Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Bella Camhi - November 18, 1999

What number?

The number.

The number is what?

Forty-one nine. No. Forty-one, one ninety-four. And uh, after that we got to the shower. In the meantime, we hear whistling, whispering you know, from the side of the fence. The other people there. And there is a gas uh, shower and is a, a real shower and being in the shower I'd--oh God, I remember, remember my place. Ah. So when we heard the water--when I heard the water coming it was a relief, but I don't know for what. A relief of the beginning of suffering. And this went on in the morning. They would get you up five o'clock in the morning. All you get is a shisel of coffee. A whole pot of coffee. And lunch was the same pot. They put you some soup, Kartofel soup. You know, potato soup.

Uh-huh.

And in the evening you'll get a part of--let's say the bread is there you get a part of a piece and butter. Sometimes uh, salamis that stinkin' cheese, you know. And I adapted to it you know, I wanted those things here and I go look for it. And for years I bought it. Like kielbasa. Like uh, that uh wurst, liverwurst. I took a like, you know. And so now they change everything. Whatever you buy here is no good to. But it used to be so delicious in the fifties. That bloody salami, you know.

Blood salami. Yeah. Blut, blut, blutwurst.

Yeah.

Blutwurst.

It's got some specks, whatever it is. I don't know. It was good.

And what did...

It was good probably because we were hungry!

That's right. And what did you do during the day?

Oh, like I says, my life is not bad today. But I have a life of running that you couldn't leave it. I was working in the transports. I gotta find that picture too. Uh, somebody, I don't know how, how they could snap a picture. I, I can't remember this either. Puzzles me. You know the bunch of girls, they were very ni...and I am there all scrunched up, a little girl, I was twenty already.

Standing in rows, you mean?

Uh? No, no, no, we were sitting there, it was the liberation already.

Oh, okay.

I don't know who, who got the camera.

The Russians?

Oh, the Russians. The Russians was the worst soldiers in the world.

What did you do in the transport?

Oh I took all your stuff.