Pauline Kleinberg - October 28, 1982
Almost Getting Killed
Talking about the dirt on your bodies?
Yeah, yeah, from all this month not having any water. Then one time, we walked--I don't know how to explain--how this ??? it was already--it must have been March or the beginning of April. I, you know, we didn't know the time. But we're seeing people walking--men--also on death march, in a distance on a different road. But after the war, when I talk to some of those people, nobody walked this long. They walked two weeks, three weeks, they took 'em on, on the trains, they didn't feed 'em and they dumped 'em somewhere. But we had the longest walk alive, the longest walk in, in, uh, uh, not alive, uh, from any concentration camp. So we seen, like, you know, there in Europe, the farmers buried their pro...vegetables and potatoes and ??? how do you, you know, in some mountains covered with the--I don't know what it's called here because I've never seen here anything like that. I didn't see it then too until we were on the road. This was supposed to be for the winter, it shouldn't freeze. They didn't have so much storage clays. But for so...so we've seen in a distance, that pocket. I, I don't know how to say it.
Husband: Ah...
That, that buried, that--that food buried. So we all ran. My si...of the Germans, the guards were, "Halt, because I'm shooting." I looked around and said, "What's the difference to sh...to die from the bullet or to die from hunger?" You know, we were frozen, we didn't care. The bullet was like a friend already. So my sister said, "Paula, don't run, don't." And I went there and I picked a potato. And they must have shot. And there was a, a girl and my sister screams. When I come back to her, I see that she's crying. She said, "You are shot." "I'm shot?" She said, "You are full of blood." I said, "I'm shot for real?" But--and I see the blood. The blood wasn't mine. There was a girl standing next to me. When the bullet fell, she was hit and she fell on me and I was bloody from her, but I wasn't shot. The bullet didn't hit me. And she thought that I was the one who was shot. There was a few shot. But I wasn't.
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