Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Esther Praw - May 22, 1983

Arrival at Bergen-Belsen

And they took us to Bergen-Belsen. Bergen-Belsen. And we came in, I had with me one friend, she's here. They forgot to give me my piece of bread and I went into there. So I was crying, so she said to me don't cry, we share. And when we came to Bergen-Belsen. They gave me a job. People couldn't, they have diarrhea, they couldn't go to the--there was one toilet, they had to walk very far, and they couldn't make it. So I had in the morning to clean everything out--away. I was up all night first. And I had to tell people to go there, but they were sick uh, you know I couldn't do anything about it, and I couldn't do anything bad things anyway, or they would kill me. So in the morning I had to clean it up, and I put some white sand and I took uh, uh, you call it a barrel, a wheelbarrow, yeah, I just learned lately, a wheelbarrow. And I took sand, and I clean up, and then I put all white sand on it. And for that again I had a little bit of soup more, or not too much, but I share with this girl what she give me the piece of bread because I didn't have other people. And, whatever I made a little bit more, I tell always to my kids, I share, you know. And in Bergen-Belsen they didn't burn anymore people, but people start to get sick on typhus. And uh, I work, you are not going to believe it, I work again for the lady where she was on the block, I mean to keep the block, so I clean for her, and I helped, and uh, I didn't--over there it wasn't any, any work actually. In Bergen-Belsen I don't recall that we went to work. I don't remember.


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