Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Eva Cigler - March 17, 1982

 Burning Bodies

Describe what you saw to me when they were burning these bodies in a pit.

Ah, I see the sky light up.

Did you see them start the fire?

The fire already when I came out I didn't uh, I heard that they was uh, putting some gasoline or something on their body because you could smell the gasoline. [coughs] Excuse me. And af...and after, when they uh, start the fire, we see everything was lighting up because it was the nighttime ??? And that was during 'til four o'clock, five o'clock 'til finally it smothered uh, off. But the burning uh, was just like you light up a, a sky. And you could see it from uh, one you know, in Brezinka, the whole place, you could see the fire because the uh, it was a big fire there where they was burning the bodies.

Were there any other things that you remember during the time you were in Brezinka?

There was a lotta uh, stuff uh, was going on, uh. But that one uh, the fire stayed with you 'til you die. It's never going to go out of you uh, head.

Did you ever have the desire to warn some of these people that you saw going into the gas chamber?

No, because the uh, the SS was there and uh, it's wasn't no use to uh, they were so close already, a couple steps. So uh, that wasn't uh, we just was talking about to each other, "Boy if they know where they're going, maybe they're better off than we are." And one morning uh, when we was coming uh, 'posed to come off from work whatever, they march back through the camp we see big uh, the people was already halfway uh, in and we see a big commotion and we didn't know what the commotion was supposed to go already because the transport uh, went already to the gas chamber. And uh, we see the SS came with a little boy and he was about eight or ten uh, years old. And after that we find that out the little boy at nighttime when they was coming he fell in a gutter. And uh, in the morning when they was going back, the SS in that group uh, they find that little boy and they said "Look, we're not going to take him to the gas chamber. This uh, little boy supposed to uh, looks like ???." And they put them in a children's barrack. They didn't gas him.


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