Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Edith Kozlowski - August 19, 2010

So after you were liberated by the British, you were sent to a DP camp?

Yeah.

Where at--Lingen?

Yeah, one was Lingen--I think one Diepholz. Maybe I ended up in Bergen, Bergen- Belsen then. When you came to get me, where, Bergen-Belsen.

Husband: Bergen-Belsen

It wasn't far away, somehow.

Was it just...

In the town probably.

A couple different camps?

In the town.

Yeah.

No, no camps already--like set up for us.

Okay, yeah. What was that like? And you were still with your sisters?

Oh yeah, always.

Do you think, in some ways um, your survival was due to the fact that, that you were all together and you could kind of, help each other out? You...

We couldn't really. We knew that--I would have somebody--that we have each other.

Yeah.

But, other than this.

Did it give you hope? That you all were together?

I never believed we'll make it though.

No.

No, I didn't.

So, you're back in Bergen-Belsen, you've been liberated. How does Mr. Kozlowski come to get you? Did you guys see--you didn't know each other before the war did you? Oh you did.

I saw him twice in my life.

Okay.

Uh, [pause] he met me actually when I was at my parents--grandparents--stayed with my grandparents. He, he was involved in politics. He wanted to go badly to France. So he wanted to learn how to sew--he underst...that, is good there.

Mm-hm.

So there was his friend, used to live across from my grandma. So he was a couple times in the store. But, they had, five kids. He lost everybody but his father. So after the war, his father was ???, whoever he saw, is there anybody left that I know, that I'm close with, or whatever--whatever.

Yeah.

So he found out from my girlfriend that the three of us are alive.

Okay.

And they were liberated by the Americans. And were time of mind, they lived after the war.

Mm-hm.

So, his father Max, uh rented, or got a cab, and sent a chauffeur with him to Bergen- Belsen. To bring the three of us to the American zone. To our time of mind, some Germans gave him a beautiful home to live in. They were good afterwards, right?

Oh yeah.

Anyhow, uh what I was going to say. Okay, he took us to a dressmaker, to a shoe store, we dressed up--and we lived there.