Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Mrs. Roemerfeld - 1982?

Appell II

...starting to tell me first of all about the um, how you were awakened in the morning by the Kapos--was it by the Kapo--in Budy. You were telling me how you were awakened and you had to stand in Appell.

Yes, and...

And then you received your rations.

No, the rations were passed out in the evening.

In the evenings.

In the evening. And uh, also with the soup.

Oh, you received soup too.

No, that was the soup that I'm talking about. Tea, the leave soup...

Oh.

...they called it leave soup. And uh, that was enough for uh, the next--until the next evening. And the next day uh, uh, the next day we are, standing and uh, lined up for counts and we went to work.

Clearing mountains.

And, clearing mountains and beatings all the way to work and back. And uh, we knew it a lot of pain and uh, uh, it's hard for me to describe why, because I didn't know at the time why I was beaten. I knew uh, that I was in terrible pain and I was hoping it would end soon. But unfortunately it did not. And I was to survive. And...

How long were you...

...and I was there approximately three months, not more. Because it was beyond and uh, like I said, they must have had gotten an order to bring us back in Birkenau. And uh, in Birkenau, as I stated before uh, I went through this torture. And after I got out from that hospital when that uh, nurse told me, "Don't stay the ten days because you're not hear to be recovered. You're only the waiting list. The uh, crematorium must have been jammed or they didn't have enough gas. So if you'll listen to me, you'll get out." Well, I got out and I had a pair of wooden shoes and I'll never forget that. The strings from the wooden shoes--it was Holland shoes--they went into the holes of my wounds from Budy and they got infected. And uh, I was walking the streets and uh, I had some kind of a disease, either it was cholera or whatever. But uh, my bowel movement was not--beyond control. And I was a Musulmann what they called. And you could count every bone in my r...my ribs. Uh, it was just, you know, a skeleton. And at that time uh, I've seen the Scheisskommando uh, which it's not a very nice--a Kommando. But they came to clean the bathrooms into Birkenau. It was a men, the men Kommando from the men's lager. And uh, that cousin of my father's Romick saw me. And he asked me, "Is that you?" And I said, "Yes." And he uh, had some influence with some other people. And uh, they called me, I should go into Block 21st, which is Barrack 21st where the ??? which is Kanada was working. And that's when I start, you know, working in the Kanada.


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