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My father knew about Auschwitz. In Nagybanya nobody knew anything about Auschwitz and all these concentration camps. I don’t know how, but he knew these camps existed. In the ghetto my father told me they would take us away, and we would face great torments in the concentration camp and so on, and there was no reason to expose ourselves to this.
That’s why it occurred that two or three weeks after they started to gather us into ghettos in Nagybanya, we wanted to commit suicide together with a doctor’s family. Me too. The doctor – Benedek, I don’t remember his first name –, his wife, their child, me, my dad and my stop-mother, all the six of us. With morphine.
The doctor gave us the injection. Control wasn’t so tight yet in the ghetto, so he procured a dose enough for all the six of us. Only three died from the six. He, that is the doctor, his son and my step-mother. The doctor’s wife survived, my father and me too.
One might ask why we survived. I found out then that, interesting enough, even if morphine is administered through injection, it goes through the stomach, so it gets first into the stomach, and it would be absorbed from there. So when they found us, they took us at once to the hospital, and carried out gastric irrigation.
Of course I wasn’t aware of this, because I was unconscious. Besides I was young, fifteen and a half years old, at this age the organism is very strong, and it overcame morphine. My father survived, because he didn’t know that nicotine works as an antitoxin to morphine to a certain degree. And he used to smoke a lot out of nervousness.
That’s why it occurred that two or three weeks after they started to gather us into ghettos in Nagybanya, we wanted to commit suicide together with a doctor’s family. Me too. The doctor – Benedek, I don’t remember his first name –, his wife, their child, me, my dad and my stop-mother, all the six of us. With morphine.
The doctor gave us the injection. Control wasn’t so tight yet in the ghetto, so he procured a dose enough for all the six of us. Only three died from the six. He, that is the doctor, his son and my step-mother. The doctor’s wife survived, my father and me too.
One might ask why we survived. I found out then that, interesting enough, even if morphine is administered through injection, it goes through the stomach, so it gets first into the stomach, and it would be absorbed from there. So when they found us, they took us at once to the hospital, and carried out gastric irrigation.
Of course I wasn’t aware of this, because I was unconscious. Besides I was young, fifteen and a half years old, at this age the organism is very strong, and it overcame morphine. My father survived, because he didn’t know that nicotine works as an antitoxin to morphine to a certain degree. And he used to smoke a lot out of nervousness.
Period
Location
Romania
Interview
Dr. Janos Gottlieb