Emerich Grinbaum - October 3, 2000 & January 8, 2001
Transfer to Warsaw
So you went in the direction with your father.
Father. The direction which--to work. And we stayed in Auschwitz. Now they put in the shower you know, and they give us the, the, the, the clothing with the stripes. And we stayed there, we stayed there--they give us some food. Uh, we stayed there less than a week in Auschwitz. Everyday, everyday they had several times they selected people. First I remember they selected uh, craftsmen. We need this, we need uh, different craftsmen. And we were not craftsmen. But some people uh, they told they are craftsmen, you know. They thought that craftsmen you know, different uh, craftsmen uh, they--better chance. But you know, my father was photographer, they don't know and we are children. So in the sixth day, I think we put on--us on a train from Auschwitz and they took us to Warsaw. And Warsaw is a very interesting thing. Most of the people they don't know anything about Warsaw. On the territory of the ghetto--which the uprising was a year before, in '43--there was only ruins everything. Nothing just, you know. So there were two camps, two concentration camps. One was a old camp, a smaller. And they built recently a big camp and we--when we arrived there was almost nobody there. This for us, Hungarian Jews. Mostly Hungarian Jews. Very, very other, a few others. And uh, our job was to work and to clean up the mess, you know. We cleaned up the bricks from the mess and cleaned and put together and put on the small trains that were there. So that was our job. The circumstances--no, the food I can compare with after that, the food was relatively good. I mean, not good but uh, with that food--for awhile we could survive. The treatment was bad.
Was it different than in Auschwitz, the food?
Better! In Auschwitz, Auschwitz we didn't work, they give us some food. Here we worked.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn