Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Eva Cigler - March 17, 1982

Organization of the Ghetto

What kind of advice?

What kinda advice. UH, they should uh, talk more freely about what going around or they should open their mouth uh you know, complaining, uh. The whole situation is rotten and you can't wash or you couldn't bathe or uh, or ask for more food or something. But they hush us you know, don't open the mouth, you're going to get beat up. So you just do it the way you could manage it.

In other words they didn't treat you cruelly, they tried to advise you.

Yeah, they tried to advise.

Who selected these people to be head of the sections?

Uh the, yeah, group.

Oh you voted.

Yeah, voted you know. Not, sometime you do--voted, sometimes they elect their self because they said they had more experience. So uh, we said, if you have more experience you want be a leader, so uh, you could have the job.

Did they ever have meetings with the Germans?

No. Not that I...

No. Was there ever any one man that was head of all of the Jewish people?

One man?

Yes, one man or one small group?

I don't think so.

Who did the cooking for the Jews in the ghetto? You were there six weeks, that was a long time.

Yeah, I'd sa...the Jewish people mostly.

Where did they get the food from?

The Hungarian bring it in, the food must be...

You don't know.

I don't know.

Okay.

Because uh, I could go uh, to that neighbor and uh, cook there, so I don't pay too much attention uh, really where the food was coming or uh, sometime they're eating.

Your parents were able to buy a little something...

Right.

so that you could eat a little extra.

Yeah, right.

Did people starve in the ghetto?

Some of them who didn't have the money you know, the poor one from uh, out of town. Uh, I'm sure they would like more food to eat.


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