Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

• Contents
• Map

Isaac Engel - June 16 & 25, 1992

For the V-2 rockets.

Right. V-1, V-2. There was a badge for going in, in the plant. Of course, there were guards there, ??? they call them guards. Women guards, they were wearing, because they needed all the men in the, in the uh, the guards they need 'em to--in the front, wherever they were. So the women guards and they were checking when we went in--marched in, everybody had to have a badge for going in, in the tunnel. Only the people in the tunnel that got the badge. The ones that were working outside didn't get this badge. So I was assigned to a foreman and uh, he gave me some...he gave me a file, remember and he gave me uh, Engel. A woman, I remem...and he told me what to do and I did my job. They didn't need it anymore. This was a thing. And then they gave us like everyday twenty-four hours. They gave us bread and margarine and the soup. Somebody ate 'em up at one time. Most of 'em--the beginning I used to eat 'em up at one time and fast for twenty-four hours. But I came a little back to my strength. If it wouldn't be for Dora, I wouldn't survive. Because Nordhausen it was a matter of few more days maybe. I was going down and down and down. And then uh, up until--at one time they gave us only the ones that were working in the tunnel--I'll never forget this--on a Saturday they gave us a whole bread. You know this was meant, a whole bread? Like today if you make a million dollars in the lottery. That's what it meant, a whole bread to get. A lotta people didn't survive Dora. There a lot of people were hung in Dora. I seen it myself. They used to hang like every other day about forty people, thirty, forty people. ??? very minor things. What was the, the sin was that a guy was--fell asleep on the job or something like that. They wrote down his number and when they came to the barrack, they called this and this number to Rapportführer, this is to report. And they used to put 'em in, in a, a bunker. And they filled up the bunker, just take 'em out and whoever was in the barracks that wasn't in the factory had to come out to the Appellplatz, they had an Appellplatz there too. And then uh, they used to hang 'em up in Dora. And there they used to call it out in a few languages that the reason why they are being hung because of sabotage. This was the sabotage if somebody fell asleep on the job or something like--this was sabotage for them.