On this page I am including excerpts from interviews with survivors of the Holocaust.
I: Were you all basically in a line? E: No, it wasn't really a line, it was a line and a line and a line, if was almost like a grouping. When we were in the front line we saw that the Kapos were shaving the hair, all body hair. And if you looked at the women, once the hair was shaven it was just, it was a sight that was so terrible that it really didn't, at that moment, compare to anything we had seen. You saw those bowling balls with protruding ears and those frightened eyes and it was like, something out of a nightmare. They yanked Ellie out of line and they cut her, she had long black hair, they cut her hair and before I knew it I was next. The SS woman who gave the order to the Kapo, who was essentially a prisoner, to shave my hair, was short and blonde and squat. And fat, the uniform didn't fit and she wore glasses. I hated her, I don't think I've ever hated anybody as much. I don't know whether she saw or whether she felt, but she slapped me very hard and I just reeled over to one side. After the hair was gone, they pushed us through sort of a swinging door and the top part of the swinging door was glass. And in one second I saw a reflection that was I. Ears, an oval head, and eyes. It was nobody I knew. It was horrifying, that sight. There was some cold showers, we were sort of rushed through them, if you got a drop of water, yes, if you didn't you didn't. At the other end an SS woman started laughing and she said, the gas chambers are overworked tonight, or today. We'll get you tomorrow. There's plenty of time. We had never heard of gas chambers. We didn't know what it was.
http://www.remember.org/witness/wit.sur.luc.html
I: What was there to eat? L: Well, we got a slice of bread which most of the time had green mold on it. For a day. A cup of water. For the day. Or was a cup of tea, really, it was a horrible smelling thing. And then you got, which was your dinner as far as I remember, it looked like there was a couple of, a few potato peels, dirty ones. I believe I heard someone say that there were a couple of pieces of meat floating around that if they found a dead horse someplace they used it to throw it in there. A couple of pieces. I believe that was, I don't really know a whole lot about it. That was the food, it was...I don't know whether I was so fussy or what, I couldn't I could not deal with that. And I'm not really a super hungry person in the first place, but it didn't look like anything you could open a mouth to. You had to really be hungry, like my sister Toby.
http://www.remember.org/witness/wit.sur.lazar.html
"When we got to Auschwitz, which I didn't know it was Auschwitz, I didn't know nothing about it; I did not know about concentration camps, I did not know what was going on at all. When we got there they told us, 'Raus, raus, raus!' They didn't let us take the clothes at all, they started separating women from men. Cries. It was just terrible. The husbands were from wives, the mothers from sons, it was just a nightmare. I started to get diarrhoea, I was sick and diarrhoea, suddenly. We started going through the… through the gate; the SS men were on both sides. And the girls, young people that could see what state I was in, they had a bit of sugar and they started putting sugar in my mouth to revive me. And when they were going through the gates, they were just holding me up, and was left and right, left and right. I went to the right, they told me to go to the right, the SS men. And we had to be…. we were…. they formed us like fifths, five, five, five, we had to stay in five, five girls. And it was dark; it was dark, and they are starting to march us. And can you imagine the screams, the…. the mother was going to the left, the daughter was going to the right, the babies going to the left, the mothers going to the right, or the mothers went together with the babies… Oy oy! I cannot explain to you the cries and the screams, and tearing their hair off. Can you imagine?"
Barbara Stimler Born 1927, Alexsandrow, Poland. Camp in Kutno, Lodz/Litzmannstadt ghetto, Auschwitz camp 1943, work camp at Pirshkow. Death march to Odra. Liberated by Russians. Married, two children.
http://www.education.bl.uk/projects/voices/audio_stimler3.htm
