Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Bert Dan - November 17, 1982

Hearing About Auschwitz

Was it winter or was it...

This was already spring and summer of 1944. In the meantime, we heard, over there--we heard stories that our parents were all taken to concentration camps, but we didn't have the slightest idea of what a concentration camp means or how it looks likes or what it looks like. But we just heard stories. All I know that we kept on writing letters and we never received any mail from home.

Did you get any of those postcards they were made to send...

No, one...

...when they got to Auschwitz?

...one of my friends--one in a group of a hundred probably--received a postcard--received a postcard and it is--that all they said that we are in Waldsee...

Oh.

...that's what they called--Waldsee and, "We are having a wonderful time. We are all together and uh, hope that you are doing fine and hope to see you soon." And that again gave us a, a lift, you know that we know that they are still in existence and they are still alive and they are okay. So this was in 1944. I did not receive a card like that. But as I told you, one of my friends did get one. Probably in the camps they were only one who received it, I don't know, but this is the one--the only one that I know of in our camp who, who did receive one. And--are we out of time?


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