Sam Seltzer - November 29, 1982
Deportation
Can you describe the circumstances that led to your leaving for the camps as you described?
Yes, um. It was a cold day in the morning, four o'clock, it was 1941. It was March. And they came in, in the morning and they start looking, they had a list of people. And they had my brother's, Abi's name on it. And I was already half dressed. So they asked for, for my brother and I said, "Yes, I am," you know, Abe. I didn't want him--he was a person who had ulcers, you, you know, he was a sickly uh, person, and he was the provider at that time. He was a--he was a tailor. So uh, I said "Yes." Because I was working for them anyhow. See, I was getting dressed already to go to shovel snow for them. The whole town, the young boys were working for them. So we went uh. Uh, they took--round up about uh, I would say about uh, two hundred--three hundred boys, young boys that morning and they took us into the school. And from the school they took us in trucks and transferred us to Sosnowiec. It was a transit camp. Transit camp. They took us there and there was a lot of people there already. They packed us in there and we were waiting for, for them to, to send us out to the camps. From there they sent uh, in groups they sent to, brought buses, came with buses and they sent each group to a different camp. Well, we had maybe two buses. So they, they sort out the horses like with a you know, sort out the, the, the labor. And they took us in uh, into--I was, the first camp was uh, Klettendorf. That was my first camp.
How long did you stay in Sosnowiec?
Uh, about uh, four days in the transit camp.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn