Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Lanka Ilkow - October 12, 1991

So the four of you were on this march.

We were four schlepping us and I wanted to get out of the line. I said, "Ach, I don't..." Then I looked there, kill 'em and they freeze there. They you know, you see the bodies there, I said, oh and that thing, I don't want to die like this you know, what will happen to me and so on. So I said, oh let's schlep again and again and again until we come to Gross-Rosen.

But you stopped on the way, in a barn, you were overnight in a barn.

In a barn we stopped, I don't know how many days. We was walking night and day you know, you don't sleep.

Did you have food? Did they give you good?

They give us uh, bread.

While you were walking?

While we was walking. So they, they give us uh, you know, one slice bread. A kilo bread for five people. So that's what it was. And it's a heavy bread you know, so it's not too much of it. And uh, so that's what they give us. And we come to that barn, they give us hot water to drink. It was so good that I never forget how good that water was.

This was at night. You stopped at night?

At night, yeah. And a lot of girls froze to death because we didn't sleep you know, for so many days. So everybody was falling to sleep. And they never woked up. When they come, "Steh auf!" there was dead bodies all over, frozen.