Henry Konstam - October 25, 1991
The Łódź Ghetto
Do you remember when they set up the ghetto?
Oh yeah. Yeah, it was in 1940.
Well, how did that...
They just uh, reserved a certain part of the old uh, town and... This is like in, in Bełchatów there, this uh, beyond that. Yeah, actually. Uh...
Warehouse district.
And uh, uh, they uh, emptied out this area and built a fence around this area. And uh, people from the city, they just when uh, they shipped 'em over there. Or they gave you so many days, so many days or weeks to resettle. And there was a pitiful case. For instance um, it was in my own family I had um, two married sisters with children. And a brother and I. We all stayed in one room. In one room. At night it was just, the whole floor was covered with uh, sleeping. Uh, uh sleep, whatever we had anything to sleep on. And uh, this actually was one of the reasons that I, at least it, when we went to labor camp, it was a voluntary, so-called, you know. And, so I enlisted to go to labor camp, because I was single. They were all in there so, married. I thought to myself there'll be one person less in that room, you know. And uh, I uh, went in and registered to go to uh, to a labor camp. My family was very unhappy about it, but I thought this is the right thing to do. Make it easier on them. And uh, this is when they uh, uh, put us on trains and took us to Germany.
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