Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Nathan Nothman - November 30, 1982

Brutality in Płaszów

So I said, they went in to his--he got a house--on the cemetery he had a house. From the cemetery monuments he gotta walk, he make himself walk to his house. So when we walk on that--to his house that, I mean, you can see a Jewish name. This, this person died this day and, you know, this upside down and cover everything. We saw monuments--there was a rope monument to his house. And we work and uh, for the Wehrmacht. They worked for the Wehrmacht--shovels and picks, you know, we work. And I do remember once I have a friend of mine--a commander came home once--everybody were talking about it--and they cheri...they couldn't eat the soup. Something what--maybe the German give 'em--not the German, but the Wehrmacht--gave 'em better soup or something, I don't know. So they want to bring this soup home. And the cat was by the door--by entrance to the, to the concentration camp. What's this, what's this, what, what uh, what hospital--what is inside. So they sit with the soup. So the soup is no good. He call it the guard, the Ukraine, he call out the SS and he said, "Abscheißen." Sixty, seventy people, he shoot 'em, all of them. But and I have uh, two or three friends--I can't remember the name, it was a long time ago. So when they walked in that soldier--Russian soldier with machine gun and just behind it, they, they exploded. They jump. They think everybody, everybody got shot, but they did not ??? themselves. Somebody with bullets in the back, somebody got bullets on the side. So we supposed to commander there. I wasn't there but, you know, news travel fast. So they took them under the step and died. "So at least," we said, "at least they die as a human being, as not, as, as, as animal." It's a like a slaughterhouse.


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