Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

• Contents
• Map

Nancy Fordonski - July 29, 1982

There was--did they give you a pot or a pail? On the cattle car. Did they give you, when you went into the cattle car, they gave you no food or water, you said.

Yeah, yes.

Did they give you a pail or something in order to go to the bathroom?

There was a big pail like a garbage can. So uh, whatever everybody had to do, they just went over and they made.

Was it ever emptied?

Not that I can recall.

Didn't it fill up at some point? Oh.

And early in the morning they opened up the doors and they were letting us out. This was a scene that it looked like a graveyard because there were so many between us--dead people and we didn't even realize being all that time together, they were staying next to us or laying in front of us, we thought that they were just sleeping or resting. In the meantime they were dead. How many there were, I don't know because everybody was so occupied with themself, that we just had to go on. And the one what couldn't jump down from the train and had to be pulled out, was, or was dead already, or they were so sick that 'til now I don't know what happened to them. And we went--they took us to a special place they called Marysin. This was already in Łódź. They called it Litzmannstadt. We were Marysin quite for a few days. They put us into barracks. I don't know how many people were in a room. I really didn't care. I was just concerned that I'm with my sister. And then see what's will go on further. I forgot before to mention, it just came to me again, that when the segregation was on the cemetery in Zdunska Wola there was with me, with the family was my older sister, Rivka, with her husband, Meyer, and with two children. The children were taken away a few hours before just the same time when my younger sister was taken away. And the same thing happened with my sister, Luba. She had two children also. But they were too young to take them that time when they said they are going to a day camp or whatever. And she didn't deliver them. She was still with them when we went to the cemetery for that main segregation.