Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Freda Magnus - July 22, 1982

Um, where were you when the war began? Were you, were you at home?

I was home, yeah and then where I live so Sun...so Sunday came in the Germans and they took us out middle of the--in middle in the night from the house, knocked in the door and tell take the things wherever you can and you leave the, leave the house, you know. And this was the first time--it wasn't even--we didn't even know such a thing can exist that they could come in the house and tell us what--they came in with guns and we took whatever we could, you know. I was in the house only with my mother and my father and my youngest brother. The sister and the brothers have been married. So from our section they took all the people out of the house and told us to take what we could, what we could carry. And take so fast, we took, you know, we had bed things, you know, was heavy from dow...how they call it? Feathers--not feathers...

Feathers? Down?

Had down, yeah. Feathers and down--big ones, you know, what we had. We packed this all thing and some underwear and something from jewelry probably what we could grab because they were standing and watching us. And then they left and we walked out and when we came out on the str...and our whole backyard was full of people also what were taking out from the house and they tossed out, telling us to march. And we walked oh, maybe, maybe a half--how far? I can't even tell you--very far to a place behind, like behind Łódź, you know, like in the suburb of Łódź and there was a place and we walked and what I wanted to tell, you know, I took things what I could and put them in this--I had silver dollars, you know, put away, you know, Polish silver dollars this was...

Mm-hm.

??? put away and this was in the winter. And I was younger and I grabbed my silver dollars, you know, and I wear those high boots we had for the snow, put them in the boots and can you imagine, can you imagine to walk like this with heavy silver in the boots? We have to take it out and so much like walked I was throwing the silver dollars in the streets, you know, because I couldn't walk with them and then they put us in, in a place on the floor. We was lying down over night and we not put with them everything and then they packed us into the trains. This was before they close the ghetto. You have probably stories so you know what I'm talking about.