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Oral history interview with Lori Price

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1991.A.0112.18 | RG Number: RG-50.045.0018

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    Oral history interview with Lori Price
    Transcript
    OK.
    Today we want to give you a chance
    to tell your experiences before, during,
    and after the holocaust.
    Yeah.
    We like to begin by just asking you to identify yourself
    presently.
    OK.
    I'm Lori Price, geboren Suss, born in Gelsenkirchen,
    Westfalen Germany.
    OK.
    And you tell us a little bit about your life
    there in Gelsenkirchen.
    Now in Gelsenkirchen, [GERMAN] my parents and myself
    lived in a small apartment until about 1939,
    when the Jewish people became orders
    to move out from those apartments
    and into Jewish houses.
    OK.
    Before we talk about that part of your story,
    could we just talk a little bit more
    about what it was like before '39.
    That is, what do you remember of your childhood?
    What I remember of my childhood, my father
    had a barber and beauty shop, and a very good going business
    on one of the main streets in Gelsenkirchen until about 1929.
    Then when the crash came, we had to relinquish
    part of the business.
    And my father found a smaller shop.
    And myself and my brother.
    You had one brother?
    I have one brother, yes.
    We are still going to a school.
    And we had to attend a Jewish school.
    We could not go into a Christian school.
    But my brother started to go to gymnasium from the fifth grade
    on, until 1936 when they did not allow the Jewish students
    to continue at the gymnasium.
    So by 1936, my brother had to interrupt his studies there.
    And my parents found for him to go to learn gardening
    in Dusseldorf.
    I remained at home, and continued my schooling.
    I got out of school, what actually was only
    the grade school, what they call here grade school in 1936.
    So how old were you at that time?
    15.
    15.
    Going on 15.
    So you were born then in 19--
    '21.
    '21.
    Right.
    And from that time on, well, I did not want to stay home.
    I wanted to do something.
    I found a job in a Jewish family as a babysitter.
    This family moved later on to Dortmund, and I went with them.
    They had by that time, a two-year-old boy.
    And I worked for them until the baby was about 3 and 1/2.
    Then I changed jobs.
    I came back home, and found a job in another Jewish family,
    since to learn any profession was impossible.
    We were very restricted.
    Now that was '36, '37.
    By 1938 and '39, of course, it got worse,
    the Jewish questions in Germany got worse.
    Naturally in 1939, we had the Kristallnacht in Germany
    where all the Jewish businesses were demolished.
    The synagogue was burned.
    How did you respond to that?
    Do you remember what your feeling was when that happened?
    Well, no.
    We were very frightened, because we
    didn't know what was going on, or what would be coming.
    Then in '39, after the Kristallnacht,
    my father or all Jewish men were arrested.
    They took them down to jail.
    And there were quite a few restrictions on them naturally.
    My mother went to visit my father.
    We were not allowed to go or I was not allowed to go.
    And we were frightened to death because we
    didn't know what will happen.
    What would be?
    There was not so much hearsay, but it
    frightens us enough to see the brownshirts
    and the demonstrations of the Nazis in the streets.
    What were the brownshirts?
    The SR. And of course, also there were demonstrations
    from so-called communist parties, the workman's,
    and the situation was really very, very frightening.
    Newspapers wrote different articles,
    the smearing of the words, Jude, and juden raus,
    and things like that.
    Naturally that got worse.
    Going on the streets, well in a town where
    you knew almost everybody, and a lot of people
    had been your customers, they shook their heads.
    But a lot of them were afraid to talk to you.
    You mean those would be non-Jews?
    The non-Jews were afraid to talk to you, because they were
    afraid for their own lives.
    One would tattle on the other.
    And there were things either they brandished them
    as communists, or they were just plainly
    afraid for themselves too.
    So, coming to the conclusion that we
    should be a little bit careful.
    When the war broke out in '39, of course, then rationing
    started, and the Jewish people got maybe a little bit less
    to eat than the Germans did.
    And one thing brought the other.
    No way of being able to work freely or earn money freely
    for to make a living and feed your family.
    My father had lost his barber shop.
    We had lost quite a bit.
    My mother was working in a big Jewish store.
    But also there, the situation got very scarce.
    And I can remember that my parents wouldn't talk much
    about it, because in those years,
    parents were not as open to children
    as they would discuss things today.
    So I remained at home until 1940.
    In 1940, there was an opportunity for me
    to go to Berlin to a Jewish school as kindergartering.
    And I took the chance and went to Berlin.
    That lasted from August 1940 until December.
    You were a teacher at kindergarten?
    No, I was a student.
    You were a student.
    But the Nazis closed the school.
    So was the atmosphere different in Berlin
    than it was in your town?
    Yes, in Berlin, the atmosphere was different
    because it's such a big metropolitan city.
    And over there, the Jewish people
    were maybe not as much in the focus than in a small city.
    I see.
    But then in 1940, we were students from all over Germany.
    And we got already the news.
    There they had started to evacuate some Jewish people.
    What started first in middle of Germany, the Rhine, main part.
    And from hearing this particular,
    I had one girl what was in school
    with us, what got a notice.
    She had lost her parents.
    And I believe she had a sister.
    They were gone.
    What had happened to them?
    They took them to a concentration camp.
    They took them to a camp, and this is 1940 then?
    That was 1940 already.
    Now, when they closed the school,
    I didn't want to go home because to a small city,
    there was nothing actually to look forward to.
    So I stayed in Berlin and started to work in a factory.
    But by that time also, the bombardment of Berlin
    had started.
    Since we were living with a Jewish family,
    and we had separate cellars, it was quite often
    during the night that the sirens would go,
    and we had to march down into the cellar.
    Jews down there.
    Don't you dare come here.
