Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Paul Molnar - July 24, 2002

While you were there did you use the latrines at all?

Yes, yes.

What was that like?

Uh, it was just a, a, a big building and inside you had uh, long benches and you just, everybody shared it. Matter of fact uh, what it did to me was that to this date I, I cannot go in a public restroom and use the urinal. I have to close the thing behind myself, because I'm so conscious of it, it's something you know, it did to me, which is stupid but that's the way it is.

It's not stupid. Was there any brutality in the latrines in particular?

Well.

Was there a Scheißmeister?

Let me tell you, I was there such a short time in Auschwitz.

Okay.

that I, I'm not aware of anything happening 'cause it was, I was just there. I was just there less than forty-eight hours, about thirty-six hours, that's all.

Do you have a tattoo?

I don't-no, see, I don't have a tattoo because I was never-I was never even registered or recorded. You know, I'm not, it's not somebody that they took in and took my name or I never got a number. I was strictly there to be unloaded, killed, who they're ready to kill, the rest of us they're going to send to Germany. So I did not stay in Auschwitz. I was like in transit. So if there were bad things happening in the latrines-you know what? I don't remember. I mean, I was-you have to remember that.[coughs] excuse me-it was a very confusing time for me and, uh.

Did you hear a band anywhere?

Yes.

There was a band playing.

Yes. When they, when uh, when we were counted, people were mar...prior, before we were counted, people were being uh, marched back from wherever they work, they were at work apparently, some of them and I could hear it. But not in a, uh, you see the area that I was in uh, was kind of a remote, away from it. I was in Birkenau. The people were in Auschwitz. I could hear it, but I did not see it. See Auschwitz uh, where people who were there they were sent out to the factories around there to work which were built there. Where I was, there were one or two things happened to you. You were either killed or shipped out. Like the people that I saw were so emaciated, they were just ready to be gassed. It was just a matter of days.

Musulmen.

Yes, that's what they were. That's why they, they were staring and they were in another world. I-again, I didn't know it. I didn't, there were no able-bodied people where I was, except us.