Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Eva Cigler - March 17, 1982

Mm-hm. Did you work in a building?

Uh, no, it's, it's a barrack, this wasn't a building, it's wood, wood.

And there were tables?

Tables? No.

Where was the clothing?

The clothing was piled on each other. You know, like a warehouse, you throw everything in there. Just was packed with everything what you uh, could think of.

Was there a lot of clothing?

A lot of clothing. And not just that uh, block, not just that one barrack. Was, there was a couple barracks uh, with clothing, about three or four uh, barracks with clothing.

So fifty women worked in your barrack at night.

Yes. And fifty where it looks like in daytime who was living in that place.

Oh.

Because there was, I think, a hundred girls or fifty girls who worked there.

You think they worked the same place you did.

Yes, but we didn't see them because we were working uh, night shift and they work in the day shift.

How many hours were the night shift?

We went there about uh, three thirty and came back uh, seven in the morning. So it was a long uh, night shift, about ten. Oh, no more than ten.

Three thirty, about sixteen hours.

Yeah. 'Bout sixteen, fifteen hours sometime you know. Sometime they took us out six o'clock and sometime they took us out three thirty. So it depends on when the guy came with the dog, the SS came with the dog. Then, uh...

Oh they came for you.

Oh sure. We couldn't walk with the Kapo or anything. The SS had...

No.

No, it was two SS or sometime four SS with the, the dogs or sometimes without the dogs who uh, walk us in that uh, place where we was working.

But mostly you sorted the clothing.

Yes, we sorted the clothing and was at nighttime. And at nighttime the crematorium was going in full speed. And the transport was coming uh, at nighttime. I don't know how many trains. And they gassed them inside and they didn't have a place to burn 'em already, so they burned 'em outside. And we could uh, the people, some of 'em wasn't already gassed, some of them was in uh, screaming and they just throw 'em in the fire and the fire was uh, looked like everything is burning inside, such a big fire it was. And the smell was just terrible. The skin. Just--I put sometime in it's uh, the smoke is right away I smell it like I uh, in the camp.