Anne Eisenberg - May 11, 1982
Food
The food I could not eat. They gave you one big pot and it was worse I think than, the food was worse than they would give here for pigs. No spoon, no plate, you had to drink out of it. My sister kept on encouraging me, you gotta eat, you gotta do that. I couldn't. I was lucky, I was a chubby kid and I still say I lived from my own fat. And I think that's what saved me itself. But after the third week, I started to volunteer to go pick up the bread because that way we had a chance to pinch some of the crumbs off. And the bread if I would say it was more wood shavings than, than bread itself. But it was food. And little by little we got used to that food. Bread wasn't enough. In the morning and in the night only thing we receive was black coffee. And the meal wasn't much either. Like I say, how the people survived in that place is beyond any belief. For me six ye...six month--six weeks was like an eternity. One day we were hauling dirt from one place to another. It was just a little brick, they divided. And my sister didn't want to put too much dirt and one German woman saw it and she, she gave me such scare that I'm going to be taken to the crematorium right then and there that from that moment on my sister piled up that little buggy so heavy with bricks. But somehow we managed day after day. We were more outside. Their pleasure was for us to watch. If we were being tortured, we should watch how other pe...people are being tortured or hanged. Like I say, six weeks was more than an eternity. After six weeks they started a selection. And I'm going to refer to my sister a lot because I feel she was my guiding light. She wanted to make sure they'll be selected us that I shouldn't be between tall ones and short ones. She pinched my cheeks I should have color in them. The selection was over the first day. The second selection we had to undress. Naked we were marching up and down.
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