Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Lanka Ilkow - October 12, 1991

Um, when you were taken--October 1944 you were taken from Auschwitz.

Yeah.

You and your mother and your sister were standing Zählappell...

Yeah

and they came and took your mother away.

Yeah, they took her away. So we run after her when they was taking us to our different barrack, and that barrack they--the toilets was bad, you know. You could sit on a toilet you know, that. And uh, so we run back. My mother run away there to the toilets and we run after her. They wasn't looking for us nobody. All night long we spent there. In the morning, we went with the transport. When the transport was going, we jumped in because...

So you weren't picked for the transport.

We was picked. My sister and I, we was picked for the transport.

And you and your sister hid in the toilet.

Yeah.

Your mother...

So my mother came too with the transport. Just in when they was already taking us to give clean clothes and in the bed. And so, they took her away there. They told her, "You are too old. Du bist zu alt. Zu gehen, zu gehen arbeiten." So they took her away. And she was screaming, "Gnädige Frau lassen Sie zu meine Kinder. Bitte Gnädige Frau." No way. She beat her and took her away. And this stands in front of my eyes, so many times. My mother, I see, naked there and uh, you know, the, the way they was pulled her away from us. B...a mother is a mother. She wants to be with her children. And she knew already what would happen to her if they took her because she was too old. So the next morning, I saw the transport going you know, to the gas chamber. Because this was Birkenau. And we slept over that.

Is that where you were for six months, in Birkenau?

No...

Auschwitz I.

I was in, in C Lager, in C Lager. And in Birkenau one night we slept over before they took us to the transport.

I see. And you saw your mother

Yeah, yeah.

going off to the gas chamber.

Yeah, yeah. And uh, when we went on a train already in, to Breslau and from Br...Breslau we walked to Hunds...Hundsfeld.

A box car, you were in a box car?

No.