Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Salvatore and Lili Katan - August 18, 1981

Did you, did, did you ever receive some sort of punishment from, from the guards or the Kapos?

SK: No I never received that because I was doing my job. The only thing, one night when they brought the Krematorium, because the Krematorium was in Birkenau and I was in Auschwitz. So in Birkenau there where the ladies working, and we used to give to the ladies uh, dynamite to explode in the Krematoriums to do something.

Now where did you get the dynamite?

SK: From the factory.

Ah.

SK: So--and the girls, they used to pick up the stuff and they used to hide it here. And they used to go in the camp.

LK: ???

SK: Yeah, well, they went to the camp and pass it to the guys that are work in the Krematorium. And that's the reason they blow up the Krematorium. So when the Krematorium was blow up, right away they find out all these munitions--that's me--all this munitions is coming from the factory, Union factory. And uh, the--one night, before we leave the factory, they say, "Tonight is going to be a big inspection, all of them." So right away we knew what's going to happen to us, because they know the ammunition was going from the factory to them. And they, they threw us there and we knew we're going to get caught, but before we going to get caught and get killed, we figure we could kill a few of those too. And everybody took a hammer, a chisel, a screwdriver, whatever metal we could find, everybody puts it in his own body.