Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Simon Maroko - February 19 & 26, 1986

Knowledge of Auschwitz

Had you heard anything about Upper Silesia?

Nothing about that.

Auschwitz, Birkenau? Nothing? Just Mauthausen.

Mauthausen I had heard. Maybe Dachau. Because of some other... Becau...yes, my--the father of my brother-in-law, he had been at one time in Dachau and he had told about uh, not so pleasant treatment.

Now when you came home and found no one there, why do you think they left all their belongings?

I don't have the slightest idea. Whether it was like uh, the, the story of the matzos, that they didn't have time to--that they were forced to--you already kept up waiting so long, they won't even let you go back and, and take those, I don't know.

What did you do next?

Um, I think I contacted the Jewish Council to see how I could send things to them and they, they gave me advice.

And you stayed in the same...

I stayed in the same place. At that time, I was still working in that job at the Jewish Hospital. This was before my first escape, which I described a little while ago.


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