Felicia Shloss - February 9, 1983
Sister Becomes Ill
How many uh, before we talk about the liberation, tell me, how, how did you feel about being there? Were you--did you think about your brother? Did you still think about Łódź?
Yes. Yes. I was even dreaming about--I was dreaming and uh, I remembered my sister couldn't work fourteen days uh, in order to uh, they want to save a day, so we worked fourteen days day, and then we worked fourteen days night shift. So they saved themselves a day or night, like we went Sunday night right away to work. All Saturday night, we, we came back Sunday morning. I don't know exactly how it was. We worked fourteen days, now she couldn't work the whole fourteen days through; it was impossible for her. She fainted. She couldn't work through. She was only fourteen or fifteen years and uh, on those circum...so she um, she fainted and she--they took her--it was a little ambulance there. And she went to the ambulance--it was a Hungarian--she called herself a doctor--a woman doctor. And she uh, she gave me some medicine for my sister.
A Hungarian Jew?
A Hungarian Jew. There was no other people but Jewish. German-Jews, Hungarian-Jews. The ???, the people--the Häftlinge--the prisoners were all Jews. And she gave me a pill. I took it back, and we came back and she threw it up. And the doctors saw that it was greenish. She threw up the green, I guess, the medicine or something. So she starts screaming that she threw up the galla, uh...
Gall bladder.
...gall bladder so they took her there, in the hospital, in that little hospital. And I came back from work one morning, and I saw everything was dirty and I like clean, I guess at that time. So I cleaned up the little place and uh, uh, the one that worked there told me, "If you clean up that room I'll give your sister a little Fleischsuppe," a little um, bouillon, or something. So I did. I cleaned one room and washed one room, another room, and another room. I don't know how I did it, but I did it. I guess the nerves or something was working in me--not my body, something worked in me. And then at that time I remember, I slept very little, and we the--had two o'clock in the morning--in the night time. We had a fifteen minutes uh, we didn't work for fifteen...
Break.
Break, yeah. We had a fifteen minutes and I was--and I laid out the ammunition um, they had big boxes--wooden boxes. And I laid down on that box, and I was sleeping and then the siren started to get up and go to work, and I guess that siren didn't uh, didn't wake me up. And at that time I had a dream. I don't know if it's--if we had a God that wouldn't happen that to people. Why I? Why not--and I saw my brothers' girl friend that he used to go with. I was laying some place in Łódź on a square, without clothes, without anything--I think with a torn little something and beautiful people went through me and they were dressed in beautiful evening gowns with a black, black hats. And between those people I noticed there was a girl that used--my brother used to know. Yeah, and I used to--in that--mein, my dream I saw instead of the sun that was the, the moon. And I, I called out in Polish--should I say it in Polish? ??? The moon was hiding under the uh, the clouds--there were dark clouds and I was calling for the sun, "Come to me! Sun, come to me!" and all of a sudden, I saw a beautiful, beautiful day. And I saw people walking by in beautiful evening gowns and I was laying on the floor by myself. And uh, I, I don't know how to make that dream out. That was my dream, that dream in the ghetto. I was dreaming all the time about my parents. Whenever something supposed to happen I, I dreamt about my father. I don't know. I--it's hard to say now, that--I, I couldn't say I do believe in God, I don't believe, because it's--I'm not that educated to contradict. But if I was the one to survive why didn't others? But on the other hand, I always saw my father in dreams, he was telling me like what to do almost. In the day time, because we were in the very narrow--some--a lot of times that you that you didn't--either life or death And that was maybe six weeks before the war ended. And then uh, I don't know how did I save my sister? Yes, how did I save--it was one of those boxes after that. That my sister also laid down. I covered her up and when the German wasn't there she was sleeping there for a couple of hours and I helped her to survive.
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