Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Mrs. Roemerfeld - 1982?

How were they chosen?

I don't know, must have been by the Germans because I was never uh, a Stubowa or whatever, I was never those things so I don't know. But uh...

But is Stubowas kinder than the Kapos?

Well, the ones in uh, in Maehrisch-Weisswasser. The ones in Maehrisch-Weisswasser. I remember having a pair of gloves, leather gloves which I uh, traded for a bowl of soup in, uh, in the Maehrisch-Weisswasser they did have a kitchen. But the soup was just water. Maybe you could see a few peels of potato peels in there. So I remember uh, giving her the gloves. And then the girls told me, "Why did you give her the leather gloves. You could have gotten a lot more than one bowl of soup." So I went back crying to her, so she says, "Okay I'll give you another bowl." So she kept on giving me bowls of soup for a week for that one pair of gloves.

Tell me what happened when you arrived to um, Maehrisch-Weisswasser.

Well, we, they took us into the factory, which it was only a half a mile away. And uh, it was...

From the barracks.

...a huge factory. From the barracks, yes.

In ???.

We were on a hill and that was in the lower part and uh, we start assorting tools like.

Was it a fenced in area too?

Oh yes, oh yes. And there were smaller buildings there which the Germans lived there.

And there were...

Higher ranked people, you know, who lived there.

There were barracks similar to those in Birkenau.

Oh no, oh no. They were gates, like iron gates like you sometimes see in a, a very wealthy home. Uh, it's fenced in and that was fenced it.

Was it electrified?

No, no. Uh, when we went in uh, it was a gate like you will see in factories here and uh, the gate was locked and we had guards inside, because it was highly confidential. And I was sort of like uh, uh, well assorting the parts, bullets or whatever they were. And uh, that's where I worked until I was freed. And uh, just before we got freed, we uh, weren't allowed to get out. On the loudspeaker the, the Germans said we should stay in and that's when they escaped. And they left us there. But we wouldn't dare get out because we were afraid.