Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Aaron Salzburg - July 24, 1984

Do you remember any of the heads of the Judenrat at um, Sandomierz?

Of the...

Of the Judenrat. Do you remember the names of any of those people?

When I came there none of the, of the Judenrat from Sandomierz was still alive. There might have been a couple in the cell in the camp--in the labor camp. As a matter of fact I picked up, I picked up a picture from uh, from a person and I looked at that picture and this murderer, ???, came over and asked me, "What do you got?" I said, "I found a picture here." I believe these was the leader of the Judenrat. He's from Sandomierz and he kissed the picture. That man was killed--or sent away--I think either was killed or went away to the gas chambers. But the reaction of this murder--he kissed that picture. It was a good friend of his. I can't explain that.

Did you ever hear the name uh, Mr. Horowitz from that area at all?

I don't know it's, it's uh, what? Like forty years ago.

Well, I'm just wondering.

Yeah. And uh, from there on we went to Skarżysko. The first thing they did--they didn't need, I don't think they need our labor there. All they wanted was to get these victims there to work them to death and uh, the main object was to take away the, take away the loot. Everything we had, we had to lay it down--good clothes, watches, money, gold, silver, whatever we had. They came in and they asked for it and if anyone wouldn't deliver it would be caught later on and would be killed on the spot.

Was this a ghetto or a labor camp?

It was a labor camp. It was a camp where we supposed to do some work for them--work us, work us. There were Polish people coming in every day. To work--we worked together with them. The only thing there were free people, and we located in barracks. The conditions were terrible, unbelievable. We were living in barracks and uh, one place was called the "Economy." It was a big hall. I believe, before the war that was a school. And it's uh, economics. There were four people--four thousand people living in one big hall. Build up, scaffolds was made four or five feet high. One on top of the other--five-four, four-five decks. We were just laying down and rotted away. And young kids you could hear the cries. "Mumma! Mumma! Help me!" His mother was long dead. Very intelligent kids, they couldn't speak nothing but Polish. This is how they rotted away--start frozen up feet, frozen up limbs. Nothing could help. You couldn't go out, you couldn't get out to the toilets or restrooms at night because we were guarded by guards and they looked for an occasion to kill. So everybody had to be done inside. That was in the "Economy." And then we had some barns, which was like places like for horses could live or whatever. The roofs were leaking, anytime snow was laying on the roof it came through on the people, raining, and all that thing. These were the living conditions.