Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Edward Linson - November 10, 1981

Punishment in Monowitz

If you did something wrong, you got ten days stay bunker. And I was lucky to have fifty times stay bunker.

What was that?

This was a little, a little place--a caboose from here to here. On the other side was uh, people was pissing--excuse me--and doing, sitting and, and here was--they throw us in, ten person. You couldn't sit, you couldn't lay down, lay down--I mean, you couldn't sit. You got to stay 'til tomorrow morning. In the morning you got to go on Appell. They was uh, ??? the--in every Kommando. I was Kommando 98, which was this uh, Chemical Kommando with Primo Levi in the end. So they didn't like you, an SS man went through he didn't like you, you got to, to take four bricks and stay all like this. And I am not lying. If you, if you did a little bit, he give you a few in the, in the back--in the ribs. It's, it's impossible to, to describe. It's not a pen in the world--it's not the ink to put down on paper this. And who don't believe he should go to hell. Bring him to me and I will kill him, even if he is a crazy Jew.

What kind of things did you--is a standing cell. What kind of things were--got that punishment?

What do you mean?

What did you--you say you were in the uh, what is it? A standing bunker.

The standing bunker was because uh, they didn't like you, in other words. From the SS, they put out a order Meister, so called. They put up your na...number--you hadn't got a name--you was a number. And they, and they--after, after the Appell--Appell is in German-- so they took you to the bunker.

For anything.

For no reason. Fifty times I got beaten up. I wish I see uh, Reagan get beaten up like I got. The son of a bitch, I cannot stand this, this guy.


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