Rose Green - May 21, 2008
Life in Auschwitz
So they gave you these--were they striped uniforms? Is that...
First of all they didn't give us the striped uniforms. I wished they would have. But they gave us rags from, from here. They took away our good clothes, our good shoes and it was very cold. It was uh, end of October, uh, beginning of October--first or second of October, I think. I think so. And uh, they gave us rags, rags, really rags. And they didn't fit, so we had to exchange it fast. One was too big, one was too small. And uh, and shoes--those, those Holland shoes which were very, very, very bad. So next day they--girls from our hometown, they brought us some sandwiches. Just some very, very bad--it's like uh, sawdust bread, I called it sawdust. And uh, they brought us something to eat and something to drink. We came in--they didn't give us uh, tea or, or even just hot water to drink, nothing, nothing. First they shaved us head and they took us to showers there, you know, to shower and put on those rags. It was just unbelievably cruel, mean, cruel, you know. It, it's, not even, human. It was not human, so.
And then they sent you to barracks.
They sent us to barracks. There was a, there was a little straw on the floor--on the ground. And then later, next day they gave us uh, they put us on those, on those, uh...
Bunk beds.
Bunk, bunk beds, yeah. And it was terrible. We didn't have to--we couldn't go to the bathroom when we needed to. It was stinking. There were smelly people. People became animals really. We became animals.
Were more than one of you sleeping in these...
Ten of us. And when one, one turned around, the other one--all of us had to turn around. We were like, like herring put together. It was terrible, terrible. And the, the bo...nothing would have been as bad as that hygiene was terrible. We didn't get any toilet paper, we didn't get any tow...towels to, to wash up or something. I just don't know how people could, could even think of being so cruel, you know.
What was the Appell like?
Pardon?
What was the Appell like?
Appell was long, tiring, standing there in that cold in those dresses what we got. Not enough, not enough warm clothing. Legs were, were cold.
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