Tag #135380 - Interview #101499 (Gotterer Borbala Piroska )

I was completely crushed, I was so thin that nobody could recognize me, I didn't have a strong organism; my sister did better, she was stronger and younger, at 17. Mengele came and selected people, those for the factory to the right, those for the gas chamber to the left. I was selected for the row to the left, and my sister cried and screamed...I just sat there and I couldn't cry. Somehow, somebody came to me and asked: 'What's going on?', 'I was separated from my sister.' My sister went and talked to Mengele and signaled me to run in the other group and I did it. [Note: it is a presumption it was Mengele, but it is not likely.] The people from the other group hid me among them and no one saw me running. I thought I had made it, but those selected for the factory weren't enough, so the next day Mengele made another selection: he came to see the others again, and I don't know how, but from all those people he saw and selected all those months, he recognized me and said to me in German: 'I selected you yesterday, how did you get here?' Of course I pretended I didn't understand, although I did, and I didn't say anything. 'Ready, who's in this group is off to the gas chamber!' he said, and my sister screamed, and cried, poor thing, and I said 'Whatever happens, it will be as God wants it.' And I was taken to the waiting room of the gas chambers, where we all had to take our clothes off and had to go in like that. But there was a certain number of people needed for the gas chamber so that they would turn on the gas, and we weren't enough, and I saw him with my eyes when he said: 'They are not enough, I will make another selection in the morning and then we gas them.' I spent one night there. What can I say? Can I say what happened that night? I only thought that it should be as God wants it, and I prayed to God to watch over my sister, to keep her healthy and help her get home.