Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Nathan Nothman - November 30, 1982

Then in the ghetto there was a Arbeits, an Arbeits--the ghetto split in half. All the time they just cut the ghetto closer little by little, and you get tighter and tighter. So there was A and B. A was people who work and B people who, who couldn't work. Now there was a wire through--you can go both ways--and somehow one day I was working for the--of the commander, for the ??? So I remember there was from Auschwitz a doctor, what his name--??? doctor. He was there and he just went left and right, left and right. So the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe came to them and he was standing there. He said, "That's, that's my, that's my Jewish people and I need them." So they thrust, pushed that away the S...the Wehrmacht. He said to the Luftwaffe, "You stay there and we tell you exactly what to do." So there was maybe about 200 people of us, he cut half. We don't know which is--left is good or right is good. But the right, he took us on the truck and we s...we were in uh, in this hospital there ??? in Kraków, maybe for four days working there. My mother didn't know what's happened. My father was--I was the oldest boy and my sister and myself. And the other people went to Auschwitz, a lot of people that time. They just--so in four days I came back. It was ??? I couldn't send a telegram, I couldn't call nothing, because there was not like here, you know, so I came back. And I was lucky. I was young. And they take me to work. But I saw a lot of friends of mine went left and I never see them again. So that was 19...uh, '42--beginning. And then came the Judenrein in 1942, September. So I was by myself. My mother and my sister was in Arbeitslager. And I was in B Lager. But I didn't care because I figure myself that I can always get around some place on my own. So I want to be always the last. Other children, other children went on the, went on the truck and were never seen, like they went to Auschwitz. So I was still a small. And I was maybe in the hundred, the last hundred. But I knew right away that they need somebody to work, to clean. So, there so many mess there.