Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Charlotte Firestone - March 11, 1982

Do you know how to spell Macha??? M-A-C-H...

Macha--it's a German...

M-A-C-H-A?

I think so. She was terrible. I went out to work and my sister, Helen, was cleaning her room. I don't know how it came by--she was the Stubälteste and she was cleaning her room...

Macha's room?

Macha--Emma Macha's room and she was bathing her. She was washing her floor. She was washing her clothes and when they're outside, she was washing--and I went out to work. When I came out in the morning and when I came back from work, she got two plates of soup. You just had one, so we always shared it, other plate of soup. I remember when I came home from work, she came in, in the block and she said, "Did you got a piece of bread besides the one bread? Did you got a piece of meat?" "What meat?" Every morning, she--after she was standing up there, she rushed into the kitchen, because by the time Emma Macha was through with the counting, which Kommando goes which way, she had to have the breakfast prepared for Emma Macha, so she went in the kitchen and she always took something and so nobody shouldn't see it, so--and that Kommando where I was, she gave that to a girl and I give that to my sister, give that to my sister. I never got--I would not give it to nobody either. Maybe I would have shared, but then maybe not. I don't know. So I never got--then she was able to steal something, you know, to send it. I was so uh, lucky--I never--she never caught me. So anyway...

What was the soup like? Was it the same as the one at...

Yeah. It was a soup but better.

It was better.

It was, Yeah. It wasn't so sandy. There was Jewish girls who cooked it. I remember there was a pot and with a big stick, she was mixing it. Anyway, we came home and we had soup and we had a piece of bread. You know, they had those square, square bread and that was cut to four or five--it was like that, you know, a small piece of bread and then, my sister--we slept together in the same uh, block and...

How many per bunk here?

Hm?

How many for each bunk here?

It wasn't as bad. I think it was about eight for a bunk. It wasn't as bad as it was, but it was cold and then early in the morning when we came home, it was, you know, an upper-koja and it was a lower-koja and we had to go far out. It was--there was no washroom there, but just holes, you know, digged out and that's where we had to go when we needed--excuse me...