Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Mala Weintraub Dorfman - September 15, 2005

Did anybody take care of you at that point, when you came back to the barracks?

Oh yeah, the girls helped me. Everybody, they saved my bread and they gave me to uh, to eat.

And you said you kept in touch with some of these people.

I still am in touch with them. I still am in touch with them. My one friend that I was in the ghetto together, I was in, in camp together all through the, every camp that I went through. And to this day, she lives in New Jersey.

Skarzysko was a, one of the worst...

Yes it was.

...camps.

Yeah. Yes, the selection was there all the time, all the time. You had to get out and they would take away people and let people go.

So, you would... For the selection at Skarzysko you would just parade in front of people and they would send you in one direction or the other.

That's right. Oh, we standing in line, we were standing in line and they said go, go, go, and they're picking people.

Just looking.

Looking, yeah.

So, there were no medical examinations or anything like that.

No, no, no, no, no.

What else do you remember about Skarzysko? I mean, people were dying there, so you must...

People were dying, really people wouldn't die if they wouldn't take 'em out from there. They just took 'em out to, to die. But when they were in camp, they were not dying unless they got sick and they finished 'em. But if you could walk around and do your work, people didn't die. It wasn't enough food, you know, all that, but people somehow managed. The Polacks, there were Polacks coming into work. They were bringing some food. Whoever had money could buy for them. Give 'em the money and they bought for them.

And the people who couldn't work, were they shot, were they hung?

Sure, they were shot.

Was anybody hung, do you remember?

I don't, I really don't know.

Not that you remember.

No, I didn't see it.

So, they would march them out and shoot them.

Yeah, that's right. When the... One thing yet in the, in the hospital there, I never saw 'em coming back. What they did with them, I don't know.

And you kept the same, pretty much the same job, you were...

Yes, I did, yeah.

...doing the bullets.

I was very fortunate, I was really very fortunate.

So, it's an indoor job then.

Yes, yeah, once I got in, yeah.

Two years at Skarzysko.

Almost two years, yeah. I was liberated in Częstochowa.