Simon Kalmas - May 25, 1982
Sanitary Conditions
This—describe—before we get into what happened after your liberation—describe generally the conditions of the camps, you know, the sanitary conditions, the food…
After the liberation, or…
No, before.
Camps?
Yeah.
The sanitary conditions in the places that I was—not Auschwitz—outside Auschwitz—cannot complain about sanitary conditions, until we got to Buchenwald. Buchenwald was a different story. But in the camp, the ???, and the coal mine camp there that I was there, sanitary conditions were good, if I may say so. Because as soon you got back from work, you got to go and take a shower and you got soap, you got a towel and you had to change from, from work clothes, you know, to camp clothes. So sanitary was good. I cannot say there wasn’t. Also they had medical facilities—whatever the facility was available to them. Bandages was toilet paper—that was the bandages. But in general, as cleanliness—clean, this was the only camp that I been at that you could say, you know, it’s clean, it’s clean. Of course, we had to do it ourselves. Because we never had a free day or a free hour or after a meal or. You came from work, you have to go take a shower, and after you took the shower you had to run in and get your uh, dish of soup—whatever it was there, a piece of bread and a piece of butter.
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