Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Eva Cigler - March 17, 1982

Conditions in Bergen-Belsen II

A sty? Oh the food?

The food.

The cornmeal.

The corn... It's wasn't corn uh, beets.

Beets.

Yeah. Not the red beets, it's was the yellow one.

Mm-hm.

But we didn't care what kind stuff we gonna get, steal. At night, my sister was so skinny already, the younger one, and uh, she could go under the gate and go out there. It's wasn't walking distance too much, you could reach but you have to go out and go down and take a couple uh, that beet and bring it back. And sure enough she ca...I was standing there and she was giving it to me. And finally she came back to the barrack and we had about six beets there. And uh, 'bout ten minutes later the Gestapo was coming in our uh, barrack. And we were sitting on the stuff like uh, you know, nothing uh, happened. I don't know how they find it out or they see us on the stand and they came right to us. And they said, stand up and we stand up and he took out uh, that blanket, pulled the blanket and he find the beets. Then we get the other beating, but not so severe like we get with the whip. And uh, they went and throw out--took out the beets. There went our delicious dinner. And uh, then they uh, took us in the other barracks. Always moving around. But in that barrack they was uh, selecting about twelve girls, who wants to work. But we didn't wanna to trust them already. Who knows where they gonna take us. So we said no we don't want to work. And some girl uh, hold up their hand and the next day we find it out how dumb we was. They was working in a kitchen.

Oh.

With all that good potatoes. [laughs] So we couldn't do nothing else already because we said we didn't wanna--we didn't raise our hands and we was uh, going away from that uh, group, they shouldn't select us to go. And then uh, when they took us to that uh, barrack already was uh, January uh, end of January. And they was uh, bringing from Budapest the people uh, the tra...came a big transport. A woman uh, and man together. But in their way, that group uh, had uh, the typhus disease already. And in that barrack where we was they put twenty girls from Budapest there. And sure enough one of them had the typhus. And from that one girl already the people start to get the...

Catch it from her.

Catch it from her. So that barrack had to move away from the whole...


© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn