Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Abraham Mondry - June 15, 22, 29 & July 13, 1992

And sometimes you went and picked up the bodies?

See, for every, for every--you know what a Pflege is? In German Pflege is a nurse...

Uh-huh.

...nurse. We had to get in, in every room, we had to get so many nurses to go in there, you know. So we know what's happened. I already know what's going to happen. So we had to pull them out. I had to open a big, a big i...iron gate, you know. And the trucks was, we throw them on the truck. And we had to check it, if they're dead or they're still alive.

Were any still alive? Do you remember?

Yeah, some was alive. What could you do? You still throw them in there. You know, the funny thing, the Kapo of the block, everybody know, a bunker and they had, like they catch you, like market, anything, you know, they'd throw you in there. There was a Jew...a Jewish man ??? his name was ??? He used to work with the circus before the war. You know, he was a very big guy. He weighed maybe 300, over 300 pounds. Big strong guy. He used, used to play tricks, you know, before the war in, in, in the circus, you know, like lay down on nails, you know, on the nails, and, and put stones here. They got him. They made him the Kapo.

Polish Jew?

No, he was Jewish. Polish Jew.

Polish Jew? Not a German Jew? Not a German Jew? Polish Jew.

No.

Did you know him?

I know him from before the war. I see him in the circus one time.

Did you know him at Auschwitz too?

Yeah. You know what happened. He was one thing good, 'cause we know something, a bad guy, like a German, one of the prisoners, a Kapo. And I say, "We gotta get at him. He's killed too many people," you know. So we told him and he said, "Just get him into me, he'll never get out there."

In the hospital?

No, to the bunker.

Oh.

And we get it in to him and we tell him just, "Hey watch it. This guy should never come out...He's no good."

So, how did you get him into the bunker?

Oh, we make some, we make some kind of lie, that he steal something. Then he told the German soldiers, the German guards, you know, and they took him away. He find some kind of thing. See, on the black market with gold, we find what we got to, uh.

Ah.

Some stories, huh?