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4-Cattle Car, Auschwitz & Bergen-Belsen

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The cattle cars were overcrowded, they were very hot, because whenever I was in a cattle car it was either fall or summer. There was no water, there were no toilets, there were no buckets. People were crying, people were screaming. Some lost their mind. It was total confusion and a lot of fear. There was really no interaction. You didn't have a conversation, you didn't talk, you didn't look at the people around you. It was a dehumanizing event. It reminded me of sheep being loaded into a cattle car and shipped from one town to another.

These transports happened in '44 and '45. Whether they were any different at the beginning of the war than towards the end, I have no way of telling. Towards the end of the war there wasn't even enough energy left to speculate where we were going, what we were going to do. The doors were not open. There was no chance for escape, and it would have been hopeless.

I'd never been in a cattle car before. I had seen them, but I had never been inside. The cattle car that stands in Washington that is supposedly from the Polish government and is one of the authentic cattle cars, it is not. It is a miniature. It's not as large as the one we used and I have photos, which I've obtained. They are considerably larger, but it gives you an idea.

We didn't question anything anymore. We had seen the worst and the cattle car was just a part of it. I sat next to Dr. [Oskar] Singer who was the chief statistician of the ghetto. I sat next to his daughter. We didn't talk, not a word. We were going a distance from Lódz to Krakow, which you can drive by car in half a day. It took us three days because troop transports had preference and we stopped. If I were to equate the cattle cars to everything else that had happened, they were way on the bottom of the list. It was just an inhuman way of transporting human beings.

Relationships in Camps

When you were in the camps, the ghetto, and the cattle cars, did you get lonely at times?

Yes. I felt lonely and I was alone, because there was no family, there was nobody; there was no reminder from home. Not a piece of paper, not a piece of clothing. Nothing. But my friend from the ghetto was with me since the ghetto to liberation. Her mother died a couple of days afterward. We were fairly close and we both knew that we had no control, we had no way to change what was happening to us. And I don't think it mattered to us anymore.

Bergen-Belsen

What was the trip like to Bergen-Belsen?

Partly, we were pushed onto an open truck. And with ropes we were tied down. And then from Bergen to Belsen we had to walk. When we came near the camp we saw a big metal gate—similar to Auschwitz—and two huge mountains of shoes—one on the right, one on the left. But they were only shoes—no legs, no feet, nothing. As we were walked to the barracks we saw the barbed wire. We saw the guards. And we saw hundreds of bodies lying in the pathways, lying in a big open pit. And somebody explained to us that they had all died from hunger and from typhus. And after a couple of days in Bergen-Belsen we knew that you could not live longer than three or four weeks in this place. You would either catch typhus or die of starvation because the Germans had stopped to bring in any kind of food.

Looking back at the various camps, none of them were good. To my way of thinking, the ghetto was the worst. And then Bergen-Belsen, and then Auschwitz. All we hear about now is Auschwitz. The Holocaust begins and ends with Auschwitz. It was not the worst of all places. It depended how you died. In Auschwitz you were gassed and cremated. In the ghetto you lived, you starved, you died. It was much worse. But different people have different experiences. I have a couple of acquaintances who worked for two years in Auschwitz, in the office, who had privileged status. I know two young men slightly older than I was—I know them now, I didn't know them then—who worked outside and escaped with the help of two young women, which was very rare. But looking back, the ghetto is not to be described. There are no words for it.

How did friendships affect you in the ghetto and the camps?

When I was sick my friend would bring me water, if there was water. She would talk to me. When I had a high fever, she would sit with me. I don't know whether we ever shared a piece of bread. I doubt it, because there was so little. There was caring, there was a friendship. And it helped to survive knowing there was another human being.

Hunger and Survival

What were the effects of hunger? Were people fighting over food?

People were fighting over food. People were stealing food. If you lived in the same room your food on the shelf got less and less even though you weren't home. People, when they went without food for a long time, they were swelling up. They accumulated liquid or water. They could not walk, they could not put on a shoe, and ultimately they died from hunger. People who had talked before the war of medicine, literature or engineering, their conversation now was only about food. And that is really demeaning. It is so basic, it's like an animal instinct.

Did you have romantic relationships in the ghetto?

Yes, I met somebody who was my boss. He was separated from his wife but he couldn't get a divorce or he didn't get a divorce. And he died a couple of years ago. We saw each other after the war. He talked a lot about "after the war and what we would do." And in due time I knew that he was way too selfish and self-centered. He was very bright but he didn't like people. He wrote 22 books. I had thought that he would look for me after the war. He was very close but he did not. And that is when I knew that this relationship was not worthwhile.

What other kinds of experiences did you see other people having in terms of romantic or sexual relations in the camps or ghetto?

