Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Anna Greenberger - August 24, 1982

Life in Forced Labor Camp

Do you know if...

If...

Excuse me. Do you know what month it was that you were taken there?

Oh yeah. Uh, in August.

So from June--August you were in Auschwitz.

We were in Auschwitz, yeah. In August--I don't remember the date exactly--26th or something. And I don't remember what--when we arrived to Lübberstedt. We were there in a army camp uh, barracks. Was wooden beds. Uh, we had uh, one uh, deck to cover up, but we had straw mattresses. And I think--I don't remember if we were two on one bed or one on one bed, because they were really narrow. One was on the bottom, one was on, on the top. And we were there the whole time, five hundred of us. So if we were working very good, we got premium. They give us uh, zucchini or uh, it was a big holiday sometimes. But my mother was a excellent worker because she worked very hard. So the SS woman give her more to eat. Sometimes I go...I have corns on my feet and I couldn't walk, and 'specially winter outside in the wooden shoes, I was crying. So she gave me a Gillette to clean up my feet.

Oh, like a razorblade?

Yeah. But we didn't volunteer. I cooked, I am a--I was a seamstress. Uh, uh, we could have volunteered to the kitchen, but we never volunteered for nobo...nothing. We didn't want to be separated, even there. But when they needed something heavy to work, they always picked us because we were always uh, we were strong, uh, me and my sister--my mother was already very weak, so they didn't let her work in the factory. We had to go march like soldiers. We had to sing, even we were crying, hungry, we had to sing.


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