Olga Adler - July 26, 1982
Concentration Camp 2
Did you see others shot who fell?
Oh yeah, oh sure. I was, I was a young girl but there were older people. If I would have to do it today I would never survive it. But I mean there are older people there. So, there was a big fence and there was a small colonel standing there watching the transport going by and I was, I had my shoes in my hand and I was barefoot and the ground was frozen and I went there and I said that, please let me stay here. I can't put my... Because everyday a new transport arrived there, you know, so that you have to cook there, you had to clean there. You had to clean the, the, the toi... there wasn't toilet, the holes in the ground, you know you had to make. And there was work to be done. So, I was almost out of the gates when I went to that, that colonel and I said, look I can't put my shoes back—it was an older man that time—I would work anything. I would do anything, just please let me stay here. And he looked at me and he said, stay. I stayed in there... He sent me to a peasant's house after months and months and months and they warmed water up for me and I took a bath. And I came back and he looked behind my ears and he said, "Next time do better." As I say, there were human beings. And I stayed in that camp for about three weeks. Now in that three weeks, I worked... There were, were old people as I say that they couldn't walk. They put them on horse and buggies. And I dragged them up there, I held them up there, I fought for them to be able to go, rather they should go than the other one. And I was a big help in that camp. I really worked and I got, as, as everybody get dy... got dysentery. You know this terrible diarrhea?
Yeah.
Which I got too because the hygienic was that, it was impossible not to get it. So, I got it and I was laying down in the, in the stall, which was quite clean because we, we... Oh my God, there were people who died and they put them near the fence and they covered them with the hay and then the horses came and the horses ate the hay off the corpses and the corpses were lying there. And uh, I heard one of the officers say that, please go into the officers' kitchen and bring a bottle of wine and give it to this girl, it would be a shame if she would die on us. And they did help me out, I didn't die. They gave me a little quinine and they gave me wine. And in a few days, like a horse I stood up and I, I continued my things. And then, one day the, if they came to send the people away, the transports away who were there, so when they... we had to stand in line. If they came and they took from this half, the officer put me to this half. If they came to put me at, from this, he put me to this, that I stay there. I stay there. And, but there was one day...
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