Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Eva Cigler - March 17, 1982

After you worked in Brezinka and you were coming home, the other women in your block, they were doing nothing. They must have thought that they were going to the gas chambers too.

I don't know uh, they didn't even uh, still didn't realize

Realize.

there was a gas chamber. No, they didn't want to know about it or uh, they didn't see it. They see uh, the smoke was coming but they said they baking bread there. You shouldn't tell them that, people is doing in there. They're baking bread. So we said good for you that way, so we didn't uh, tell 'em anymore you know, it's not bread there was baking.

So you called it the bakery then.

Yes, some of them call it--yes, the bakery because they see the smoke so uh, and they think for the camp they baking the bread. They couldn't uh, doing the people there. And you couldn't smell uh, the, the skin. I mean that wasn't smell because it was inside already burning. You just smell at night, the outside from that...

The smoke?

the smoke and flesh what was burning inside. You couldn't, just who was working in there.

Could you see the crematorium?

Yes, and I was in one of them.

Okay, what happened to you after you worked in Brezinka?

After we finished there in Brezinka because the transport already was very slow. I think uh, they didn't come every uh, month maybe came a couple people who they caught. And uh, I don't that they put them in the fire for them, they just shoot 'em and burn 'em outside. And after, when we finish that one, we went to uh, from the A block, we finish with the A block, we went to the B block. They took us--always they changed the blocks. Then we went to the B blocks. From the A to the B it's was the gate again and that called the Arbeit uh, camp. That to every...in there everybody was waiting someplace in Auschwitz, around Auschwitz. And then we went to the field uh, working.

You worked in the field.

Yes.

Okay, you--excuse me, let's go back then. You said that you were in side the crematorium.

Yes.

Can you...

I just uh, could see the outside you know uh, the big place. And uh, we could see where the water supposed to come. The showers.

The showers.

But was, uh...