Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Clara Dan - July 1, 1982

To Bergen-Belsen.

To Bergen, to Bergen-Belsen, which was hell. It was. The Germans were treating us, because by that time, you know, they were getting weaker and weaker. And we got the typhoid fever.

While you were there you got sick.

Yes. And I was there... It affected my ear. And my sister. And we spoke English from home. We learned English English.

British.

British English. And that was an entirely, a different English than the American English. And the girls--the group of people who we were together noticed and we noticed that something is going on because the food didn't come on time. And the loudspeakers were talking in English. So a few girls from my hometown came to us and I--they said, "Clara and Irene you understand English, go and listen because they keep saying something over the microphone," and it was food and we don't know what. We were so deaf, I just couldn't make it out. So my sister and ??? decided that it must be the food. We're not going to touch the food. By this time her daughter was so weak already, had diarrhea and ??? was so sick from diarrhea that ??? just one person were crazy. Absolutely crazy. She lost her mind. But so bad that the Germans took her way. So we lost. We lost her daughter. And it had a terrible effect on us. But we were sick, okay? And these--we got a hold of these girls. I told you about, okay. They brought us food and we didn't know what happened with ??? because ??? was put in another barrack. And we went looking for ??? with the food to come to our place because by that time the girls found us and they started bringing us food. And we were still weak, very weak, but I went looking for them. And I couldn't find ???. By the time I found Agi was gone--her daughter was gone. So we dragged ??? with us to come to our barrack and have some food but she couldn't stay there for the night because we were still counted, you know. So during the day and uh, we lost ???. She couldn't take it anymore so she died. And the day, the next day, the English came. ??? died the day before. And the English people came in and started announcing that no food, no food, no food. So when the girls told us what they say in English, no food. That we could, okay, fine, don't touch the food because the food was poisoned.