Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Joseph Gringlas - January 14 & 22, March 18, 1993

...in Buna. That was my work. That's lighter work.

Buna was the factory and you lived in Monowitz?

Buna was the factory a little--but outside of B...Monowitz. But Buna-Monowitz was the factory. In the, in the la...in lager, where we stayed, in evening we had to march going back to the lager in the morning and going to the factory. And, uh.

So the lager was, was Monowitz...

Uh?

...and Buna was the name?

I think that Buna-Mono...Buna was called Buna-Monowitz...

Buna-Monowitz.

...all together. But the lager was a little bit away, about a few kilometer we marched out.

Did you ever see anyone at Buna um, what were the latrines like at Buna? There are a lot of stories about horror, horrors that took place in the latrine. Anyone ever assaulted in the middle of the night?

In Buna?

Yeah.

In Buna was terrible. First we didn't, we did...fed us with little bit a soup, piece of ration--bread.

But if you went to the morning to the latrine, did you ever find anyone dead or beaten in the latrines at night? In Buna?

Yeah.

I mean there was a lot of, we saw, people was killed like you know, they fell down you couldn't walk there, it was terrible--we just--we knew what's going on. But you tried to, the--you only sit and try to stay on, stay on.

Yeah. Forgive me for asking you this...

Yeah.

...but was there any sexual...

...contact?

...overtures between this Kapo, say and you or between? Oh, be...between the Kapo?

Any overtures?

The Kapo was, he went out to the, from the out, from the camp too to the factory see, that. So they had contact with other people--civilians.

Uh-huh.

They had contact with. So they had, could have sex.

So there, I mean were no sexual attacks that you know of in the camps.

There was, yeah, there was uh, in Birkenau. Between women and, and the Kapos. They had taken out the women, 'cause there was, yeah.

But only the Kapos.

K...Kapos, because you didn't think about sex because you--what...whatever feature you, you could...couldn't stay on your feet.