What Nazi concentration camps were like, told through the …



Nazi concentration camps told through the eyes of people who survived them…

Rudy at Auschwitz - Rudy and his family stayed in a Nazi-run Jewish ghetto for almost two years. Then in 1944, they were told to prepare to move. In the selection below, Rudy describes what happened next.

In March 1944, we got the dreaded notice that we had been selected for resettlement. The train cars they took us in were actually cattle cars. We entered and sat on our baggage. There was not very much room between us and the roof of the cattle car. We were packed tight. We had some water and some food but no comfort whatsoever. The cars were sealed. We could not open them from the inside. The windows were small, open rectangles. Perhaps we could have jumped off the train and run into the countryside, but we did not know if anyone on the outside would help us. We thought people turn us in and we could not speak the language. It seemed better to go along with the SS (Nazi squad) and do what they wanted. The war had been going on for 4 years. We thought the end might be in sight.

Our train left the ghetto at six o'clock in the evening. At night as we traveled, we heard gun shots. We did not know why these shots were fired. After the war, I learned the SS troops were on the roofs of the cattle cars shooting past the windows to discourage people from sticking their heads out. The train was moving fast. We did not know what country we were going through. There was no stopping. At 4 o'clock the next afternoon, we arrived in Auschwitz (Ow-Switch) in Poland. When the train stopped, we thought of trying to escape. But we knew that in Germany most Germans would turn us over to the local authorities for a reward of money or food. We didn’t know if the Poles would be any different. We had no food or money. So in the end, to keep our family together, we dropped any plans of attempting to escape.

The doors of the cattle car were yanked opened. We heard men shout, "Out, as soon as you can, out. Your belongings you leave there!" We pocketed what we could and assembled outside. Before us stood land surrounded by electrically-charged barbed wire. This was the Auschwitz death camp. Troops of the SS assembled us into long rows to march. We were marched up and down between posts of barbed wire with a huge sign, EXTREME DANGER, HIGH VOLTAGE ELECTRICAL WIRES. We saw guard towers high above us. We saw men with machine guns inside them, but even then we did not know that we were in a death camp. Back and forth and back and forth, they just kept us in motion. As it got closer to one o'clock in the morning, we were more and more desperate. You could hear more and more cries for food.

Finally they set out large boxes. Everybody had to put in their valuables. Women and men were forced to strip off wedding rings. Whatever we had, we lost. Those who did not give up their possessions willingly were beaten. Then we were separated into male and female groups. The women's camp was separated from the men's camp. The men in charge of the barracks (sleeping cabins) were German criminals taken from German prisons. They made us give up anything they wanted. The only thing I had that they wanted was a leather jacket. I told my father that I regretted having to give my jacket. He said, "Child, if we ever get out of here, I'll buy you ten of these."

In the morning we got metal cups and spoons. We were each given two slices of bread and sometimes a pat of margarine. The coffee was toasted acorns ground up. It tasted terrible. The midday meal was potato soup with maybe a little bit of meat. We were already hungry from the ghetto because we did not get enough to eat. In Auschwitz we were beginning to starve. In the evening we got another slice of bread and some coffee. We thought about running away, but what could we have done? There were guard-posts everywhere, and high tension wires in between. We would all have been killed.

We noticed there was always this sickly sweet smell in the air at Auschwitz. We saw a large chimney belching smoke 24 hours a day. We saw German military ambulances with the Red Cross symbol on them going back and forth. The Germans had painted the symbol on the vehicles to hide their true purposes. Much later we found out these ambulances were carrying military guards or cyanide poison gas canisters for use in the gas chambers.

We made the best we could of the situation. My younger brother had hidden a book. We read it. We memorized it. We had a deck of cards. We played card games. There wasn't anything else we could do. Eventually my brother got a job laying a stone road. They gave him a half a portion of food more. But the work was excruciating. We were desperate for food. My mother watched where geese fed to figure out what wild plants we could eat. She gathered them whenever she could and we ate them. We were starving. We had not had enough to eat for 4 months. We hoped in 1944 that the end of the war was in sight.

