Herman Marczak - May 12, 1982
Rumors of Labor Camps
Was there any religious observances uh, any synagogues?
I can remember one time in Rosh Hashanah I had some because the Germans were not in there. If the people wanted to they could do it, probably. But not--I didn't participate in nothing like that.
No?
No. Then in 1944, they spread a rumor they needed fifteen hundred people to send out to ammunition factories, because that Albert Speer who, who died last year, maybe you heard about it...
Yes.
...it was that movie yesterday...
Mm-hm.
...to take people from concentration camps or Jews into work in the, in, in, in the armaments industry, that was his idea, you see. The German didn't have--they didn't--that was not their purpose in the beginning. The beginning was to starve us to death, as Jews, completely isolated from everybody else. But he got that, that idea that why, why should--let those people work for the armament industry as long as they can do something, as long they alive. So there was in Poland from before the war was a central industrial area they called it--they started to building this, you know. They were the--it was really, it was really an armament industry area. So next to that area they built up labor camps for Jews to work in those factories.
Is this in...
In Poland.
...in the area of Łódż?
No, it was not a--it--by our standards it was not far, but by Poland it was far. It was a few, a few hundred kilometers away, maybe two or three hundred kilometers, it was not too far. Anyhow...
Excuse me, let me just make one thing clear. You were in the Łódż ghetto from 1942 until when?
'Til '44.
You stayed there for two years.
No, no, no. About fifteen--I came in the end of '42 in August, it was four months.
Mm-hm.
And, about a year and a half, to be exact, a year and a half. So they spread rumors that they needed a few hundred or a few thousand people for those, for those, uh...
Armament.
...ar...to, to send us to those places. I don't know. It, it proved that the rumors, the rumors were true. I don't know how they spread or whatever, it proved to be true.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn