Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Brenda Reiss - June 23, 1983

Life in Forced Labor Camps

Yeah. When you left Breslau with your friend and you went to--near Gross Rosen you said next you went?

Next took me to Gross Rosen. I don't even know...

Yeah.

...I don't even know.

Yeah. And, and then they noticed there that she was pregnant also?

My friend? Yes because they, they said after she's pregnant, "You know what? You better go because you're not going to go." She said, I--this was a Lager to go through. I said, "You better go. When I cannot go they going to take you anyway." And she said, "Okay," and we went. And I went--the last one I went through ??? by ??? in Czechoslovakia.

Can you spell that for me?

No. I, I don't...

Okay. And you were there until the end of the war?

'Til the end of the war, yes.

Were conditions any better there than they had been?

I was living in a factory--in a broken factory with lice, everything. I was working in a factory then and I don't know what factory it is.

Yeah.

I didn't even care. I didn't even care what they did with me. When I know it will be better for me, I know I'm not going to be alive anyway. I don't care what, what they did it. I went to make the, the, ??? you know, where the fly is going to fly, you know, to make--I don't know, they call this ??? I don't know--to hide it, oh yeah, to hide it. Yeah I went. Every time when you supposed to go, you go, you don't know where. I didn't know nothing.

Sure. Were you taken by train to all these different places?

We walked.

You walked.

Always walked. Even from Breslau I walked to ???. No trains, no nothing, no nothing. We were sleeping in the--where the cows are. How do you call it? Barracks? Barrens...

Barns?

Barns, yeah, yeah. We were sleeping there. We saw a big barn, we said, "Today we're going to sleep." I went, oh...


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