Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Lanka Ilkow - October 12, 1991

Arrival at Hundsfeld

A regular train.

A regular train. So uh, we arrived to Hundsfeld you know, and uh, we was just one in a room and everybody had a bed you know, with a mattress, with uh, hay in it, in the mattress. It was better than uh, Auschwitz. So we had uh, you know, that and we had a--everybody had a pillow and everybody had a blanket and it was a big table there and everybody had a, like a big plate you know, for food and a, and a spoon you had. So you already was a person because you had that. Before we didn't have--we ate just with the hands and, and, and drink because you couldn't--in Auschwitz you couldn't eat it. You had just to swallow it because it was full of sand and grass in it. So we didn't have nothing. But they give us everybody, like they say in Yiddish, a, a shisel. So that's what we had. So there we had a table, sit down and you know, and a, a spoon, which I don't think, I, I don't remember having a fork you know, just a spoon. And uh, it was two ovens you know, you heated yourself inside in the winter. And we used to go to the kitchen and steal potatoes. The girls give us, you know. They threw 'em out in the side that we should take it, the cooks. And uh, we baked potatoes and they smelled all over. So they went and they looked. One night they was coming, you know. We had uh, like cream cheese you know, uh, from--the girls give us.

From the kitchen.

From the kitchen. And uh, we maked a party. Everybody we baked together and we sit down, twenty girls. So we got along, everybody was sharing what we had. And uh, there was girls, one girl she liked my sister very much. So she used to give her, my sister, everything. And uh, because she was so skinny and little so she always give her. Now she's fat and I tell her that she should uh, in Swedish I say to her, "??? Margareta. Uh, she should lose weight. So she says, "Before you looked I should get fat, I got fat."


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