Bella Camhi - November 18, 1999
Conditions on Train
Uh. So, so you get to the train station and then what happened?
Ach. What happened. Three weeks, the worst weeks, the worst days of anybody lives.
Three weeks.
In the train, in the wagon.
Three weeks!
Three weeks. And once a week they let us go out. And they're stopping now in a place where is you know, there is not l...uh, like a little mountain. You know, you know how you go and there was falling, they were uh, twirling around and they were with that stick and uh, uh...
??? *
And there you were making, there you were doing. And they did picked up a lot of ???. A lot of food. So.
On the train, you were in a box car.
Uh, a box car and we were you know, snuggle that you couldn't even move. Eighty-five people in one wagon.
What do you remember about that train?
I, I, I can't forget it.
Tell me.
I just can't forget it.
Tell me what is was like.
Sitting in there and I says to myself, this is not justice. This is--if God is there, I start taking it with Him, from so religion, I started not believing anymore. How can a human flesh go through? We were sitting and we were fighting and calling name. You couldn't move. You just couldn't--it was no move. And the more stuff we brought it was taken from out of the space for the human being. Oh God, that train, that train it was... I just can't believe how we survive. I can't believe it.
What did people do for toilets?
Uh, in there.
Right there.
Right there.
So the smell must have been pretty bad.
Not only did the smell, you, you could choke. I mean, I don't think uh, where it was air coming through there.
Why do you think it took three weeks?
Well, to go from here with the train that uh, to...
To Birkenau?
to Germany. It used to take a week to go to Israel. A whole week.
It's maybe ten hours by train.
In Greek, in--to Israel.
From Salonika to...
Well, you can't go to...
to Poland.
you can.
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