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Emerich Grinbaum - January 8, 2001

[interruption in interview]

...stomach, which we, for months didn't eat nor...regular food.

So they died right there.

Right there.

And you...

Several, in the, in the-they died right there in the, eitherin the uh, uh, in the place, or later on, you know. I know that. I had a goodfriend, I remember a Fried, F...Fried. He-they survived. The boy was coupleof years older than me and he was with his father. I remember Fried. And thefather died there, father. I remember that particular case. Because they ateand he died. He got diarrhea and, and, and, and, and they died.

Again, I-I'm curious. You're fifteen now. Right?

At that time I was fifteen.

Fifteen. You're watching people dying and...

Eh, yeah.

What kind of reaction did it have in you?

You know what, I'm telling you, the, oh, psychology was we didn'tcare much, you know. There was such a apathy, apathy then as to the dying.The only thing we cared, to survive, to have some food and not to be beatenup. And that's, those you know, that was, and that's all we cared during thewhole period, you know. We didn't, died, died, so we didn't care. I'm tellingyou, for instance, when the uh, the last several months when the Americansand, and the English came bombing, nobody had any fear whatsoever. You wouldn'tbelieve that. You know, we just, we were alive, we're happy. We're waitingfor them. Because if they allow, and there was several of us then we had-couldlie down and not uh, not to work. That's all we, we cared about that.

You mentioned a Dar...Darwinian survival of the fittest whenthe other people were taken, lost the job in the kitchen, you said that'sto survive.

Right. Yes.