Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Lanka Ilkow - October 12, 1991

The SS.

Yeah, the SS.

Do you remember any in particular?

From Austria?

I mean the guards at Auschwitz.

Yeah, he was you know, we was cursing him. When he was uh, doing something, we was--this already in Bergen-Belsen picking uh, some kind of eat and this cut our hands. We didn't have gloves. So uh, we was cursing the Germans. So he reported it and 'til today I don't know what they did to those girls. They probably killed them. Because you ne...never--they took them away and we never saw 'em. So we knew where there is--we had, when we're talking, we should not talk when they're around us. Just nice things.

You mentioned last time that there was um, the Kapo had some, you thought some homosexual relationship with the um, SS woman.

This is the Blockowa. The Blockowa from, she was in charge of the, of the uh, of the block, you know.

German, was she German?

No, she was Slovakian. But uh, the German woman always come visit her and she had a room for herself. So, we didn't see nothing but we thought so. But she was married to a doctor and they even allowed her, her husband should come to see her.

Do you remember the German woman?

No.

No.

I would recognize her if I would see her, you know. The face I never for...forget. I don't remember their names, you know. One thing, they--when we was uh, going and walking and coming home from the factory. And so, i... One--even there was one woman you know, she was nice to my sister. And there was maybe a few friendly Germans. Like, let's say, you was working out and a German old man already on the end, in--already there in uh, Hu...Hundsfeld, it was near Breslau, not far from Breslau. It's like a suburban, suburbia. So uh, he brought us potatoes and put down that it was four girls and he says S...you know, we should eat the potatoes. But we was afraid to eat 'em. So, uh.

So you didn't eat the potatoes.

No. But he always everyday brought us something, you know. And h...he said, "Du willst sein frei, du willst sein frei." He wanted to hid us. But uh, you know. They woulda...

He offered to hide you.

Yeah, he said that uh, we could go on the end and he will come, there's a car standing and we could come there and he will drive off. But we didn't wanna go. We was afraid. But then they was taking the transport already, walking, there was girls--Romanian girls who jumped on the streetcar. And the streetcar was going and they went on the streetcar. Again, I don't know what happened to them. If, if they catch them or what. They must have catched them, you know. Because we had no hair and the way we was dressed. We couldn't mix in with uh, civilian people. And we was going once, they was taking us to work and we was going in Breslau was a bakery and everything there. Bagels. And we was dying, oh gosh. Just let us go in and take one bread. We couldn't go in, we couldn't--nothing. We couldn't even look on it.