Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

• Contents
• Map

David Burdowski - May 13, 1982

What kinds of--other than the paper mill--what other kinds of jobs or, or duties did you have at the camps?

Uh, coal mines. In Jaworzno was nothing but a coal mine. In every, in every camp it did help me personally being a barber, it helped me a lot because I could uh, work as a barber and not make any money, but maybe make a little uh, piece of bread more or uh, a couple spoons of soup more. This was the, the only uh, thing you got for--because nobody had any money, nobody had anything more than what we did, so.

You, you cut the prisoners' hair?

Yeah.

Not the gua...not the, not the guards.

In some, in, in some uh, camps I cut the guards' hair and they didn't even have the money.

Did you know of any uh, uh experiments or, or medical experiments?

Going on in Auschwitz?

Yeah.

No, because I was only in Auschwitz about two or three weeks. I, I really don't--we don't know. We used to live like, like, like, like cows. We never know what day it was, or what date it is or anything but we knew that uh, from Auschwitz we had to go out fast. And the other thing was to--don't forget I was very young. I didn't know too much what was going on and that's probably the only thing that was going for me was, was I was so young. So that's the only way I could survive. And being young, you didn't, didn't know what, what was ahead of you or what to think what's going to be ahead of you. That's the only thing what kept you going. The only thing you had on your mind is how to get a little food. That's all you had on your mind, food. Hoping that uh, this thing will--this nightmare will end anytime.