Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Berek Rothenberg - May 20, 1984

Then I start to eat. I got the diarrhea. People dying. Diarrhea it was going on from front--from the back. And I start to go. I went to the doctor, I said, "Doctor take a look at the diarrhea." He said, "Go stop eating." I said, "For so many years I didn't eat, and you want me to stop eating now." He said, "The only way you take a bread and burn, and make charcoal and eat the charcoal." I took a loaf of bread and took a wire, made a fire and I put this loaf of bread in the fire--burned for charcoal. I was eating the charcoal and my stomach stopped. And that's--if you get diarrhea, go in the drugstore and just ask for charcoal powder. That will stop you right away.

Charcoal?

Charcoal, charcoal. They sell it in the drugstore. And I ate this charcoal and it stopped right away. I came to the United States, my aunt make me toast and she gives me burned bread, I say. "I, I don't eat no burned bread." 'Til today I don't eat no toast. And that's, you see, that's we went through. And, and people don't forget. There's a lot of people forgot already.