Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Charlotte Firestone - March 11, 1982

You were getting on the train? Is that what they were doing?

That was just in S...S...Stutthof, you know, when they was counting the numbers to, you know, to select the people and she was still standing there. All of a sudden the last line, she came and I was crying. She came in and there she was changing and I was changing and we were standing in the same line. That, that was so important to us.

Do you know why it took her so long to get there?

Then she told me that man wanted her to stay there, in Stutthof. He didn't want her to go away from Stutthof. And she begged him to pick me out. She couldn't take--he couldn't take me out, because the SS's were standing there. He was afraid to take me out, you know. So she went in for the last one and that's how we were together. So when we arrived to Praust, it wasn't too far from, from um, a few hours. That was not open wagon already. We arrived there and there was, there was three blocks. It was a wired fence in three blocks and there was a Hauptscharführer there, we called him Hauptscharführer and there was a lot of SS's and there was one SS who came who arranged, who made, you know--and my sister, Helen, she had already a, a band here and she start in the long line--they should stay in the line, you know.

Was there a band around her arm?

Yeah. She had already a band on her arm.

What color was that?

Yellow. In the line, in the line and that man, that German who was the, who was arranging, do you know, a little--the kitchen and he was selecting women for the kitchen and he was selecting people whose gonna be the Stubälteste, whose going to be the Kapo and he said to, yeah, he said to my sister--I don't know, she be...I don't remember how it was, but she became the girl who went to clean up for him. He picked her, she should--she became the Stubälteste for the big block and she went to clean for him. I don't know it, how it became and then after she went, he came out in the morning and she went in and she cleaned for him and somehow she always brought out a piece of bread, or sometimes a piece of cheese and she shared it with me. And when he went away--he was there about two or three days altogether.

An SS officer?

An SS officer. He was in his [pause] late forties, you know, what a ugly man--stuffy short and then two of them came. One of them was Emma Macha. She was a terrible person.