Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Edward Linson - November 10, 1981

When did you go to Majdanek?

We went over--we went--they took us with the trains and they didn't give us water, they didn't give us food. They hold us in Poniatowa a day, they kill us--they kill off a, a few hundred. And the rest what they men they are physically able to work, they took us to the camp.

How many days were you on the train?

Oh, a few years. I was exactly--the whole business about six years into this theater.

I mean how many days in the, in the train?

In the train? I tell you the truth, about a week. We got lots of dead.

Did any of your family go too?

The family? I, I hadn't got no, no idea where they are.

No one was with you on the train though.

With me in the train was uh, hundreds of people.

Any friends, people you knew?

I tell you the truth, no, not specific. We had been like animals, you know, at that time. No mention of nothing.

You said that you knew what was coming when, when you were at Warsaw.

Yes, because some guy come back from uh, uh, for his parents and he says--nobody believed him. And if you have uh, let's say you have a mother--a, a house--the mother will say uh, some people uh, start running to the Russians over. So the mother would say, "??? you got here a bed to sleep, you got a, a, a towel to wash your water, this, this." So this was very, very tragic, very tragic. I mean it.

Now when you, when you--so you, you had a suspicion of what was, what was going to happen.

Yes, because I was working on the train also--on the station, we was loading. I was seeing killing every time. And the German--the Oberscharführer--he says to us, "Mach schnell ???" He couldn't see it, honest to God, he couldn't see it. When they took uh, seventy Yeshiva buchers, they put them by the wall over there and they knock in...into the head. So I--you saw this--you see fire like this. I will never, I will never forget this.

This was in Warsaw you say?

Yes. On the--this was uh, later ??? I will tell you exact. ??? in Deutschland. I never forget the talk, honest to God, you--this make me so nervous. This make me so nervous of the, of the American Jews how they are so stupid. How they believe this, this, this, this hooligan uh, uh, ??? what they will tell it.