Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Sara Silow - August 8, 1993

Bergen-Belsen

Did you march to Bergen-Belsen or was it also on a train?

No, we were marching.

Marching.

Yeah.

In the cold--wasn't it cold?

Yeah. One girl--a SS girl was near us walk...eh, walking and another girl asked her, "Where we are going now?" She said, "You are going to a place for ??? in the Weltgeschichte." You know what this means? In the history...

In the history of the world?

...in the history....

Yeah

...in the world history building. This is the place Bergen-Belsen. This is what she said to this girl, yeah. And she said the first time what the girl was talking to us that her mother in Germany was a maid by Jewish people and they treat her all the years so good and she was fighting with the Germans that her daughters cannot go to, to be a SS against the Jews. And they were saying she has to go--a young girl. But her mother liked very much the Jewish people that treat her so nice.

And she was in the camp?

No, she was a SS.

Oh, I see.

Yeah.

Um, when you marched to Bergen-Belsen it must have been cold then. It was winter, no?

Don't remember. I don't remember.

Was there snow?

I don't know.

But had--you had your wooden shoes...

I know one thing: I was wearing the wooden shoes and they were so big and I got blisters on my foot. black blisters. Just terrible, just terrible.

What else were you wearing? Just the uniform?

Yeah.

And did they give you food when they marched you? Did they give you bread--nothing?

Nothing. In Bergen-Belsen it was a hunger, just terrible. We were living only on a soup a day--one soup a day.

Do you remember what it looked like in Bergen-Belsen?

Outside, you see nothing. We were sleeping outside and we are outside, not working--was nothing.

You said you saw piles of bodies--trucks full.

Oh, so many bodies. One time I was looking from the barrack and it was a stack so high. And I was looking, looking. The dead people was looking maybe like a tent floor. When we were liberated, it came trucks with sand and they put all the sand on these people to cover up, yeah.

To bury them?

To bury them. This was the bury place. Yeah. Maybe now a cold drink?

Okay. When you were in, in, in Auschwitz or in Poppenbüttel , did you talk to anybody--any of the other prisoners?

About what?

Were there ever any discussion about what was going on...

Nothing

About your family? About--nothing, nobody talking?

But one, one lady, she, she recognized me because she knows my parents. She said, "Your mother will--can't recognize you now because your hair are growing." Yeah.

But that was it? Nobod...no one else talked about it?

No, no. Only neighbors, only neighbors--a few girls.

You didn't talk about your family, going home?

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Did you think you were going wind up going home?

People ??? to not survive. Was impossible to live this way--was just terrible, just terrible.


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