Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Pauline Kleinberg - October 28, 1982

From there, there they get off all the raids, they get off there and they--they're sorted where they need people for certain um, uh, concentration--it's uh, compulsory forced labor camps from there. So he said with his influence--he had there a brother somewhere that he was a head of a camp--with, with his influence he will see they should send us to a camp where his brother is. In the meantime, during their stay there it was a camp. He's here and he had influence enough to take us home to his house that we should sleep over night in his house private. In the morning he delivered us back to the--it was a pre-camp where they selected. The people sent to the forced uh, forced labor camps. We were there a few weeks. And after this we got to Blechhammer. Blechhammer, I didn't know at that time. Blechhammer had five thousand people. I don't know Blechhammer had a crematorium. All I knew is the area where I was taken--there were uh, mostly it was men with uh, women were like um, personnel. Uh, you know what day they peeled potatoes in the kitchen, in the laundry room, and all that work--this was a privilege, this was privileged labor. But it didn't last very long. We were there only four or five weeks. And then they sent us into another camp, some girls uh, twelve different camps. And what--there what happened, our prayers--our mo...that was me and my sister I'm talking about that we were together, it was--no matter what's happened to us, we should stay together. Whether to Auschwitz--we thought we're going to go to Auschwitz--which it was immediately to, to be cremated. But we got into a, a small forced labor camp, which it was called Neustadt Oberschlesien, Oberschles...Silesia, you know, and there they put us to work. The work we did there into a factory, which it was um, weaving. We were weaving for the uh, army um, you know, like towels and for parachutes material. When I walked into this factory, my sister worried. I was the shortest of all and I thought, "I'll never reach that machine. And how in the world am I going to make it?" And here you can't talk. Come here, because the machines are so loud, you can't hear. But I've seen other girls. When I walked in--I seen girls with stars. I say, the more Jewish girls, it's a heaven. Because we're not supposed to be here, we're supposed to be there in the graves. So I thought it was running around, you know, between the Polacks was worse. So I thought this is already like whatever it will happen with the others it's going to happen. And I seen them clean, and I thought, that's beautiful. The camp was a very small one. The camp was about a hundred and ten girls, where this ??? where I met her there the first time.