Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Henry Konstam - October 25, 1991

Fellow Prisoners

Did you form some sort of comradeship with the people from uh...

For what?

Was it basically every man for himself?

Well, you always used to have some friends, you know. And I remember that Posen came there they brought in a transport from some other camp. And there were two brothers, they were neighbors of mine in Ozorkow. They were very, at home they were real big strappy people and it was a pitiful sight what they looked like. You know uh, I in normal life, you just don't see that how people go down. That they uh, they just collapse, you know. And uh, they swell up from, from, from starvation. They swell up. Uh, I've seen boys there that were uh, that had a piece of bread in their hand, they couldn't take it to their mouth anymore, you know. They were so weak, you know. Just died. Just, they just dropped. They were swollen from starvation and just died. Pitiful sight just to look at these people. You just know what's going to happen. You see their faces are swollen. Uh, legs, everything swollen, you know, and just... You know that uh, the end is near. And uh, also uh, I remember--these cases stay in your mind--uh, there was a boy, a German Jewish boy and uh, for some reason he got gangrene set in his legs and his body. You could uh, like to see 'em, the uh, these bugs that forms, you know, in the gangrene and just eats you alive. There was a doctor there, but uh, he had no medication. There's... Couldn't do anything for you anyway. It was in the camp in Posen, you know. And these uh, the vermin, you know, just ate him up, you know. Young kid, he was only about uh, eighteen, nineteen years old, you know. Died. There were a lot of... In Posen there was a lot more cases where people died than in this uh, camp in Gronow.

Of starvation and sickness?

Yeah. They had a hospital area over there, you know.


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