódz? What happened?

There were not days, there was a notice pasted on the ghetto wall–and there are copies of this notice available–that the ghetto will be totally evacuated. The first transport leaves on August–I forgot the date–the middle of August. And you can either report to the cattle cars on your own or the Germans were going to walk street by street down and take the people out. So, most people, ultimately, reported. I reported with some friends on the first day. So, it took until middle of September, until all of them arrived in Auschwitz.

Can you describe your experience of that day when you reported? What did you see, what did you hear, what was happening?

I took a small bag. It was a long walk, about a two-hour walk, to the railroad siding. Halfway, I stopped at my friend Dorka's house because she lived much further away, and I was tired, and she lived with one of the ghetto policemen in that apartment and her mother. And he came to the door and he said, "Go away, or else." And a little further away, I knocked at the door of Leons and his wife, Zenia, and they didn't let me in either. So, I completed the walk, with that little suitcase to the railroad siding. The cars were open, the cattle cars. They had a ramp, you went up the ramp, some of us got some bread, and when the cars were full, they were closed from the outside. It was a relatively fast process.

You said that most of the people in Auschwitz were from Poland. I’m wondering if there was a sense of being a little different from the others because you were born in Germany and spoke German?

No, I wouldn't say most of them were Polish. The ones in Birkenau, in the camp I was, were Polish Jews. There were Jews from Hungary, there were Jews from various parts of Germany, but you didn't have access to them. They were in different sub-camps, and we were separated by barbed wire. Being together with five-hundred Polish women was no problem for me. I spoke the language, I had friends among them. That didn't bother me.

Did you encounter any Catholics in Auschwitz?

No, I knew there were Catholics in Auschwitz, I knew there were gypsies in Auschwitz, but you did not have a free movement in Auschwitz. Each individual set of barracks was surrounded by barbed wire. So, if you knew that a hundred meters away were some gypsies, you could neither talk to them, nor did you have any contact with them.

Do you think that friendships helped you cope with the experiences?

I think so.

How so?

Well, you develop in close quarters an understanding, you develop tolerance. If you're sick somebody will talk to you. If somebody has spare water, they will give you some water. I don't believe many of us would be here today if it would not have been for those friendships.

We recall that you had a friend, Ellie, that you met in the Lódz ghetto and that you were fortunate enough to have her with you when you went into the cattle cars, Auschwitz, and all the other camps.

Yeah, we are still in touch. She lives in Israel, I live here. [telephone ring in background]

Was there ever a sense of confusion or cynicism about the continuation of friendships because it may have felt like everyday was a struggle?

No, if it was a real friendship, it sustained you, and you took your chances. And I think the friendships among women were much stronger than the ones among men, from what I hear now. Women basically were very supportive. They were understanding. There were exceptions. There were those that would denounce you, there were those that would steal food, there were those that worked for the Germans. Yes, there were exceptions, but those were in the minority.

What did you hear about the men and how they got along?

They had a tougher time. Their work assignments were much tougher, and the survival rate among women is higher—we don't have exact figures—is higher than the rate of men. They could not do with so little food. And in most cases there were not these close relationships.

Thinking about marriage, you said how it wasn't truly a place to have romance.

No, but it still happened, in spite of it.

Thinking about marriage, you said how it wasn't truly a place to have romance.

No, but it still happened, in spite of it.

Did you ever feel a sense or need to have someone, maybe in a romantic sense that could kind of provide that support and protection?

Very rarely, very seldom because it always had an ulterior motive on either side, and that's really no basis for a relationship. I had neighbor, who married the director of the labor department, she is still alive, he died. And there, she divorced her husband, and their marriage lasted till he died last year. I had friend, who had a boyfriend, who was the director of the food department. Nobody knew about it. I only found out after the war, but she never saw him again. So, it's very hard to judge.

In Auschwitz you described that you and the women you were transported with were asked to line up for counting and recounting everyday. Did you ever do any manual labor?

No, we didn't do any manual labor. There was talk about, of pushing some wheelbarrows, but it never came to that.

In the last interview, you recounted a memory of an SS man when he tried to force himself onto you. I’m wondering if you feel comfortable to ellaborate on this?

Well, I had stolen a piece of a scarf, which was strictly forbidden. You paid with your life if they saw it, or knew it. He asked me to translate for him because most of the women talked Polish, and we walked past a bombed out chimney. He put his hand across my mouth, and the other hand went down my body, and he found or felt the rag. He jumped to the conclusion with one word: menstruating. He did not guess that this was a stolen scarf, and he pushed me away. So, I was afraid he would discover, and he wanted quite something else. So, the scarf, I washed, and I wore on my shaven head for many weeks.

How did you feel after this incident?

I put it out of my mind because I knew it was a possibility anytime, anywhere. It had happened before to other people, and there was nothing you really could do.

Regarding the verbal abuse you endured, what affect do you think this abuse had on you?

I don't like verbal abuse in any shape or any language, it bothers me. But it has become an everyday usage. You see it on television, you see it on the street, you hear it in school. I mean, if your vocabulary is so limited that you have to resort to verbal abuse, it's pitiful. But verbal abuse is very painful, if you hear it day, after day, after day.

Did you start to think of yourself not so much as a person anymore, but as a number, particularly because of the verbal abuse?

Yes, we felt as numbers, we didn't feel we had a name, and it didn't matter anymore. It didn't matter if tomorrow did not come, it didn't matter if there would be an end to the war. There came a point when nothing mattered, and you didn't think about tomorrow, and you thought sometimes of suicide, and then you said, "Oh, maybe I can do it another day," but your mind stopped at the here and now, it didn't go any further. It didn't go to the past, it didn't go into the future.