Lola Taubman - December 22, 2009
Life in Auschwitz
When did you find out what, what happened to your parents?
When? You know, there were some French Jews that were there and I remember in the back of the, the, the latrine, he told me, "The only way out of here is through the chimney."
Through the chimney.
So he told me--we saw the, the flame going all the time. And not only that, while we were working the transports kept coming, coming, we saw them and they're entering that building and they never came out. And somebody found my, my father's jacket and there was a picture and I held onto that picture until liberation, and then the bus came so quickly that I forgot my picture. And uh, and, you know, when, when uh, by the time we arrived they were running low on, on uh, the gas. So the, the, the officers came out, and they would throw the gas bomb through the window and then close the window. And they were running so low that they didn't kill the people, they just numbed them. And then they put them half dead on, on, on trucks and took them across the street. And you know how the truck draw...goes up like that and bodies are falling down. And they burned them outside, while we were looking at it.
They burned them alive.
Pardon me?
They burned them alive.
Yes.
When you found out what was going on there, what was your reaction?
That we were ???. Even when we were evacuating Auschwitz and we saw the anti-aircraft canons, I said, "That's where they are taking us, there to kill us there." We never were sure, we never were sure whether the, one of the officers gonna get mad and kill some of us or all of us. And uh, things just jumping ahead of me. I was together with my aunt on my mother's side--my mother's sister--and she was carrying my piece of bread. And when I was hungry and we were already away from Auschwitz, I said, "Would you give me a piece of bread?" And she said, "No, I'm saving it when you pass out."
What did they give you to eat?
One piece of bread when we left Auschwitz, that's all. We had no food on the way.
This is for the death march--on the death march.
Yes, the first death march.
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