Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Rose Green - May 21, 2008

Assembling Propellers in Work Camp

Was there dysentery?

Oh yeah. Everybody was sick. That's what I'm saying. It's, it's just, dysentery. There was no, no, no way to clean yourself up.

So people walked around covered with filth.

With filth, yes, exactly.

And what was the work you were doing?

I was working uh, that uh, head where they put uh, those in the airplane there's--what do you call those?

Bombs.

No. pardon? The head of the--I have--I don't remember the name of the--you know, those long things what, what turns around.

The propeller.

Propellers, yeah. See? My old head--the propellers. That had--we were ??? I was doing that where you put those uh, propellers. There was lots of screws and wires there inside. It's a very complicated thing inside there, you know. So that's what I was doing.

And this was where you worked twelve hours.

While standing up, twelve hours. And uh, that had weighed about, oh, seventy-five kilos or something. And we had uh, we had something what used to lift it, you know, to turn it around because you had to montage three places on it, you know. And I, you know, I can't explain it. And they turned it around, you know, there were some things, you know, like uh, how you call that?

A pulley.

Yeah. And the pulley died on us and they didn't fix it. So I had to pick it up and turn it around like this and me with my stomach--with a baby in a stomach. You know, a hundred and fifty pounds, turn it around and I have to do a few of 'em every, every day, you know. ??? every day, it's very hard work.

Did the other prisoners know you were pregnant?

[interruption in interview]


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