Helen Lang - February 23, 1982
Arrival at Auschwitz II
He says, "Put down the baby and you go to the right." And I still didn't pay no attention to him, because, you know, they didn't--I couldn't let--he was eighteen months old. I couldn't let him with all these people, he would run away. So I was holding him. So let's say that, you know, there was a dividing line. The Germans Me...I think Mengele was standing there, or whatever. I don't know who he was standing--some Germans. See to the right you went to the camps, and straight you went to the gas chamber. So I--we were already so close. So that man came and he give me such a thing with that shovel. He says, "I want you to put down that baby right now and go to the right." He told me in Jewish that. So I went and I gr...grabbed a hold of my si...I put down the baby. I grabbed my sister and I--we went to the right. And I looked back and I saw my mother was putting down the stuff and she got a hold of the baby. And she went with the baby. When we got there, in a, in a place there they were shaving us, you know, all over they were shaving us. And they said to us that the older people will take care of the children. We're going to work. Then they put us to a--I think we were standing there all night in that place.
Had they given you clothes?
They gave us clothes.
So you had to undress first.
We had to undress yes. We got those uh, we got the grey or the striped ones. The grey ones--we got the grey. We got to keep the shoes. But we got the dresses, the grey dresses. Everything we had to leave there already. Then we went to--I think next day. They kept us all night there. We didn't know how, what--at that time we didn't know it's the gas chamber, nothing. We had to wait 'til, 'til one uh, how do you call it--those houses there...
The bunkers.
...the bunkers. ??? So we went into the bunkers...
[interruption in interview]
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