Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Sara Silow - August 8, 1993

Fate of Sister

You were working in the ghetto?

In the ghetto I was working.

Your mother, too?

My mother, too, yeah.

And your sisters?

When, when they are not working, they send right away to--out from the ghetto to Auschwitz.

And your sister was also working?

Yeah.

What about the baby?

I, I not--I don't know, I really don't know.

But the baby was still alive in the...

No. When people were with babies at Auschwitz right away they went to the oven.

I mean in Łódź--still in the ghetto.

Yeah, she was in the ghetto with us, yeah. She was living in another apartment--another street.

With, with the child?

And with her husband, yeah.

You said your other sister got married in the ghetto.

In the ghetto. Lots of people were married in the ghetto because they wanted to go to Russia.

And it was easier if they were married? They wanted to go to Russia so they got married?

Yeah.

It was easier to go to Russia because they...

No, because the Jewish law not to go there with their boyfriend.

I see.

Yeah. So they got married, yeah. She was writing lots of letters from uh, Russia and send us packages.

How did she get away?

Very easy. My husband was in Russia, too, yeah.

This was before the ghetto then?

Before the ghetto.

Oh, so, she escaped when the Russians...

The ghetto was open...

Open, okay.

...so, you can go everywhere where you wanted. She send us packages and one time she send--she was writing that she was sending such a good package but we don't receive. From Warsaw ghetto--from Warsaw we receive from the families packages, but not too many.

And you, you heard from her until the end?

No, no, no, no.

Do you know what happened to them?

In the Warsaw ghetto the, the, they--you know what happened the Warsaw ghetto.

No, I mean in Russia--your sister who is in Russia.

My--I find--I was writing lots of letters everywhere. I got, I got aunts in the city where my sister was in the ???

Hmm. So they died in the war?

Huh?

They died when the Germans got there?

Yeah, yeah.

Now, how did you, how did you get to Warsaw? Did you--were you also in Warsaw ghetto?

No.

Who was in the Warsaw ghetto?

My mother's three sisters with families and another family--my mother's cousins eh, her husband was a doctor--with the whole family. They died in the ghetto of the typhus.

Was there typhus in Łódź, too?

No, no. But in Bergen-Belsen I got typhus.

At the end?

When we were liberated, I was with the typhus, yeah. The day we were liberated--every day they took us out and count us, five in a row and two girls went to the SS and said that I cannot go out, I am sick. She said--this was a girl. They were worse than the mens--and she said, "She has to go out." I went out and they were holding me and I fell down unconscious and the same day we were liberated. And that's all.


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