Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Marvin Kozlowski - August 28, 2002

Appell

Wife: Roll.

Roll call.

Roll call. We had to count how many were, nobody got lost. If there, one of 'em uh, was able, uh...

Wife: Missing.

Uh, to escape, there were, there were barbed wires. He was taken to work and he disappeared. They immediately take people of the same name--they were not related--and they put 'em to a pole, five people shot 'em with weapons, their weapons when they were shouting, on holidays, Jews too. There was the gift for holidays too, for any occasion, they would take out at least a couple, sometimes five, tie them to poles and shoot them with dum dum weapons, which tears the body apart. And then took people from our uh, line up carry them around and showed everybody what they did. That was the German culture.

Did you do that? Did you carry...

I was s...I was not--I was not lucky to, to carry them around--unlucky. I was standing watching them, they were carrying in front of me, I was watching them. What amazing to me I can never forget, one of them was ??? the name uh, from our hometown, because his cousin ran away. So that was uh, after rain, we were all lined up--again, I forget the word, uh.

Wife: Roll call.

Roll call. It, it was a roll call.

Wife: It was a puddle.

It was a puddle. The guy knew they were tied up again carried to be, to be shot. To be torn apart. He missed the puddle and killed another guy and I can never forget that thing.

Wife: For that...

But he knew he was going to die, shot with, with, with a few people tied to the pole. But yet he was--anyway, that was there. I remember...

Wife: ???

First of all, I just want to go a little bit further. Every month or two they would have thirty people hanging on uh, bars like across the factory. Everybody was scared like hell. The Jews, the few Polacks, too were scared, but the Jews were the ones who were punished. Then after a month, they would take it off, keep it for a couple--three or four weeks and then again. Now, I remember, I was trying to--always we had a time, but they would take out a person from uh, one floor and beat them up or something like this. I, I suspect maybe I was chosen that time because of a guy, his name was Beck and I was taken--called to the office--you know you're in trouble. So there were three or four guys with those dried out cow tails and beating me from every side. I was screaming for awhile and then I passed out after. All I know, they took me down to the courtyard and there uh, they were pouring hoses with water. And I woke up and they sent me upstairs to work. And that guy, there's one of them that I spent time together, he was one of them too. So it shows you.

A Polish prisoner.

He was known as Polack until after the war. He was a Volksdeutsch. Uh, a Polack would not be in that office. That was just for the... So that was it.

Wife: But what was the question?

They beat you and then you went right to work.

They sent me back to work.


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