Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Rose Wagner - August 14, 2002

And what, what did they have you do?

I--they, they took us every morning to a factory, ammunition.

Do you remember the company that you worked for? What was the name?

Messap.

Messap.

You know, you heard about it?

Mm-hm.

Yeah, Messap.

So what did you do there?

I was sitting at a little machine and I was making holes in metal.

So...

Now my sister had a lot of problems there. She wanted--they put her in a very hot, heavy machine and she wanted to get away. Because she got away from the machine, they punished her.

How?

They punished her so, they, they kept hitting her that she was sick for a few days.

So did she go to the, the Krankenstube, is that what...

Krankenstube, she did, but listen, what are they going to do, they had... So after a few days, there was a nice guy there. We had French people, French people that they used to come to the factory everyday. Those French people were outside. They could work, they could go whenever they wanted to. But they, they were not prisoners. They, they lived outside, but they had to come and work. So they brought food for us. So in the factory it wasn't bad. It wasn't good, but at least we had...

Food.

...a little bit good food to eat. So...

And how long was your sister in the...

Oh, we were liberated in that factory.

But she was in the hospital.

She was in the hospital a few days. She stayed there a few days and then they let her out. And then she went back. Then she put somebody else at that heavy machine, so she was lucky that they put somebody else. And then she had a much lighter machine. So we were liberated in May the 8th.