Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Isaac Engel - June 16 & 25, 1992

Do you remember a few years ago they sent--they arrested and, and uh, deported one of the scientists who worked at Dora.

Right, I heard. Yeah.

Arthur Rudolph.

Right.

Did you ever see him?

No, no. No.

What about the other--the people who didn't work in the work in the tunnel. Do you remember any, any beatings, any torture?

Oh they used to beat people you know, off and on. They used to beat people. But not real, not that I know. But of wh...what I saw, what I said, what, they used to hang people for little nothing.

In Dora.

Yes. There was a lotta Frenchmen there in Dora. But they came way before. A lotta died there, in Dora.

[interruption in interview]

Did you ever talk to any of the guards in Dora?

No. No.

That was still verboten.

No.

Yeah. The foreman? Were there foreman there?

Yes, yes. See, to talk to a guard you see, rather not talk to him and not see him. Because if you walk by a guy--a guard and he didn't do nothing to you, you were just lucky to--you avoided him as much as you could. My uh, foreman told me when I was working in Dora--he seems to be a [pause] nice guy, I have nothing... He told me that uh, a few more days everything he says is going, is, is gone. Like the way he's, he put it in German "Nach paar Tagen, alle geht los." Like, the Germans lost.

Was this...

It's not going to mo...too long, he says.

Another prisoner? He was a prisoner too.

No. He was a foreman. He could have been a, he could have been a--I don't know if it was a scientist, but he was a engineer.

A civilian.

Oh yes. Civilian. He was a engineer.

So when he told you that, what, what did he think you should do?

Nothing, nothing.

What did you think you should do?

I just listen what he say. I didn't say nothing.

Mm-hm.

I just took the good news and kept it to myself. I told a few friend, once you know, in the barracks. And I told him what the, what the Meister told me, what the engineer told me.

So did you--they were going to liquidate the camp. Did you think they were going to kill all of you?

That, that was a possibility.

So what did you do next?

Nothing.