Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Sonia Nothman - January 4, 1983

Allach

You stayed in Allach, you said, for...

A few weeks, 'till they took us out to ???.

Who took you out? The army, the...

Yeah, there used to be an army. Yeah.

The United States Army or...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There was a captain there and a woman. Yeah. They have an order to take us out from there 'cause it was dirty-filthy there. And we didn't have too much. We didn't have nothing. So they took us, I don't know, with cars or trucks. And they took us to ??? used to be ??? We had beautiful rooms. Us four sisters have one room, four beds, a beautiful. Nice and clean. That's ac...the elite used to be there. And we stayed there, it was eighty women uh, from different camps. And we used to walk around. At night they used uh, the MPs direct us. Because there 7,000 men, 7,000 men. And during the day we walked. And I found a teacher ??? And they went home to Poland, of course, but we didn't want to go home. We had--we didn't have anybody in Poland. So, how long did we stay? From then trying to find my brother. And we went to ???, this is on the Austrian border. On the Austrian border. And there were like a 140, 150 men. It wasn't a camp there. It was like a, a holding camp. It's a--they watched over them because everybody was sick. But uh, there was a guy who was uh, from the camp, from the other side. They told us not to live in the camp. He was the first ??? So a German. We ??? with a German 'cause they give us uh, one room. And the guys brought us food from the camp. And we used to go to the camps. Then people used to go out from camps, to different, other camps, and they found that this goes on. So then they came lots of women already. It was a bigger camp. But from there they took us to Ainring, because ??? is a small little, very small. They took us to Ainring. Ainring was a bigger camp. And while we were there, we stayed. Uh, here was one small camp and one big camp. And people used to come from Russia then, they put them in the other camp and they used to send people to Israel. And there already I met lots of people there, we stayed all together and my brother was there. And there I met my husband too. You know, they used to go with him cook. Or nothing, went down to the kitchen. We have lots of people were married there. My sister was married there in the camp. We had three weddings in one day. Who made the wedding, the, the American I think. We give money, what kind of wedding, nothing special...The whole camp was invited to the wedding. And from there people used to evacuate, go all over. I met my husband and he used to play soccer. But my husband didn't live in the camp. He lived in that small city, but he used to come to the camp. And then when I was married I moved there. And from there people used to go to United States, and Israel, all over.


© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn