Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Sonia Nothman - January 4, 1983

Then many people died. Many people. 'Cause they give us food. My--from my youngest sister I did not know nothing. So when the Americans came and then me and my other sister she got better. So I asked about my sister. So they found out that she's in Dachau in the hospital, which she was. She was better. And then they took us when--from Allach...We stayed there not too long. There was big uh...We stayed in uh, they took us from there I think to Frima. This is by Munich. Because they was very busy there in Allach. And Frima, this was a troop Kaserne there was--I remember during the war 7,000 soldiers, German soldiers, so big. No barracks uh, big uh, buildings. And the front was a, a smaller building for all the officers, and the higher, the elite. So there was eighteen women there. So we stayed there. And from there...the people used to go already from different camps with a list and show them the phonebook because it was a quarantine 'cause of typhus. With a list who's alive. And my younger sister said that a night before she said that she was dreaming that my brother's alive. I remember she said ??? On the following day a guy came. He was from Krakow and he showed us a list and I saw my brother's name on the list. And he said that he's going to two different camps and see people and if somebody from us want to go see him, you're more than welcome. He's going to take us. So my youngest sister went with my older. They went, they them and they found my brother there. This was near, in Germany, near Austrian border. My brother was--they went out from Buchenwald. Sixteen hundred people, there is 140, 150 people killed. This...So then they came back. And we were all ??? When I saw my brother was once, he was a guy tall, good looking, handsome, a skeleton. But they, they had nurses there. They feed him, they give him medication. He was sick for a very long time. I remember they came to him. They got assessments then so they brought him in and my brother was laying in a bed there. He said, "Come on, come on hit." It's funny now when I think back. He went down from there, he crawled. Hit, he was. Before the war, I don't know.

[to husband]

Uh, Nate, how many pound could he weigh now?

Husband: Seventy, seventy. A-hundred-and-fifty pounds.

A hundred fifty pounds, he was eighty pounds then. Yeah, and he was tall. So he crawled, crawled. He went to SS. And he couldn't even go back to his bed 'cause it's too much energy. He couldn't make it. So then, he used to--my brother went to lots and lots of hospitals. But thanks God he's okay.