Felicia Shloss - February 9, 1983
Being Taken to Auschwitz
They took you to this prison, and they put you in the open...
Czarnieckiego, yeah. And they took us to the main train and there they took us into trains--closed trains already like freight trains. Like for, uh...
Cattle cars?
Cattle cars, yeah.
Tell me something about the train trip.
The train trip was terrible. I heard people were saying, but I was there. It was terrible. We didn't sit where the corner was. I was lucky. Uh, men and women together, you know, children, everybody was together, but it was thirteen hours. And I, I guess I can control myself, I didn't go once there, my brother didn't go either. My sister didn't go. Uh, people that could control themselves they didn't go because it was--from um, Łódź to Auschwitz it was, I think, a twelve, thirteen hour--it was overnight the drive.
And people--what of people that couldn't control themselves?
They did go and it was terrible ???.
Right there?
Yeah. It was terrible.
Did you have any food in the train?
They gave us bread and cabbage, and uh, until today I, I have the same uh, guilted feelings because my brother--he was a man, I guess he needed more food than I, and when he want to eat, I said, "Don't eat, because you--maybe we'll need it for another day, for another day." And I have, until today a guilty conscience, that I didn't--it's not I didn't let him, I told him to control himself, not to eat. And we came with the bread to Auschwitz. And um, the workers that worked in the streets told us, "Eat up everything what you can, because they take it away anyhow from you. Eat up, give us your jewelry. Give us--throw away everything what you can." They went to--I--to women and children and told them, "Give away your children, you're gonna be gassed with your children." The people in Auschwitz on the way when we walked from the train, they knew already. We, in Łódź, didn't know about those things.
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