Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Adele Sandel - [n.d.]

For the third time?

The third time. After that, we already knew, I mean, that's all we talked was that. Oh, we already had eyewitnesses. I had my best friend from my city. I, I grew up with her. I went to school with her. She, she was like a sister to me and I kept on asking uh, "Where is Evie?" It was her name, Evie. So, I had a eyewitness who told me that he saw on his own eyes that in Auschwitz where they called you all in the morning to, to, to stand in line, you know?

Roll call.

How?

Roll call.

Roll call. So her mother was a heavyset woman and she was tying her shoes and she wasn't finished with that shoe because she was, she was a heavyset woman and she couldn't be so quick so this man--this, this, Gestapo took his um, this Nazi took his gun and he was aiming at her and this friend of mine, the daughter of this mother, she stood in front of her and she was killed. One bullet killed them all--both with one bullet. That was--when I heard that for days and weeks I was crying. Even today when I think of that I, I just, I don't know. Do you think I'm normal?

Of course.

Do you?

Of course.

Oh, sometimes I don't think I'm normal because none of these people will live through that. What I'm telling you here is one percent, from one percent what we lived through. Can you tell in an hour or an hour-and-a-half five years of, of horror of, of--you know since then I cannot fast on Tisha B'av. I don't find the strength to fast on Tisha B'av because the compare--I compare the tortures, the trouble we have now and what they had it was terrible that there, too. There were some ??? and everything. But, I just don't find the strength to fast on Tisha B'av what was going on here now. I didn't have to be in Auschwitz to live through hell what, what, what was going on. Which part should I tell you? And we would just slowly, slowly started to become like human beings. Really slowly.