Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Lily Fenster - November 8 & 10, 1994

You remember bodies in the streets?

I remember, yeah. I remember, chaleshing, like taking away when we were staying in the lines. In the lines we were staying, like I fainted and I was a young, healthy girl. Hunger is terrible Sid. Nobody should know from that. Your neshomeh goes out. Your soul goes out. When I was in the hospital, in the hospital, in the horse things when we were laying with typhoid was epidemic in that ghettos and everything. I seen a lot of dead one too. In straw I was laying next to him and I didn't even know it. No hospital, nothing, would you believe how I survived? And all the times I remember, "??? give me a little bit of water." Nobody paid attention to me. I don't believe that. Six days without food, without water, is that possible. Did anybody gave me water and I didn't know it, was I unconscious, maybe. I cried and I woke up and didn't have my hair. Imagine a young girl without the hair. I was so crying, they all say," Don't worry, it will grow back, it will grow back." It did grow back. My parents and my life didn't come back. My sisters didn't live to see nothing. You know what I sometimes think to myself? I think ??? my mother would be so proud, I would buy a dress, I would, would pamper her, I would, she would be in seventh heaven. Because they didn't have a life. Even before the War, there was poverty in Poland. I remember poverty. A lot of people say they had nannies and they had that. I don't remember that. I'm telling you the truth. It's nebekh--it's not a shandeh to be poor, because we don't take it nothing to ourselves. It just comes to you. If I could choose, wouldn't I choose the best? [pause] The envy of a shikseh having a bicycle. Would I envy a bicycle? And they went to church and they laughed and they giggled and I use to work in the pigs and milk the cows in the heat. That was such a terrible work, it was so--you were dead almost some days when you go and did it, that work. It's hard work farming, it's very hard work, 'specially when you come from the city. You were a scared of animals and now you have to take care of them. But I was lucky that I could do that.