Herman Marczak - May 12, 1982
Life in Labor Camps
You don't.
No. But I wouldn't sit--I wouldn't uh, tell my daughter those stories. I...I'm not interested to make somebody else emotionally upset about it. But we--our friends sometimes, we always, almost always talk about all kind of episodes what we went through and about this. And I got my best friend here we were all the years together, you know. And I didn't know him. I had a friend who died a few years ago and we stand in that ammunition factory. His machine was as far from mine--from, from here to that corner--and I never exchanged a word with him over there, and here we, we became friends. Because...
But you recognized him.
Yeah, because we were not--people recognize me from, from Toronto. They came at weddings, you know. But we didn't, because we, we had maybe a, a few from, from the hometown or the home area where we used to go and talk. Otherwise people were not in the mood to make--we, we, we knew that we're not under a normal kind of existence.
Well, did you treat each other with respect?
Yeah, said...
Was there some normal treatment...
Some...
...among yourselves?
No, some, some got--there was uh, fights between people. Not every people, person could take it, you know, there were people--not every people can take it in calm those things, you know. People always disappeared, people always died, people always got sick, all kind of, you know.
Did you have Appell there too? Did you have to stand in line in the morning and be counted?
Not in, not in Skarżysko, not in, not in those factories, no.
Oh you didn't.
No, they--we just had--we just, we just got together because there was a lot of departments--maybe a hundred department. Everybody knew where he has to stand up and we went together to work, you know. But we didn't--it was not like that, no. Anyhow, that Kuhnemann, they had one barrack that's supposed to be direct for a, a hospital, you know.
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