Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Helen Lang - February 23, 1982

Dysentery.

Yes. I was already going out with blood. And I said to my sister, I says, "I don't know what to do." Then she had to take of me, you know. So she had something to think about. So, which in a way it was good. So she says, "Look, I don't want you to report it, because whoever reported it you're sick, now you know there was the gas chamber." She says, "You just stay here." So she gave me because I couldn't drink that soup. It was--when you dranked it from the bowl, you felt sand like, you know. You know, sand, what they have outside. I felt that between my teeth and I just couldn't eat that. So she went and she was drinking my portion of soup and she gave me her bread, you know. So, and then it was already after three weeks we were there that I got so sick, you know, but I didn't want to go, because I knew already what's going on here. It's no good here that when you report that you're sick. So then I uh, she gave me and I was still sick. But after four weeks, they took us away again. All night long we were sitting in that washroom. We thought for sure that they're going to turn on the, the gas and, you know, we'll be dead. But, yes, and when they selected us to go away again, so we had to stay naked in front of Mengele to pose for him--all naked--the clothes we had to put on, to show that, you know, that we're young or if we have any scars they put 'em aside, you know. Who had some kind of operations, you know uh, incisions or something or something was wrong or, you know. They put them aside and we were turning pose for him, you know. We were turning around to show us that, you know, nothing--there's nothing wrong with her. They had to go on that side and whoever had something wrong were standing here. I remember there was a friend of mine--her mother was there too and they put her mother aside and the daughter says, "Well I want to go too. Wherever my mother goes..." I guess she didn't know what was going on. She says, "I want to go with my mother." She was a young girl. They put her aside too. So I know where she went because I never saw her again. So then we went to Stutthof.