Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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

The Americans

How did you get to Italy from Ebensee?

They took us in the military trucks.

The Americans did?

Yeah and I line up. See, I had, I drank water, see I. 'Til today I got America, you know, that I cleaned up my bunk. When they take a picture, it shows up still today. So many years, you know. I gotta tell them not to worry. It stays like this. It's not getting no bigger, no smaller. They tried to get it out but they couldn't. Now let me tell you about Ebensee. The Americans come. The Americans good, hearty boys. They make some, they make some meal. They cook some cornmeal, you know, cornmeal, this kind of soup, you know. Then everybody, everybody around, you know, everybody eating it and holding their belly, you know. They couldn't hold it, you know. So finally, some doctor from the army, you know, come in and he got so mad. He took everybody's food, he throw the food on the floor. He say, "You kill these people. You cannot serve them cornmeal. They gotta have rice, rice and potatoes, dry potatoes, you know, dry diet." He hollered. And they took me, you know, to the UNRRA camp, you know, first. I couldn't walk. When I walked a step, I feel here something pull.

In your back? Your lungs?

Right, and finally I had a temperature, a 102 temperature, overnight, up and down, you know. Then it stay, you know. And they put me in a hospital there, you know. There was this hospital, you know. It's run by the nuns, you know. Oh yeah, I know, they call these guys, the young priests, Carmelite, the Carmelites.

Uh-huh.

They go to the seminar, you know.

Uh-huh.


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