Rose Green - May 21, 2008
Life in Work Camp
Now, did they tell you, you were going to a work camp?
Yeah, yeah.
The told you that.
Yeah. They told us they are going to work.
So what was it like when you arrived at the camp?
Well, it was first of all, we, we came in and there was like a, like a house--like a barrack, you know, it wasn't like, like in Auschwitz. And everybody had his own, own bed. Everybody had his own bed there in the working camp. And in Auschwitz we had that, that ??? they call it and we slept ten of us or twelve of us on one uh, one bridge you know. And here, we uh, we had--everybody had his own bed with straw in it, with a very thin blanket, but it was our own. And we had a table in the middle of the room with, with two benches like two picnic tables--like a picnic table. And there was only--how many? About twenty-eight people in the room so it wasn't so terrible. It was a little bit better than the other one. And we had to keep it very clean. And we had to go out to the--we had a toilet outside. I still didn't have any paper or anything, but uh, we managed somehow. I don't know how I managed. So, and there was no--I had one dress all eight months--the same dress, same underwear. So, can you imagine that? She--there was a woman who was a professor in Germany and she was in the laundry uh, uh, laundry place. There wasn't lau...she didn't do any laundry for us because she would do that for the Germans I think in that laundry room. So she took once in awhile for somebody something to wash out. So she washed out my, my underwear. So I, I was so happy. She did it for other people too. Once in awhile she could--she sneak it in. So she washed my--so I was--for, for a whole day I was shivering because they didn't dry so fast. It was all--it's, it just--I don't even want to--that's why I didn't want to do it. People ask me to do that, but I just didn't want to do it.
It's difficult to remember.
Oh.
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