Benjamin Fisk - November 8, 1982
Being Taken to the Camps
Um, when the ghetto was liquidated--do you remember the date that...
No, I wasn't there. I wasn't there.
You weren't there.
Yeah, I went away, you know, I went to my brother and I went to conc...to the camp. Arbeitslager, you know. It was no concentration camp, but it was--you were still in the camp, see? I went to Blechhammer to the IG, IG Farben district, you know, one of the largest ??? you know, there still IG Farben in Germany. They're, they're still there. It was ???, then it was Blechhammer, you know, then I was Bismarckhütte...
Wife: ???
She knows, she got it ??? already. Then it was Bismarckhütte, you know, where I, you know, from Bismarckhütte I went to Auschwitz, you know, and then Monowitz next, next, next to Auschwitz. It was one camp, you know, all the way around.
When you left the ghetto, what were the circumstances? You said you went to work for the IG Farben, uh...
Well, we went to work every day you know
Did, did, did you--did they take you though from the ghetto to work?
Well, they took us to Umschlagplatz, you know...
Umschlagplatz?
...they took, let's say, 300 people. You know, they--somebody came--probably from the Germans--he said, "I need fifty people here." The other German here, you know, they were buying like cattle, you know, "I need fifty slaves here." I happen to wind up in this camp, you know, and I was a carpenter, that's what I do. I work in the camp as a carpenter. And then I didn't go in the shop they need a carpenter I work in the shop, it was a lot easier for me, you know.
And this was what date? Do you remember?
Hmm?
Do you remember what the date was that you left the ghetto? Just close--the year?
Forget it. I don't remember what I ate this morning, half the time.
Wife: ???
I don't want to remember, you know, I don't want to remember a lot of the stuff that I went through, you know, that's why.
Do you remember the year though that you left...
Hmm?
The year that you left the ghetto?
Wife: Forty-three
Forty-three?
Forty-three, yeah.
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