Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Jack Weinberger - February 6, 1983

Dogs as Weapons

Uh, when you were in Ebensee was there ever any, did the guys ever use dogs?

Oh yeah, there were a lot of dogs. A lot, a lot of dogs. The dogs used to come d... see I love, I love dogs but those days you see what dogs can do to uh,--I love any, every animal, doesn't have to be, like outside I feed the birds, I feed the squirrels, I feed the cats. Every day my wife fights with me how can I bring home meat, I work in a meat market. Meat for the cats, every neighbor's cats. Used to come with uh, big dogs, you know, that Sechsundzwanzig just coming in with the dogs and tear them apart. Couldn't do nothing, so we, so we...

Did they train the dogs to do that or do they just...

Oh they, they, he had them--listen uh, you can train, train a bear to dance you can train a dog to do that too. He, he listens to his master.

Were there ever any German guards or people in the camps that helped at all or that were at all, um...

Helped, like what?

Compassionate or at all...

No.

No.

Inside in the camps everything was done, mostly, ninety percent, the Kapos inside. Of course they were, had to do it or if not it would have been done the same thing to them, strictly for self survival. I didn't-- I'm not saying they did it cause they love to do it. Could've been-- if I was older I probably would have done the same thing, I'm not saying it was for survival. They were, there were inst... uh, instances uh, many places, many times even a son did it to his own father for self survival, not because he liked to do it because it was the power to the camp. The other ten percent the Germans just came in to supervise, to check if everything is going according to their plan. Like with the dogs, they came with the dogs the dogs were not inside the camps. Dogs were strictly outside the camps, but they came in with the dogs. The dogs did the job. Uh, I, I, I, I remember from my hometown, he remembers him very good too, ??? because we are from the same hometown. There were two Jewish people and two non-Jewish people, big top. One was from my barrack, number twenty-six the, there was uh, from my hometown, he was, he must have been at least seven foot tall, very heavy. And there was another guy picked up from the next barrack and there two more picked up from another barrack in the middle of the night. See because in that block Sechsundzwanzig I was it was strictly a dead, dead, dead row. People were dying every day. The man from my hometown, for self survival he picked up-- he pulled out teeth from the dead people, golden teeth. Just to sell it for a little bread. When they were going outside there was, stealing it, but he took it outside to the Germans to be sold for a little piece of bread they took down his Haftling number, everybody had the number, no name. Took it out, they took him in. They came in one night, they picked him up ??? there were four involved, four people. No questions asked, just took up the number. Took them outside from the barracks at night, hung them, they were maybe five to ten minutes hanging, they cut them down and took them to burn them. Just like nothing, no questions asked, no trial no nothing. And this was going on everyday twenty-four hours a day. Twenty-fo...only thing a person didn't know when it's going to happen to you. That's all.


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