Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Eva Cigler - March 17, 1982

Transport to Bergen-Belsen

The dishes.

The dishes that uh, dishes. Take the dishes because you're never going to go back again to the barrack. So we didn't know what they uh, taking us and sure enough uh, we was marching to the gate and from the gate we see the wagon already standing there. And they put us in a wagon, fifty-by uh, fifty uh, girl. And then the wagon was going about two or three uh, days without uh, stopping to Bergen-Belsen.

How did you go to the bathroom?

Uh, the bathroom we have a pail there, who wants to make it make it. And there was one SS uh, with us in a wagon.

Inside the wagon.

Inside the wagon, yes. And, uh...

A male.

A man. And uh, he was very sorry for us. He said he's not a SS, he just uh, have to uh, go in the Army like the rest of the Germans.

He was a Wehrmacht?

The Wehrmacht, yeah, he wasn't SS, a Wehrmacht. And they said, don't worry the war already gonna soon be over. But if you would stay in Auschwitz the Russia already coming closer and closer. And uh, I think in January uh,

They were liberated.

they were liberated. So we were so lucky they took us to that death camp.

Okay, let me ask you a couple questions. Did you ever hear about in October of 1944 there was a crematorium that was blown up by one of the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz.

In Auschwitz? It could be in Auschwitz, not in Birkenau.

Well, it may have been in Auschwitz, I think it was in Birkenau, I'm not sure.

In Birkenau.

Well, there was uh, October 11, 1944...

Yes.

there was a Sonderkommando that blew up...

Yeah.

one of the crematoriums. Did you ever hear about that?

I heard about that one but I don't uh, they was talking about in the camps. I remember I don't know it was October or uh, November, but I heard about uh, uh, the blowing up. I don't know if they blow it up or not.

They blew it up.

Did they blow it up?

Mm-hm.


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