Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Harry Praw - June 30, 1982

Being Transferred to Skarżysko

After about a year being in this first camp, from there they started--they moved us out to a different place. They took us to Krakow and that was already a little bit different.

Was that--that's the ghetto there?

No, no, no. They had a camp up in Krakow, near Krakow in that area. And that was already strict, more stricter than this one.

Uh-huh.

And they always, they always picked out the Jews. That was mostly the Gestapo people. If they didn't like the looks on, the looks on you, you were a goner.

Mm-hm. Did you, did you still have Ukrainian guards?

And then, and then--no, that was already strictly German.

Oh, okay, it was more German.

That was stictly Gestapo, that was strictly Gestapo.

Mm-hm.

Then we stayed there--they kept us there for a couple of days. They loaded us again on transport trains--same cattle cars. They always had the same accomodations. And then we went to a place called Skarżysko. Was a--that was an ammunition factory in the woods.

Uh-huh.

When they brought us into that camp, people were already working there. And we took one look at their faces--they were all yellow, like yellow paint painted on them and we couldn't figure out what happened to them. And that was already--that we figured that that was the end of us. That was in 1943.

Mm-hm. Mm-hm.

In that particular factory they made grenades. The produced grenades in that--in this one factory. So from that powder--the people--what they called the people that filled the grenades--whatever that was somehow it affected--the chemicals affected them and they all became yellow, like somebody would take yellow paint and paint their faces, their whole bodies.

Huh.


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