Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Brenda Reiss - June 23, 1983

Can you uh, can you tell me about Auschwitz when you were there? What type of work did you do there? Where did you work?

I was just outside because they were thinking they send me to work. I was no, I was no--nothing. I was just outside--the day and night outside.

For three days.

Three days, yes.

And then what happened after that?

Then they sent me to Breslau. I think it was May the ???. And I met my friend, what I worked with together in Auschwitz--in the Łódź ghetto. And she told me she lost her husband. I said, "I lost my sister." And she asked me to make together. I said "Okay." I--we were working together. Then the SS lady asked who can cook in the kitchen. I said, "I can cook in the kitchen." And then I--she asked me if I have a sister and I said, "Yes," because I don't got, I don't got a name, I got my number, I said "She's my sister." I give my number. My number's 54--my number 54750. I come home and I told her, "You gonna work with me." She said "Okay." She worked with me, then a month a later she said to me, you know, "I don't got my, my month." I said, "You know, you changed climate, you lost your mother, you lost your husband." Then four months later she, she was pregnant and I always was behind her. She was with me 'til the last minute when she got the baby, she got the baby.

This was in Breslau?

She got the baby in Czechoslovakia. We were working. I told her, "You better work with me, because the Nazi going to find ou...they're going to kill you anyway." She worked with me to eight months and then after the eight months, I was in ???, I was working nine months I was working. When they found out that she was in the four months I was in Breslau, and after the four months they want to kill her. Mrs. Schneider said, "Why you didn't tell me are you pregnant?" I said to her, "She said that she don't know." Then she said, "You're going to go with a transport to working." She told me to go with her, I went. And then, then I was, I was in Parschnitz I was with her, then they find out again she's pregnant. I said, "Okay you got to no more to go because somebody going to--" they still took it away to, to crematorium ???. Then we went to ??? in Czechoslovakia.