Jack Weinberger - February 6, 1983
Sokirnitsa Ghetto
What was the name of the ghetto, the town?
Sek...uh... ghetto uh, ???.
Oh.
Yeah, Sokirnitsa ghetto.
And you stayed there four or five weeks and then you were taken...
We were taken uh, we were walkin', they put us on uh, we had our belongings whatever we had, let's say uh, clothing or something like that. And the old people, and the old women and children uh, they were put on uh, horses, like--and the stronger ones had to walk behind and uh, we were walkin' um, it took us two hours to walk. And then there was a little child, the mother was sitting with the child at the back of the wagon. And the other horse was, you know, lot of horses, just bit off a finger from her child. You know, and the mother start crying and the baby start crying, you know. And uh, stop, stop, stop, you know. And uh, a German stand up and he says, it won't be long you won't need it. So he gave us a hint, just keep it moving, keep it moving. And that's all I never saw that woman again, never saw that child again. And then they took us uh, already in the station and the Germans going a little ??? had machine guns set up. We were in the fields first, all across in the field. And uh, on top of the roofs the buildings surrounding the German's had machine guns set up. We were already start praying, everybody praying to God we thought this was the end already. But it wasn't apparently because uh, then they told us, everybody to, families should stick together because we're gonna, they were gonna start settlements in there. Putting us in the train, cattle train, closed up. Took, I don't know, about four or five days I have no idea. No food, no nothing. Women and children, can you imagine, in one--dark, everybody had to go to the toilet and everything was smelling and, and one, one woman even had a baby there. No doctor, no nothing. Just, really just like they put animals in a cage, nothing. And I was fifteen, fifteen years old. I didn't even--nothing, comes a time when even a human being is worse than an animal.
Were you with your, your family then still?
Yeah.
How many people, about, were in a train car? Do you have any idea? Was it crowded?
Crowded, completely crowded just like uh, sardines in a can. No place to move, couldn't stand or nothing. The only thing the cattle train, and once I had a little opening.
Mm-hm.
Even if somebody wanted to jump or go out you couldn't cause it was so small. Was smaller than this ???.
This was what, in May of 1944?
Forty-four, that's after they picked us up from the ghetto. That was on the way to Auschwitz .We didn't know where we were, that, where we were being taken. We didn't know nothing.
Did anyone die on the train?
Not in my--they were but not, I, not in my uh, compartment. Not in my uh, but I did see when we arrived to Auschwitz and took everybody off. They pulled off a lot of people, ??? uh, had Red Cross ambulances waiting. Can you imagine how there was so camouflaged, camouflaged like never thought was, nothing.
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