Bernard & Emery Klein - May 23, 1984
Gleiwitz
B: When we arrived there, in Gleiwitz, and uh, again, an indication as how we could no possibly survive without our father, when we arrived there, we were supposed to, we were given a manual labor, of course, they were beautifying the camp, and we were to dig some kind of a man-made lake and take the material out...
E: Carry heavy, heavy woods and stones... B: ...and then logs we had to carry. It was a terrible type of job, and uh, our father always tried to watch out when we are watched and were not, but he particularly told us when we had to dig that type of a lake, he...and we had the Nazi guards in the back of us watching us, besides telling, "He's not watching now, take a rest," he also told us, "Whenever you work, I mean, don't try to take a lot of dirt on the shovel, but just a few drops. As long as your hand moves," he says, "they'll think from the back that you are working." And that's the way we were able to preserve a little energy, or preserve ourself altogether, because if you wouldn't be working, the consequences would be anywhere from bad to worse, and uh, then you recall the incident that, uh...
E: Ya, I mean, what happened there was, even these who were left alive were tortured mentally, if not physically, by, by you know, by those Appells and by the head count, and, and by, by practically no food. We were woken up for no reason at all very early in the morning to line up for a count and then left outside at that time. It was very much, in October, the cold, and though we, we generated some heat for ourself by huddling together, and, and let's say 7:30, 8:00, brought us so-called breakfast was literally a bowl of warmed up soup, also not hot... B: Black water instead of coffee...
E: Warmed up, yeah, morning was coffee, which was repeated at noon by warmed up so-called soup. B: There was actually a type of shortage of food in Germany. The Germans themselves didn't have very good coffee, so you can well imagine what type of coffee they would give us.
E: There, they found all kinds of work for us, just again, torture us as much as possible, physically, mentally, and every day, there was a selection where, where Dr. Mengele, who was the camp doctor... B: You're going back to Birkenau.
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