Berek Rothenberg - May 20, 1984
Being Shipped to Skarżysko
You returned to your hometown?
Yeah, yeah. And then finally in 1942 they came in--they broke into the house--it was already like a ghetto--a Jewish policeman with the Germans--and I had a paper to show that I'm working for Ümler. Nothing helped and they took us to the jail. It was a big place or whatever. And they took all the young fellows--mostly young people. And they put us in the boxcars and they shipped me out to ammunition factory.
Did they take your brothers?
No, they didn't. My brother he hided. My brother and--my, my two brothers, they hided. And I was thinking that I'm working for this company and they're not going to touch me. Only they said, for this replace...for this--for him we replace other people. And they took me away in 1942 to Skarżysko.
Did they take your father?
No, didn't take the--my father was shipped out a month, or a month or six weeks later--my father, my mother and my sisters, my two brothers--they shipped them out I think to Auschwitz. Because we had a guy from the Judenrat, he--and he used to come, bring us mail or something. And, and they would--last time he came--he says no more because all gone--they all--the city's clear. They shipped everybody away.
And that was the last time you saw your father?
I did...I saw the last time in, in June, June of '42. And I didn't see them no more. So, and then my brother get uh, they took my brother to another uh, labor camp--in ammunition factory too. And I founded out that my brother's alive--my oldest brother. And we contact each other through a Polack. He used to go from one place to the other one by mail. I give him a little letter and he--and then they shipped out my brother to Auschwitz. From Auschwitz some place else and I lost him. If he would survive--he was four years older than me--he would contact my uncles--my uncle Nancy in Detroit, and the whole family. Or he didn't contact nobody so I knew it. And from Skarżysko I worked over there--ammunition factory to '43--around little later than '43. And then they shipped me out to Buchenwald.
This was uh, all of the Jews working in this ammunition factory...
Yeah.
...they shipped to Buchenwald?
Buchenwald.
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