Luba Elbaum - January 20, 1982
Life in Płaszów
They count you.
They counting us for hours. More counting like ??? somebody was missing you stay and stay and stay. He could--who could survive, survived. We were working. Sometimes uh, you know, like I was younger, I was watching--I was taking the back, back the empty space in the kitchen sometimes you take a piece of potato. Take it, I mean, from the kitchen. Sometimes I pick it. They give us--they make the soup us--how you call from the--I've forgotten. From reams they make a soup and some kind of vegetable. So sometimes I was, I mean, strong. I was taking a piece of meat, you know what I mean. Organize, nobody would see. In this everybody took a piece, took a piece of bread and that's the way you survive. I mean, younger women survive--younger people. Healthy people survive.
What was your clothing like? What did you wear in the camp?
In the camp in Budzyn they give us like--they give us every week we went on clothes--we wearing civilian clothes--we wearing our clothes. They give us something. They give us one, one shoe, one shoe, da, da, da--because they have all the clothes what they bring out from the people. Tooked out in all the ghettoes. They had no store, but they had all the clothes from Majdanek they bring the clothes--from all over they bring the clothes. They give us skirt, like a sweater, like a coat, like a--something they give us. And in '4...like in '44 we were already still there in, in uh, in Płaszów. They took us--we--when the Germany came back it was also a cemetery. And they start to dig out the all dead people. Like I say in the first uh, they make the ghettos--when they make--when was the ghetto they just, big, big holes and all the people push in like. And then when the Germans--when the Russians start to come in, in the armor car, they set to dig out--the dead people take out. They were burning with something. I was not working but they said they were burning with something--gas. Not to, not to find like, I mean, a symptoms. And then when the Germans--when we are--I think the Russians started came closer in '44 started came closer, they start everyday was transport to Oswiecim. Everyday was staying for miles empty, for miles empty, empty like trains. It was Appells and they start digging in the eighty people--hundred people in that train. And everyday they went away the trains. We don't know this where they're going because we don't know it's Oswiecim. We were on the Płaszów. We don't know what's going on over there. We never hear from these people.
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