Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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David Burdowski - May 13, 1982

When we arrived in, in uh, in Auschwitz, I had some friends that we uh, kind of stick together and we used to go to school together. And the selection in Auschwitz, I'm sure you heard of that...

Yes.

They uh, they asked right away who--but we did came from a working camp so it was a little different--but they did ask who is sick or uh, would like to go on a truck. So we come into actually into Birkenau and then we walked into Auschwitz. So some of--they said it's a long walk, so whoever wants to go on a truck and ride into the camp. So some of my friends didn't feel too good so they said they want to go, so they did and I never seen 'em again. They probably take--took 'em right into the gas chambers. And uh, whoever walked in uh, most of 'em didn't survive anyway, but at least we had a fighting chance. And then we were just--went from one camp to another.

They kept moving you around.

Oh yeah.

What other, what other kinds of experiences did you have in the labor camps?

Different in different places, different things like in uh, uh, in the paper factory we worked--for instance, I myself worked uh, from two in the afternoon until eleven at night. And we used to unload uh, truckloads of, of wood you know, from the wood they would make paper. And uh, that particular camp wasn't too bad.

This is Buchwerder Forst?

No, this was in ??? Neustadt. It's uh, not too far from Berlin. And uh, we were, we were there until Auschwitz--from there we were taken into Auschwitz. And uh, the food wasn't very well, but we could survive. And uh, Jaworzno was very bad and from then on it was worse and worse and worse.