Marton Adler - July 13, 1989
Arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau
You were with your father then? You went off to a side with your father?
Yeah, yeah. So in other words...
Your brother was with you...
My brother and my sister went with my mother to the gas chambers. Because the other brother was with my aunt. Remember, he was from little village. So I'm with my father, with this group, with the men. Men separate, and women and children separate. So I with my father. So as we were sorted out five abreast to line these people up and they're asking who was the head, who was the head in the ghetto and this guy they give him privilege again to do a little bit dirty work for them in here in Auschwitz. And he is getting these people together, you know five abreast, make 'em like a square, and a man in this uniform, in a striped uniform asked my father, didn't ask him like I'm talking to you, "this is your boy?" Just to say, this is your boy? "How old is your boy?" "Uh, fourteen." "You're going to go through that SS officer, tell him you're sixteen." And my father, he asked him too, "how old are you?" He said "44." "You tell him you're 38." You'll have at least two, I had three suits of clothes on me because the extra clothing they don't count it as weight, so all my clothes I had it on me, or at least the outer garments, you know what I mean, so the jacket. And now we're marching, we're marching, we're going now and this, the five becomes like a single line and you go through which now I know who he was, Dr. Mengele, and my turn came, I was this high, a young boy, "Wie alt bist du?" "Sechzehn." "Kannst du arbeiten?" "Ja." But not in that tone of voice, in a much, much brisker and curt, "Wie alt bist du?" "Sechzehn." "Kannst du arbeiten?" looked at me like I'm a horse, buying a horse on a--okay, with a finger go. So I followed these people and as we followed he said my father passed the test too. And now me and my father and all of these other people out in a hall oh the size, let's say, like the size of my store, uh 50 x 100. Maybe 100 x 100. Big hall and the minute we're there, "undress--we got to give you haircuts and remember where you put your clothes", and we undressed and uh, they had to let's say for um, let's say if a guy was tall, the barber got on like a little foot stool, or let's say if a kid was short, the kid got on the foot stool to be the height of the barber. See I got on the foot stool or let's say a real tall guy, the barber got on--or maybe he bent down and they cut off everybody's hair and whatever on private parts of your body, which I didn't have it because I was still young enough, and I undressed next to my father, he undressed, they undressed and we were all naked there without hair, again somebody comes up to my father, one of these barbers and says, "This is your son?" `cause I was next to my father, "Yeah." "You better go um, you better go up towards the wall." You know we were like ??? an SS men will come in, in a few minutes and uh, you're gonna lose your son. So we went back to the wall and sure enough an SS man did come in dressed in beautiful uniform, smiling and like nothing happened and he pulled out maybe a couple of kids uh, you're too young to work, you got to go to school, it was a guy with hunchback, you're too weak to work, you got to get light work, this is gonna be heavy work, you're an old guy you gotta go to an old folks--well, anyways he said all them...
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