Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Luba Elbaum - January 20, 1982

Now when they--when you would go at four o'clock in the morning you'd line up.

Line up. First for the, first for the thing we have to line up. Then we line up...

What did they do there when you lined up?

Yeah, line up...

Call your name?

Call your name and every--if the name, everybody was sending over to work. If somebody died you have to go in looking for the other one. There were Blockältester--that's what they went in the, the room look for all the other people. And then after everything was done in the morning we went to work like three kilometer there. There they asked us to sing, they wanted us to sing. We all were with soldiers, not to run away. There was--there were, I mean, searching not to run away. When we came over there it was also like a ghetto. It was all cover top and then the men went to work and we women went to work too. Sometime, the first year they let us work like, I mean, to go scrub the floors. It was not too many women. And all they wanted just young women, not old, just young women.

Like what were the ages?

Hm?

Ages?

The most what they let us live, most what they let us live, you know, it was exceptional if they letted older women. They start most eighteen years old, twenty years old, twenty-five was the older one they killed them. No kids, no kids. Because Feix came in--this was the Oberscharführer--he came in and when you standing in the line, when was an older woman, and there was a--somebody, you know, they have to stay in the back or in the middle. They just were young women staying. You have to be ??? the best and then go to work.