Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Charlotte Firestone - March 11, 1982

Um, we're back to, to Praust again. Um, you said that Macha was...

But I remember when I went out to work, we had to have the, um...There was SS's, you know. They were watching over us. How we work, when we work but when we had to go to work, when we were working, there was no such thing ever. What we did, we were building an airport. But first, we were cutting out the wood, chopped down the wood and we were building an airport.

Were there men working, too.

No. Men was all the way on the other side and there was like a shack where the tools. We kept the tools there. And the men kept the uh, also the tools in the same shack, you know, but we didn't see that--we saw them far away, you know, but there was no communication or anything, but some of them left us a letter, so they were not, um, Jews. They were um, war prisoners.

French.

French. Yeah. And sometimes, they left us a piece of chocolate or anything, you know, we was--very seldom, but it happened. So uh, excuse me, when I, when we went out to work-- so some girls then--and they went far away, because, you know, they have to go out. They had to make and uh, maybe they came out a little bit later. I don't know, so the SS had a piece of paper and he wrote, he wrote down their number and they came in, in the, in the lager, the, the, the they gave the paper--Emma Macha was standing right by the door, you know, as we walked in, because every time was a door, it was open and they came in and Emma Macha was standing there and counting the people, because she has written down, you know, this SS had so many with them, so many. And he gave a piece of paper. They gave her a piece of paper. We didn't know what it is. For as soon as we came in, Emma Macha gave an order. Everybody on there, on the, you know, to come out from the blocks and she made a line, five must stand--at that time was thousand women already, in fives... We made a big circle and five, a long line, you know. And then they brought out a Hungarian. It was a stool like that. Red. And she called out--she came out and that time was another woman. I don't remember her name and they came out and they--she got a piece of paper and she called the name and they all came in the--they had to come in the middle and Emma--and they had to lie down like that, you know.