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It took a whole day and a night, I think. They open the wagons: 'Raus' [Ger.: Get out]. We look: 'Arbeit macht frei' [Work makes (you) free, the infamous inscription above the Auschwitz gate]. What's going to happen to us? I thought then. I didn't know anything about Auschwitz. I knew about our camp in Pustkow, but about others, that they existed at all, I didn't. They left us a very long time on that ramp. And that SS-man, Ruff, said that he had had a 'Befehl' [Ger.: command] and he had to put us in the camp, not in any crematorium. No, because he had been given an order and he wasn't leaving the place until they took us to the camp. It wasn't that he asked for it - he demanded it. On that ramp Ruff behaved very decently. I didn't see him during the convoy, I only saw him on the ramp.
I didn't know that Auschwitz was a death camp. None of us knew that. We were told that we were going to the camp and we went to the camp. But later I found out that it was usually like this: a transport arrived and all of it to the bathhouse. There that poisonous gas at once, then the floor fell in, the corpses down, and that was it. In Birkenau [29] there were crematoria, those people were sent there to their deaths, and others were sent to the sheds. And so somehow we simply survived, because in the end we were sent to the camp. And so that's why I've got this number, A-18077. I was tattooed on the first day, 27th July 1944. Prisoners did it, but I don't know whether they were Poles or Jews.
After that I got my stripes, of course [camp uniform, made from material with blue vertical stripes, comprising a jacket and trousers]. But in Pustkow we hadn't had stripes. You went around in whatever you had. First we were sent to this big bathhouse. I knew that I was in quarantine, that this was how it had to be, that they would come and take us somewhere to work. I don't know what the point of that quarantine was. Two weeks we sat in these sheds and didn't do anything. On the bunks, without anything, just like that. There weren't even straw mattresses, and all those people.
There I saw the women's camp in Birkenau [30]. Women, all shaven, I saw at once on the first day. I saw the gypsy camp too. Yes. I could see that they were gypsies; their camp was separate. I saw other people too, different nationalities, Greeks, Hungarians. I even remember this one episode. I didn't even know what it meant. 'Korfu lekhem' - one of the prisoners said that to us. 'Korfu' meant that they were from the island of Corfu, and 'lekhem' is simply 'bread' in Hebrew, apparently. I still remember those two words, as if it were yesterday. 'Korfu lekhem, Korfu lekhem.' Just meaning that they were from the island of Corfu and they wanted bread.
And after that quarantine, after all that, what they called 'merchants' came to the camp. Yes, SS-men. They ordered us all to get out of the shed. The whole group, the one from Pustkow, because we'd somehow stuck together. They asked about our trades. What trade, what trade? They just wanted to see who could do what, because it was to be real work. Obviously I wasn't a properly trained tailor, but I said I was a tailor. Perhaps I saved myself as a tailor, because they took me to work and didn't leave me in the camp. Some of them, that stayed, older people, they finished them off in the camp. Then they split us into groups and some went to the Siemianowice Foundry [proper name: the Laura Foundry], others to... I can't remember, and I ended up in Gliwice. In July 1944.
I was still a prisoner of the Auschwitz camp, just of the Gliwice branch [31]. There they were building a factory to make gun carriages and large water mines - munitions, in any case. We organized it all, in the sense that first we did the earthworks, and then we put the machines in, set them up, leveled them. Even lathes, milling machines and other machines. As non- experts we did what we could. And in charge of that was a firm called Zieleniewski [Zieleniewski-Maschinen und Waggonbau GmbH] from Cracow, which the Germans had partly transferred to Gliwice during the occupation. I don't know why. Perhaps so as not to be manufacturing munitions in Cracow? Perhaps they didn't want it to be visible in Cracow, that there was production going on in such a big city, and there in Gliwice it was somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, way out of town.
Some of the workers presumably had to move from Cracow to that factory. But they used to go home almost every Sunday. They weren't slaves like we were, but presumably got money for their work. We walked to work every day, perhaps 10 minutes, because our sheds weren't far from the factory that was being built. But there the conditions were awful. Indescribable. In the winter, washing right out in the open air, naked. The washbasins were outside. We had to wash, because we were covered in lice. I couldn't stand it any more. Everything outside. These camp sheds, so many people in one space, as many as possible. The nights terrible, the days terrible. And I was there until about January 1945. The worst I experienced was there. The worst. And then after that there was that march [26] as well. I didn't expect it to end like that. Quite simply, well.
