Bella Camhi - November 18, 1999
Evacuation from Birkenau
Do you remember was there ever any uh, any other resistance? Did they, did they blow up one of the crematorium?
No, no. When I was--when I was there. You see, oh God, January 16, 194...beginning of--end of '42. All of a sudden they came, they took me, finally they took me away from where I was for almost two years.
1945, January of '45.
'43, 44, I mean. '44.
'44.
And they took us to Brzezinki. A small town. This sounds weird. We have a house there just like you see in the movies. Fluffy pillows, fluffy blankets. Silk sheets. And I says to the girl, Sh'ma Yisroel Adonai Elohim, boy, we're gone." It felt good to sleep, you know. We were just in hay. No blanket, no nothing. No, not a ??? anything. What now? We have breakfast cereals. I--you think am I dreaming those things? Am I making them up by wanting them so bad? It drives me crazy. When I only think about it, it drives me nuts. So--we were there a week.
Who, who went? How many, how many of them...
The group of us. About twenty of us. You know, each uh, each block was separate in, in twenty girls. You know, ???.
So the German soldiers came and they took you away.
They took us away.
By train again?
With uh, no, those long wagons and the horses.
Uh-huh.
Uh, then we walk for, I don't know, two, four hundred feet, four hundred feet. Then they dumped us off. [pause] And we were for six months laying around in nowhere. No people.
This is after Brezinka.
Right.
To get to Brezinka, how did you get there?
Oh they took us. It was not far from uh, Lager A to Brezinka. It was like, like just jumping a...
So you just walked.
Right. From here to ???.
You spent a week on this vacation...
Yeah.
and then you got on a wagon...
Right.
and they dumped you in a field.
Yeah, they dumped us in the field. And let me tell you, it took us six months of walking. We had no strength. Like I says, I was skin and bone.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn