Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Saul Raimi - July 7, 1982

Buna

After that, when I completed that course, they sent me to Buna. Buna was actually industrial uh, through IG Farben...

Mm-hm.

...was building a big project from synthetic uh, rubber from those I don't remember. I...

Yes, yes.

And all the day, that camp was in that terrible Auschwitz I. It was bad enough but it was better over there. But...

You were a bricklayer there?

No. That's the funny--I was sent there as a bricklayer. Never did work one day as a bricklayer. I was a helper to a bricklayer. In fact, I uh, when I came to Buna, I was assigned to a bricklaying uh, commander which worked out, out of--outside of the camp but the bricklayer was a civilian and I was his helper, just uh, handing to him the bricks and uh, the mortar, but not... Actually never did work in the camp.

Mm-hm.

Well, in Buna I was from '43 to '45 'til finally the uh, Russians called in. And I described to you more or less uh, how that uh, uh, the deportation, I mean uh, from uh, Auschwitz to Buchenwald was terrible conditions. It was also very bad winter. You had to march from Buna to ??? and there was a nights that people just dying from, from the terrible cold and uh, beatings and so on. In ??? they put us on those trains where ??? the road through Czechoslovakia to uh, Buchenwald.


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