Some people would get married—Rumkowski performed the ceremony. A lot of marriages broke up. The ghetto elite—everybody had a girlfriend or two, that was customary. It was not a good place for romance of any kind. There were abortions in the ghetto, which was illegal. It was really a society without rules, without conscience, without thinking about the consequences or thinking about the future. It was today only.

What were some examples of that?

I had a friend who was killed in Sweden. She was much older than I was, perhaps 10 or 12 years. She was very beautiful. She was divorced. Her husband used to be an officer in the army but I never met him. She always was very well dressed, and she never seemed to be hungry. And towards the end of the war she went to Sweden because she found her sister there. And I never could figure out why or how she managed. And I never asked. And after the war she told me that several times per week the director of the food department—who was married and had two children—would come with his horse drawn buggy and a driver, and visit. And they kept it so quiet that nobody knew, not even the neighbors, because he made sure the wagon did not stop there. And that relationship went on throughout the entire war. I don't know if his wife survived, but he survived. But they never met again, they never talked again. She married in Sweden.

And it was just amazing the stories you heard, and what went on behind the scenes and how often the partners changed. The higher your rank in the ghetto, the more men or the more women. That was pretty much taken for granted. To a 16 year old, it was pretty difficult to understand.

I had a neighbor across the hallway. She was married to a ghetto policeman —very good looking, very pleasant. She came over and talked to my mother a great deal in Polish, before I learned Polish. Her father was the head of a food store. Her name before the war used to be Solomonovicz. She was married to Yakubovicz. One day I met her on the street. And she has on brand new leather boots, a fur-lined coat and looked marvelous. And I said, "What happened to you?" And she said, "I got divorced and I'm getting married." And I asked, "So whom are you marrying?" "The head of the Department of Labor." And they both survived the war and came to the United States but I never saw her again. So anything was possible, anything was feasible. I had another classmate who lives in Scandinavia who was the girlfriend of the commander of Bergen-Belsen, the German commander. It took all kinds.

Was there a specific person or event that helped you survive the war?

No. It was either luck or destiny or something that I did not in any way control.

Were there tactics that you had learned as a child that you used?

No. I only knew that I didn't want to leave the ghetto, because the ghetto was miserable, another place might be worse. But otherwise there were no tactics, no anticipation. You couldn't predict the Germans. The ghetto people that were sent out of the ghetto in various transports, we were led to believe that they were going to a labor camp, someplace, somewhere. We had no idea that they would end up in Chelmno in a mass grave. In fact I had a death certificate from my sister—which my friend sent me from Poland after the war—and it said in poor English that my sister was dead, and what happened to the children on these transports everybody knows and they disappeared in Auschwitz. None of them disappeared in Auschwitz, they disappeared in Chelmno. But that was 1946, we didn't know yet.

How did you maintain your will to survive?

Towards the end I had no more will. It was just whichever way it goes, it goes. It didn't matter anymore.

So you never gave up?

In a sense I did give up because I just stopped caring. My health held out until liberation. Did I ever give up? I contemplated suicide. And life after the war wasn't any better either, until you could get out of a displaced person camp. You asked yourself, "What did I do to deserve this?" And there were no answers. Looking back, all of us who came out of the war are damaged, mentally damaged. It's just a matter of degree. Some seem functional, others don't function. But the damage is there, even if you don't show it.

In the ghettos and the camps, did you have religious practices? Did you keep up with any of that? Did you know anybody who did?

No. I knew somebody who did, some very Orthodox—ultra Orthodox—Jews. I did not. As Ellie Weisel was quoted as saying, and I think it was his first book, "After Auschwitz there is no religion." And he only was in a camp for six months. From May to January. So, that should tell you a lot.

Your experiences in the ghetto and camps went on for several years. Can you give any examples where people from the town and people from outside the camp had contact with camp people?

Not a single one. The camp had no sewers. It had no underground pipes that would go in here and come out over there. There was no contact. None. There was a broken down radio, which didn't always work and didn't give us the information we really wanted to hear.

Did you witness the opportunity for townspeople to have knowledge about what was going on in the ghetto?

Yes, because they could look through the barbed wire. Where we lived in the room, there was a guard house down below and across the street was a bakery. And the bakery is still there. And they could see us and we could see them carrying the bread. We could even smell the warm bread. But nobody would look at us, nobody would talk to us. I had a friend who became friendly with a German guard with a post. He once or twice supplied some bread, and he brought some medication into the ghetto for her brother. But otherwise I don't know of anyone.

Can you describe your time in Bergen-Belsen?

There was nothing to be done in Bergen-Belsen. The barracks were overcrowded. If you wanted to walk to the latrine, it was a long walk and the walkways were covered with dead bodies. Food came in very seldom. The barracks opposite ours were women from Czechoslovakia. The barracks in back of us were the Dutch. And it was just a day-to-day existence. It smelled terribly from the decaying bodies. And we knew that nobody could last very long in this place.