Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Luba Elbaum - January 20, 1982

To what do you attribute your survival?

Huh?

To what do you attribute your survival? How do you think you made it through?

I made it through--I was a strong girl. I was a strong girl before the war. I was the oldest one in the house, you know. And I was always I was al...I was already old, to me, like eighteen, nineteen, twenty--nineteen, twenty. And I older and older, and older and older and older. And I was stronger, you know. Where you ??? stronger than others. When somebody came he was from like from a rich home, they couldn't hold it out, like--who was stronger, I was a woman. Sometimes I was working in a kitchen, sometimes I was working in a house. Sometimes it was a piece of bread. Sometimes give me a--when I was working in a factory for the ammunition when they're having dinner there, they took--you know, the master were German. They don't mind this kind of work or the older German. Sometimes they have a potato, they give you half potato. They give you a half potato, when it's left from them. Sometime they give you a half potato. Sometimes when we used to go to the kitchen take back like the kettle I used to run and take a potato, or take some--give some other girls too, I mean, to survive too. When I survive I was sick already. When the, the war was to end I was sick. But this time you have to be, I mean, like strong to start, to go on with your work--with, with your, with your life. So I was hoping I'm going to come to Poland, and I was figuring my cousins run away, maybe my father's someplace, maybe my brother's something. When I came in Prague they registered us. And I want to go back to Poland see maybe somebody's living because it was close.