Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Sara Silow - August 8, 1993

Were you in a barracks? Were you put in a barracks?

Yeah.

When you walked into the barracks, what happened? What did you--did anybody give you any orders in the barracks to go to that bunk, this bunk?

I not remember everything. It is such a long, long time--I went through so much. I cannot remember everything. It is better not to remember.

Uh, huh.

It is better less.

Uh, do you remember the first--your first night in Auschwitz, what it was like?

Yeah.

Tell me about it.

I remember either laying one on another one.

More than one person in a bed?

Not a bed.

Oh, sorry.

A bed?

What was it? You describe it.

On the floor! One of us was laying on the other one.

There were, there were no bunks?

No.

Just the floor?

In concentration camp when we were working, we got uh, beds one on another one, yeah.

So, you were laying on each other?

Sure, yeah.

And then what happened that night--the first night? Did you talk to anybody?

No, speechless. What we got to talk? About what?

Did you know any of the other prisoners there? Anybody from Łódź?

I went, for example, with, with five hundred people from Łódź, this transfer. Fifty survived, yeah. It were not eh, eh when I went to Sweden, nobody will be alive. In Sweden, they treat us all terrific, yeah.

When did you find out your mother had died?

Because they, they, they took her on the other side.

But, when did you know for sure?

Oh, I went with several girls from the same place from--in Łódź ghetto. And in one, one, one girl she told me that her cousin was in Auschwitz a long time and she saw my mother and her mother go to the Auschwitz--to the, to the, to the oven. And from this time--later on I find out the date so I call up and ??? where we were living to a shul and every year they are sending me a reminder they are saying Kaddish. And I send a check every year, yeah. This is what I'm doing for my mother and my father.

So, that is how you found out, somebody told you?

Yeah, this way I find out--the date that they went to the, to the oven, yeah.

So, that's the day you arrived in Auschwitz.

Yeah.

And what kind of work were you doing?

Where?

In Auschwitz.

In Auschwitz we were doing nothing. We were waiting only until they send us to, to work.

[interruption in interview]