Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Lola Taubman - December 22, 2009

I did meet her.

Yeah, that was her sister.

Daughter: Tell, tell uh, Sid about the Boléro.

Yeah. Ah, they gathered us in the sauna and provided chairs for us to sit and they uh, were dancers performing for us but the soldiers...

For the prisoners?

Yeah. But the soldiers were standing behind us with open bayonets. So they found a Greek girl and they provided her with a, with a uh, tutu and she was dancing by--to the music of Boléro. Every time I hear Boléro I can, I can see it.

Daughter: She says the hairs rise up on her neck...

I'm sure.

Daughter: ...when she hears the overture from Boléro.

I'm sure.

And once, I was going in this barracks to pick up the, the uh, packages, and uh, in front of me was a Madame Clementine, she was from Morocco. Behind me was a Romanian girl and behind her was a French girl. So I spoke to her in English and she tried to answer me in French. And by the time I came to the front gate of that barrack, I got a slap on my face. You know, the, the uh, the officers had a, an amplifier to their ear, so they can hear what people are saying. So he heard me to talk to her, and he slapped me.

What did you do when that happened? What did you do then?

I, I was scared. What can I do? I was surprised. And I said, what will be next? Is he going to beat me too?

Did he?

No. He was--they--he was a soldier who got injured in the war, so most of them were injured officers that came to do the easy job. Like there was one from Vienna and when he got drunk he sang all over the place.

You seem to know their names.

Uh, no, one was--I only know the ranks. Hauptscharführer.

Sergeant.

Is that the sergeant?

Yeah.

Uh, he was, he was a good man, and after the war he was put to, to--in a court and people came and, and, and supported him and he was let free. Uh, there were two--the Slovakian girls were taken away'42 to Auschwitz and they got positions. So they were bookkeepers, assistant to the, to the officer and then one of the girls got sick after we left Auschwitz he provided a carriage for her, so he deserved to be saved. And uh, he had a Jewish girlfriend who was a Kapo. She--??? was her name, from Slovakia. And because she was too strong to the inmates, they wouldn't let her go to Israel. She was hiding in Romania.

Tell me a little bit about the Kapos.

Well, there were two Kapos. She was Slovakian and the other one was Polish and the Polish one wanted to outdo the Slovakian. So she would slap people, she would push people. And then her sister was brought on a, on a, on a transport and she arranged with the officer to save her and bring her into, into uh, Birkenau. But she, she was mean. Her name was Irma. Irma and ??? were the two Kapos.

And did they survive?

Irma I heard vaguely but ??? as I said, she couldn't go to Israel.

She was hiding in Romania.

Pardon?

She was hiding in Romania.

Romania, right.