Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Louis Kaye - May 9, 1983

Deportation to Skarzysko 2

Okay, let me ask you, you were picked up by the Germans and you were taken to this, to the concentration camp.

Skarzysko, yeah.

Okay. What happened there?

Over there I was wo... working by ammunition and I, I was making, I worked with ammunition day by day and I... And after, my two brothers work in different places. And I would go to work like seven in the morning, come back five o'clock in the evening.

You come back home?

No, no. It was a, a camp.

Okay.

I never... The minute I left 1942 I've never seen my father no more. Never seen my family no more.

You never had a chance to say...

No, they took to concentration, my two brothers the same time with me.

I see.

Because I have at home another three brothers, four brothers, and they took these two with me. The other brothers was working that time some place else. They took 'em away early in the morning. So, after they took me there I was working there and then I was working too long, like about two years. Then later, later on they took me from one place to another.

So, once they took you, you never saw your family again.

No, I never seen my family back again.

Did you have a chance to say goodbye to them?

No. I walked away, I never see them. When they took me, I'm not mistaken, my father was hiding, everybody was hiding. They just took me out. I remember one day my father wrote me letter where I was, make sure, be a Jew. Know what I mean? Make sure, don't forget, know what I mean? I should be religious, things like that.

How long were you at the, uh...

All together in concentration camp?

Yeah, the concentration camp.

??? concentration camp in the Lager, and we worked all together for about five years, 'til 1940.

All right, this first concentration camp...

Yeah.

...how long were you there?

About two years over there it was, was like a working Lager, know what I mean?

Mm-hm.

I was over there from '42 to '43. Then we... And then in '44, before the Russians come through, they took me to Germany. In, in one year I was in four different places, they took me one place to another.


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