Abraham Holcman - September 14, 1983
Jewish Women in Görlitz
And what happened next?
And then I worked, uh... Well then the trains, they left. I don't know, we got some Jewish girls working or coming in and working instead of the French.
Did you talk with them and find out what their experience had been?
With the, with the Jewish girls?
Yeah.
Uh, no. The, the, the girls, uh... We didn't talk too much with the girls. They didn't behave right.
Why? What did they do wrong?
Uh, the uh, there were three hundred girls and uh, five hundred men in that particular camp. And only one girl died in that camp. Out of five hundred people, four hundred died.
Four hundred men? So, you're saying the girls were...
They were feeding, they gave 'em good food and the uh, potato, the, the uh, warehouses uh, potato where they kept all the uh, in the camp, in their camp. They had uh, plenty of food. And, and they didn't, they didn't try to help us, their fellow men.
The Jewish girls didn't try to help the Jewish men?
Right.
Were they sleeping with the Germans, is that what was going on?
No, no.
Why did the Germans treat them so much better?
Uh, I don't think the Germans treat 'em any better. The, the Jews, the, the Kapos, the Blockältestes. Those, they had a good time with those guys. And uh, now they had potatoes laying, laying uh, in the yard. For stealing, only thing they could get is shave their hair. And here men are dying for hunger and they didn't want to, they didn't want to steal a potato for the men.
Where were these girls from, do you know?
Yeah, there's a, yeah, some of them, uh... They come from Gross-Rosen. There was a mixture. Some from Hungarian, some Romanian, some Polish. Uh, no Pole, which is uh, ???
Did you know any of the Polish girls?
Uh, yeah, I talk... I worked with 'em, I talked with them uh, I fought with them, uh... I happened to have in the factory... I was the glying man. I was glying the metals out. So, I had the uh, the stove. In other words, they couldn't cook nothing without uh, putting it down on my uh, on my stove, on the factory stove that is. So, I threw them out unless they gave me a potato. Uh, even though I knew uh, if they gonna tell their lovers that I gonna get uh, killed or hit, whatever. But I didn't let them cook unless I get a percentage.
Did anybody tell on you? I guess not.
No, so far uh, I'm still here.
Yeah. Were any of the girls from uh, your town in Poland?
No, no.
No, no.
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