Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

• Contents
• Map

Nancy Fordonski - July 29, 1982

Can you describe your train ride to uh, Auschwitz on the train?

There were again cattle trains--pushed on, we were pushed on the train, but everybody could still hold on to some belongings. We had some clothes with us. We had a little food what we could saved up from the ghetto, because we were always afraid to eat up our portions. We always saved a little bit for the following day, because we were never sure how we get the following day something to eat. So we just still saving something. So we still had some, a little food left. All we had were some clothes. We were--had the bundles with us and they pushed us on those trains, just as many could get on, get, get on. And the same when my sister Sasha was with me and now my husband, Michael and his mother. We were all together on the same train, in the same wagon, same car. The ride was again awful. The smell was unbearable. There was in the middle of that wagon a big can, like a garbage can and everybody where they had to make, whatever, made in that thing or they want us that the smell should kill us or we should get sick from it or we should from the, from the bacterias that they should you know, not everybody could stand it. Just faint and then you know, collapse, because the ride was going back and forth too for, I really can't recall for how long. It took like forever. And that smell was, was so killing that you couldn't think about food. Even if we, we didn't get any or if we had something we couldn't eat any. But then in the morning when the train stopped, they uh, they added some chemicals to those big cans, excuse me of the expression, whatever was in that--shit. [slight pause] I cannot say that if they were full that they em...they took them out. Maybe they were afraid to touch them 'cause Germans opened up the wagons. The, the police and Jewish police they were already on the train and they didn't have much to say. So we were just under their guidance.