At Auschwitz people died of huger because they had come to the camps already weakened. The people who had died were stacked like wood, naked, without dignity. Nobody to close their eyes. They were stacked 4 feet high. Every 24 hours a cart came. People were simply grabbed by the hand and foot and tossed on there. We knew they were taken to the crematory to be incinerated, but we still had no knowledge of the gas chambers and that people were killed or gassed in such numbers as they were. We never fully understood why we had not been killed.

Pincus at Auschwitz - In 1942 Pincus and his brother were taken from a ghetto where they had lived for around two years to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.

When we got to Auschwitz at night, we had to undress completely and line up before the gate. A Nazi officer was pointing left, right, right, left. I was fortunate. I went to the right. The ones to the left went to the crematorium. The ones to the right went into the camp. It was dark, but I could see the people to the left were mostly elderly or young children, so I realized that we were going into the camp. Inside the camp first they shaved our hair. We were stark naked and they tattooed us. I am 161253. They gave us cold showers. It was November. Bitter cold. Then they put us in striped uniforms and took us into Birkenau (Beer-Kin-Now), the killing center at Auschwitz. I was fortunate. After I had been there 4 weeks, I was sent to a labor camp within Auschwitz and they gave us a little better food. We had to work 9 or 10 hours a day. When we first came there, we worked unloading gravel and coal from trains. If you didn't finish your assigned task, you got a beating. We were clothed in an undershirt and a thin, striped coat. We worked outside when it was 15 below zero. People just froze to death. The hunger was also terrible. We used to search for a potato peel and fight over it.

Every few months we had what they called a “selection”. They came into the barracks and picked out the people who looked very skinny and couldn't work anymore. They looked you over, and if they didn't see much fat on you, they put down your number. The next morning they came with trucks, picked up these people and put them right in the crematorium. It was heartbreaking. In January, 1945, the Russians came close to Auschwitz. The Germans took us from the camp and marched us west away from the approaching army. They moved us out in a dead march. We marched a whole night to a Polish city 70 miles away. My brother kept saying to me, "Let's escape." I kept telling him that this was not the time because I knew we were still in German territory. I said, "Where are you going to hide? The population, they are not friendly." But he wouldn't listen. Suddenly I didn't see him anymore. Since then I lost him. I was with him the whole time in Auschwitz.

Bluma at Bergen-Belsen - Bluma Goldberg was born in Poland. When the Nazis invaded her town in 1939, they set fire to most of it. Bluma's house was destroyed and the family moved in with an uncle. Bluma and her sister spent several months hiding in the dense forests near their village. After learning that someone had informed on them to the Nazis, they decided to turn themselves in to Nazi authorities. After working in a bullet factory, they were moved again to the Bergen-Belsen (Burg-In Bell-Sen) concentration camp in Germany.

When we arrived in Bergen-Belsen, they stripped us of all of our personal belongings. They gave each of us prison clothes. Any jewelry that we had was taken away from us. They took us to the barracks. It was winter and very cold. There was no water and no bathrooms.

Every morning they got us up at five o'clock and they counted us. After this roll call, they gave us a cup of coffee. For lunch they gave us watery potato soup made of potato peels and a piece of black bread. In the evening, we received only a cup of black coffee. In Bergen-Belsen diseases spread quickly; many people became sick with typhoid fever. Some people just went crazy. They started talking to themselves. The Nazis just wanted people to die there from hunger and disease. The only work we had was to carry a pile of junk from one end of the place to another. We all lost a lot of weight. We were there for three months and if we had been there for another three months, I don't think anybody would have survived. We had lice all over us. I cried a lot. I didn't want to live any more -- the cold, hunger, and disease. One day we got lucky again. A German military commission came. They were looking for workers for an airplane factory. They looked us over as we went by. Some were told to go right and the others to go left. I was lucky. I went right and finally my sister also went right. They took us out of Bergen-Belsen and we went to a factory. They made airplanes there. My job was painting the number on the airplane. Months later Germany surrendered. I do not know how I survived.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download