I didn't know that Auschwitz was a death camp. None of us knew that. We were told that we were going to the camp and we went to the camp. But later I found out that it was usually like this: a transport arrived and all of it to the bathhouse. There that poisonous gas at once, then the floor fell in, the corpses down, and that was it. In Birkenau [29] there were crematoria, those people were sent there to their deaths, and others were sent to the sheds. And so somehow we simply survived, because in the end we were sent to the camp. And so that's why I've got this number, A-18077. I was tattooed on the first day, 27th July 1944. Prisoners did it, but I don't know whether they were Poles or Jews.
After that I got my stripes, of course [camp uniform, made from material with blue vertical stripes, comprising a jacket and trousers]. But in Pustkow we hadn't had stripes. You went around in whatever you had. First we were sent to this big bathhouse. I knew that I was in quarantine, that this was how it had to be, that they would come and take us somewhere to work. I don't know what the point of that quarantine was. Two weeks we sat in these sheds and didn't do anything. On the bunks, without anything, just like that. There weren't even straw mattresses, and all those people.
There I saw the women's camp in Birkenau [30]. Women, all shaven, I saw at once on the first day. I saw the gypsy camp too. Yes. I could see that they were gypsies; their camp was separate. I saw other people too, different nationalities, Greeks, Hungarians. I even remember this one episode. I didn't even know what it meant. 'Korfu lekhem' - one of the prisoners said that to us. 'Korfu' meant that they were from the island of Corfu, and 'lekhem' is simply 'bread' in Hebrew, apparently. I still remember those two words, as if it were yesterday. 'Korfu lekhem, Korfu lekhem.' Just meaning that they were from the island of Corfu and they wanted bread.
And after that quarantine, after all that, what they called 'merchants' came to the camp. Yes, SS-men. They ordered us all to get out of the shed. The whole group, the one from Pustkow, because we'd somehow stuck together. They asked about our trades. What trade, what trade? They just wanted to see who could do what, because it was to be real work. Obviously I wasn't a properly trained tailor, but I said I was a tailor. Perhaps I saved myself as a tailor, because they took me to work and didn't leave me in the camp. Some of them, that stayed, older people, they finished them off in the camp. Then they split us into groups and some went to the Siemianowice Foundry [proper name: the Laura Foundry], others to... I can't remember, and I ended up in Gliwice. In July 1944.
I was still a prisoner of the Auschwitz camp, just of the Gliwice branch [31]. There they were building a factory to make gun carriages and large water mines - munitions, in any case. We organized it all, in the sense that first we did the earthworks, and then we put the machines in, set them up, leveled them. Even lathes, milling machines and other machines. As non- experts we did what we could. And in charge of that was a firm called Zieleniewski [Zieleniewski-Maschinen und Waggonbau GmbH] from Cracow, which the Germans had partly transferred to Gliwice during the occupation. I don't know why. Perhaps so as not to be manufacturing munitions in Cracow? Perhaps they didn't want it to be visible in Cracow, that there was production going on in such a big city, and there in Gliwice it was somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, way out of town.
Some of the workers presumably had to move from Cracow to that factory. But they used to go home almost every Sunday. They weren't slaves like we were, but presumably got money for their work. We walked to work every day, perhaps 10 minutes, because our sheds weren't far from the factory that was being built. But there the conditions were awful. Indescribable. In the winter, washing right out in the open air, naked. The washbasins were outside. We had to wash, because we were covered in lice. I couldn't stand it any more. Everything outside. These camp sheds, so many people in one space, as many as possible. The nights terrible, the days terrible. And I was there until about January 1945. The worst I experienced was there. The worst. And then after that there was that march [26] as well. I didn't expect it to end like that. Quite simply, well.
Period
Location
Auschwitz
Poland
Interview
Leon Glazer
Tag(s)