Salvatore and Lili Katan - August 18, 1981
Medical Experiments in Auschwitz
Do you remember any...anything, anything else? Any specific times when it was...
SK: Yeah, they...
LK: How about when you had the...
SK: That's what I'm going to talk about. Then one day they came to the camp--was one Sunday in the afternoon, we didn't work on Sunday. We were washing the clothes--made the buttons. When we are Appell, you know, we have to look everything clean and so forth, all right. Then there comes the German doctor says, "Who wants to have a good job? It's going to have more food and it's going to be better off, not hard work." And myself, I raise up, I raise up the hand. Says, "We need six." So they choose six and the hospital were some Polish guys was laid up in bed and they knew me and they say, "Greek, Greek! Don't go, don't go." I don't understand what's talking about so when we're--they said, "Don't go because they're going to take you away, they're stuck in the front." And they told me why. I said, "That's a good job." So the doctor started suddenly the one ??? over there, he says, "You're good, you go this way," said to the other one, "You're good, go this way." When they come to me ??? I put my hand in the bag and I pulled, says, "??? you're no good, other way, go back." So this was mine--my luck. And then I get stuck again in another gang like that and they call me and they took me to the hospital and they operate me--I was about to run away from that one--and they open me here in my right side and they put me a bone inside. But I don't know in that time nothing about it. And then ??? but since there I had all these pains. And when I was liberated we went to Italy, Milan. And one day I was not capable to put my feet in the floor. I have such pain I was going crazy. So my wife and my brother-in-law, they pick me up in the shoulders and they took me to the hospital. And we went to the hospital was ??? or Mussolini built the hospital. And the doctor looked and says, "What's the matter with you?" I say, "I don't know, I have a pain here doctor, I can't put my feet down." So come the doctor and they checked. Said, "Oh, you're going to be all right," in Italian and that's it. Says, "Go to bed," and the pain was worse, more worse. I thought I'm going to be paralyzed.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn