Tag #139571 - Interview #101729 (Bella Steinmetz)

When we arrived, they pulled us off [the wagons]: ‘Los, los, aber schnell, fast, fast!’ Only the cattle are driven like this. This was carried out by the men from there, the haftlings, the prisoners. Everything had to be left in the wagons. We got off without any packages, only with the things we had on us. We walked straight about 50 meters, maybe even less, and the slaughterer was already in front of us, in black clothing: Mengele, in patent-leather boots coming up until this, elegantly. He had a stick. We found out very soon that it was Mengele, because there were Polish girls already. Many were deported already from Austria, Poland, Estonia, what the Germans had invaded, they deported from all those countries. Then he looked at me, and he just made a sign with the stick… I didn’t know yet what would happen to my mother. Only after that the Polish girls from there told us, ‘Can you see, there, how the chimneys are smoking? The previous transport...’ From Szatmarnemeti, from Maramarossziget, I don’t know from where. However, the furnace was smoking at full steam. There was such a smell permanently, and it was so terribly hot, that at the beginning we almost suffocated. Especially when it was gloomy, and it pressed down [the smoke]… That was it.