This is the gate of Auschwitz when you come in. It says Arbeit macht frei
in German which means 'works makes you free.'
We came off the trains where there was no food, no washrooms, just packed in like sardines.
I couldn't understand it. My parents kept me near them,
comfortable, as much as they could. And then they took us off the trains,
and they separated the men from the women, and they shaved us and then they gave me,
they hurt me with a number, tattooing a number. I didn't understand it.
I didn't know what it was.
The idea that there is such a thing as a gas chamber would
never occur to anybody. Even today people don't believe it
We had to undress and we were under showers, cold showers, lasted maybe
30 seconds, and then we were tattooed, I still have a number, a tattooed number.
They took us into the shower, my mother, my aunt, and me, and by that time we knew,
my mother knew already, and my aunt that usually when they take you to
the shower they gas you, like they take you to the gas chambers.
But this time they opened the door and they let us out, and they separated me from my mother and
my aunt, and they took me to Birkenau.
In Birkenau they put us
into the barracks, and of course they did it very quickly,
you have to go fast and if you didn't they would be somebody with a dog on
the leash and they would beat you, but we still didn't know what was the
gas chambers. I thought these were bakeries because, to supply you know
the huge chimneys, a lot of smoke coming out. There was a fellow that I
knew from Terezin and we are walking, and he asked me, "what are those chimneys there?"
I said that's where they kill, burn the people they kill.
I said I can't believe it, couldn't believe it.
They put me into a barrack with children,
and thank God I recognized a couple of boys and they were a little
bit older and they explained me, they helped me a little bit, told me, advised
me what to do and what not to do. And I was, I just think I was just plain lucky.
I hid whenever they meet roll calls, thank God they didn't take me out,
and there's a few times that they did take out, thank God I came back.
Because most of the children when they took them out for the experiments they never
brought them back.
Do you know the death marches, you just went on, and on, and on,
terrible weather, and my brother fell. He was after illness, and my father stayed
back to try to get him get him up to keep going, and the SS says,
"get going, get going!"
And they could not, so they were both shot. My mother was two weak,
so she was not, so she went to the gas chamber.
Well I was four years old when the war started, I didn't go to school at all.
I never played with any children, I was mostly with adults or working or being hidden.