Edith Roth - March 28, 1982
Selection for Transfer to Bruntál
and my-so after about seven months in Auschwitz, Mengele came again to the door and he wanted 300 girls under twenty years of age, go to work in a factory. And that was the biggest decision to make because how can you trust him again?
Was this around January? 1944?
That was around January. My girlfriend with her mother, who I told you about, I begged her to go with us. I took my cousin, one, the one cousin, not the twins and we-- and my sister was screaming bloody murder, she didn't want to go, and I said for some reason I have a feeling that they need, that they are not going to take us to the crematorium, by then everybody was, people were running around, people were going crazy, they didn't, they didn't want to make the 300, 300 line. They didn't, they didn't come forward and um, I said, "Let's go." My girlfriend stays there with her mother and my cousin and my two sisters, and my girlfriend the last minute runs out of the line, she changes her mind, with her mother who was killed later on, and uh, I said, every single day they were doing this, twice a day, three times a day, ??? people up the wall, you know they were constantly selecting, the selection went on, well they had 35,000 people, woman, and they constantly selected, going here, going there or, you know, mostly to the crematorium, but for some unknown reason I don't know, I said to my sister, "Let's go," okay. And we lined up. I have to tell you 300 of the most gorgeous girls you ever saw for from Slatina, from Romania, from Czechoslovakia, from Hungary, he lined up, Mengele, wanted, he wanted to see us naked and the hands...
Hands out in front?
Hands out in front and naked. That's how he wanted to see us all. And he was standing, he told us to, to take our clothes off and he marched us to a, to a, to a bathhouse where, I had to pick up my sister again because she said they're going to have gas coming out, okay. They did a disinfection on us, disinfected us, okay, they, they had this something come out of the walls. I guess they wanted us clean-the disinfection came out of there.
Was it liquid?
Liquid, yeah. And then they gave us clothes, which was better than, that was already the good part.
Were there any that didn't make it, when he was inspecting?
Oh God, yes. There's a lot of them who didn't make it, but we, after that they lined us up and took us to the train. We were-at that time, that moment, we were already the most more fortunate people.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn