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Franka Charlupski - June 18, 1985

When they started the deportations, when you and your family were taken, how did you find out about that, and tell me what happened when the transport came?

I don't know. You know what, I don't know how I found out about that, the only thing I remember is being near the cattle wagons. I don't know if we were told, or we were taken without notice, I don't remember it. The only thing I do remember is being at the train station, not the station where regular trains go by but where the cattle station was, and being pushed into the cattle car. But I don't remember how and when. I know it was in August, I don't know the exact date. And we came into Auschwitz, it took three days, I think.

Can you describe the trip?

The trip. Oh yeah. Oh, very well. Uh, we put on ourselves whatever we could. That means if I had two dresses, I put both on hoping that I'll have it. Uh, I had one pair of shoes so there wasn't more to take than one pair of shoes. I don't think I had a ring. I don't think so. Whatever you could. They told you. Whatever, just what you have on yourself and what you can carry in your hand. And uh, my husband naturally did the same thing. As a matter of fact, we both had new shoes. And uh, this is what we put on. And we went to the station. Or we went or we were taken, I really don't remember. It's amazing that I don't remember it at all. It's like it never happened. But I do remember being in the cattle car and uh, we were, oh God, in one cattle car maybe 100 people. One on top of the other, no facilities, uh, people were dying right and left and right in the car from the heat, from hunger -- uh, from the smell, we would um, make like little holes with whatever we had to get a breath of air, and that is how we got to Auschwitz. And once we came into Auschwitz, we were separated left and right.

Were you with your parents on the train?

Yes. With my parents and my sister.

They were right next to you?

Right next to me. And um, once we came in, like I said, we held on to my mother and that was the biggest mistake, I think. It's possible not. Uh, if it was fate or what. But I think that at that time, my mother was, in 1944, my mother was 44 years old, [pause] and a healthy looking woman, I'm sure, she would have survived if we didn't hang on to her. She would have gone to work like all the other woman. But they did take her out and we never saw her again.