Anne Eisenberg - May 11, 1982
Arrival in Auschwitz
You're doing beautiful.
[long pause] Two day, actually four day, I think and we arrived. We didn't know where we were. They opened the door. The Germans are screaming. They all had a dog beside them. Men in striped uniforms are running about. Lights but fire everywhere. It was such a strange place. One cannot imagine how petrifying that place was. The screams were unbelievable. The Germans with their shouts, "a Rau...a Raus, Raus!" Everybody was jumping. The men were lined up in sixes on one side, the women and children on the other side. My mother and my sisters and brother was on one lane. My aunt and her children were on the second lane. Me and my sister found ourselves on the third lane. All of a sudden, my aunt turns around to my sister and she says please get me some diapers, I forgot them in the wagon. My sister runs up to the train, gets the diaper. When she wants to come out her foot got stuck on the--by the train, by the track. She's trying desperately to get her foot out and by no means can she get it out. As I was watching and the Germans shouting, I was afraid for her life. I thought they'll shoot her any minute. But so--by some miracle she got herself loose and all of a sudden she's beside me. But then I looked in the front of me, I had no vision of my mother or my sisters or my aunt. Nobody was in front of us except my sister was beside me and we keep marching. Then they send my sister to the right. I wanted to follow. All of a sudden I hear a shout. "Halt." I stopped, I froze. I had no knowledge what was taking place. The Germans were consulting with one another. And then they send me towards the right too. I guess that's when my life had really begun. When the selection was all over, we were again on the march. We were taken to a tremendous big hall. And all of a sudden, again we hear shouts to get undressed. Men--the Germans were all around us a German women and they shouting to get undressed.
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