Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Lanka Ilkow - October 12, 1991

Is that what they told you? Line up in five.

Yeah. So he said, "Line up and go to the right if you can, just try to go to the right and don't ask me questions, I am not allowed to talk," he says. So I thought--that much he told us. Then we knew it's something very bad. And we smelled it, you know. My mother says, "Men harget Mentshen men brent, they're burning people," she says. And I said, "Mother, no just think, why would they burn us? I still didn't believe. For some reason I didn't believe that one human being should do that to the next one. I didn't believe it 'til I was in Auschwitz and saw it. And many time they took us to bathe. Uh, we come out I, I check myself if I am living, you know. Because in same places they let and they gas, they let go. So many time they took us to bathe, they brought us back. But we put on the same clothes. And it was full of lice, the clothes, because when we got it, it was lice in it already.

You went together in front of Mengele. There was...

Yeah.

just your father, your mother...

Yeah.

your sister, your brother. There was five of you.

Yeah.

And three of you went.

To the right.

To the right.

Yeah.

What did your father say?

He was, he asked Mengele if he can kiss us and he let him, you know. I have a cousin, he died already, you know uh, uh, the Klein brothers?

Mm-hm. Emery and Bernie.

Yeah. Their father went to Mengele and begged, begged him he should, Bill, I mean, uh Bela the, the younger brother, that he should let him go with him. And he did--he let him go. Because he took him and the oldest brother to the right, but he, he put in the left and he went and begged him he should let him go and he let him, for some reason. He, he was moody, the way he felt. He let him go and he survived. This is marvelous brothers, which they was helping each other, and, and, uh...

I talked to them.

Yeah. Oh, they give you, did they tell you that story?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not exactly that way, but they told me.

Yeah, they...