Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Rose Green - May 21, 2008

Being Transported to Auschwitz

When they broke into your house, what did you think? Do you remember?

Nothing. You, you're dumbfounded, you know, dumb. You're numb. You don't know what's going on. It's like a, like a bad dream. Like a bad, bad dream, that's how it is.

So they dragged you out and took you to Sered, which is how far from where you were?

Oh, Sered, let's see. You know what? I don't remember what came first, what came first--which way we went first. We went from uh, we were on that farm all summer in ???. At end of the summer we went to Sered. We stayed there for one month and from there, after a month we went to Auschwitz and they put us in cattle, in cattle wagons. My eighty-eight year old grandmother, she, she was bright like a penny; remembered everything, was smart. And there was no where to lay down; you know how, how those wagons were. You didn't have a--not even a little straw or anything to lay down. So my father tried to make her comfortable. So, put our coats and we had the, the rucksacks and put them so together so she could lean down a little bit and she was uncomfortable even so. And she said to my mother, "Frieda, ??? Are you crazy, Frieda?" to my mother, she said. To father says, "Why don't you make my bed? Why do you let me lay here so uncomfortable?" So she much have flipped a little bit because she was--she would never have told my mother that uh, "You crazy," or something, you know. She was a very gentle person and she didn't talk nasty or, or anything, you know.

What time of year was this?

Pardon?

What time of year?

That was uh, fall, it was end of September or around first of October. And then from there we went uh, we arrived in November the first, I think, in Auschwitz.

And the year? What year was it?

Forty-four.

Forty-four. Had you ever heard of Auschwitz?

We hard about it, you know. We heard about it from people.

You heard the name.

The name, yeah.


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