    Things like that, from the so-called Aryans.
    Down in a special place?
    Down in the special area, where we should sit.
    But we had to go to work the next morning.
    So much sleep we didn't get.
    After the alarm upstairs, again, maybe another hour of sleep,
    and then out to work.
    This was going on in 19--
    like I said, 1941.
    I remained in Berlin until the end of 1941.
    When my parents became the notice for evacuation,
    I was not 21.
    And the law in Germany was by then
    that you had to return home.
    So I had to go to the Gestapo and get a special permit
    for to go home, because Jewish people could not
    travel anymore.
    They gave me the permit that I could go home.
    When I came home, my parents told me, well, you are lucky.
    They have postponed the evacuation until next year.
    That meant 1942.
    So here, I was home again.
    What's to do?
    I did not want to sit home and do nothing.
    So I applied for work at Krupp in Essen, 17 kilometers
    from my home town.
    I went to work there.
    And Krupp had one department where they made false teeth.
    So the Jewish people, they were working at this department.
    And I worked for Krupp from November of '41,
    until almost to the day of the evacuation,
    until the end of January of 1942.
    Do you remember any personal feelings and experiences
    that occurred in that time?
    What was it like for you?
    Well, it was always the same fear.
    We lived with the fear because by that time naturally
    we wore the star.
    You had to make sure that you found a place in the train
    where you could sit undisturbed, where maybe you
    wouldn't see a Nazi, and they would tell you, Jude go raus.
    And after 8 to 10 hours of work, it was quite tiresome.
    Winter time, it was cold.
    It was snowing.
    And we got ground down.
    Food was in short supplies, like anything else,
    like clothing or anything else.
    And then we lived with the fear tomorrow
    they would come and get us.
    So you had that fear?
    You had that sense that they might come and get you anytime?
    We had the fear they might get us
    any time, because see, of the arrest
    when they had arrested my father, good they kept him
    a week, and let him go.
    But this was enough to put the fear in us.
    When was your father arrested?
    My father was arrested in '39 right after the Kristallnacht.
    I see.
    Like I said before, and then they let them go after a week.
    Now my father, like I said, he was a barber.
    He could not shave with a disposable razor.
    He had to have a straight razor.
    He came home with a big beard.
    When my mother saw him, she screamed because he had maybe
    aged 10 years.
    Well, in the end of January '42, they
    gave us the notice where we had to be on the next day.
    We could take with us one suitcase.
    This is for the whole family?
    For the whole family, for all the people,
    that were being evacuated.
    We had one big place where they crowded us all together.
    The Nazis would come, raus, raus, raus.
    And had as much to this place.
    And there we sat.
    All of us had tried to get some warmer clothing.
    We did not know where we would go.
    But warmer clothing was very well in order,
    because we knew we might go, or had
    an idea we might go to a place where it would be a lot colder.
    We were lucky.
    We did not been transported in [? feed ?] wagons.
    They transported us in regular train wagon.
    So that we were very fortunate.
    We had one bakery at home what were Catholics,
    and they provided us with ample amount of bread.
    And well, they did have--
    my hometown, then all smaller towns
    around there and including one group from Dortmund
    also, what all had been put on this train.
    What were the conditions like in the train?
    The conditions on the train were actually normal, I would say.
    We had places to sit.
    And we were not overcrowded.
    So you would call this normal, at least, for a train ride.
    But where were we going, we didn't know.
    SS was on the train, naturally.
    And once in a while, they would come.
    The train would stop.
    They would check.
    But in general, they left us alone.
    They did not harass us or do anything to us.
    Until we came finally to the end of our journey.
    Where are we?
    Riga, the train station in Riga.
    It was about 40 below, very, very cold,
    and here we get the greeting raus.
    Dirty Jews, raus, raus, raus!
    So all of us tried to as fast as we could get out of the train.
    And there they stood there with dogs, machine guns.
    And we found out we couldn't take anything with us,
    except what we had on us, and maybe a backpack, what
    was on our direct person.
    But nothing, our suitcases, we could forget about it.
    Yeah, you get this later.
    You get this later.
    We still believed we would get them later.
    We started marching.
    Where are we going?
    It was quite a ways from the train station
    to where they would place us.
    We finally arrived at some big doors with barbed wire fence.
    We didn't know where we were, or what this was.
    Then we stood all there out in a big place.
    And we found out later that it was the Appell place.
    Pardon, the what?
    The Appell place in ghetto.
    To the right of us, there were rows
    of houses and with barbed wire, and also on the left.
    Well, we saw coming into the ghetto there was one building.
    We found later out that was the Kommandantur.
    And looking further down the streets,
    there were small houses.
    A few people we saw there.
    But we still didn't understand where we were
    or what, until the Nazis gave us the orders for us
    to find some quarters.
    The scramble started.
    Because living a normal life and being as a family,
    we were used to having at least one or two rooms where
    we could shut the doors.
    Well, we had to forget this.
    We had to share one room with a small cooking place
    with another family.
    Here was my father, and my mother, and I,
    and I can't remember how many more people were there.
    Your brother was not?
    My brother had left already in 1936,
    and emigrated to by that time Palestine.
    I see.
    He was very smart.
    He came home one day and said to my father, I am going.
    My father was very upset, and wanted to tell him he couldn't.
    But my brother was 16 years old, and he decided I am going.
    And he did.
    OK.
    So until it took us about three days
    for really coming to reality what was happening to us,
    that we were behind barbed wires,
    and it was very, very cold.
    We had to find some material to get some heat, and trying
    to get something, and see if we find something to eat.
    Also what they give rations, we hadn't talked to people.
    We didn't know what was.
    And we had to order them.
    Every day was Appell.
    We had to be out at a certain time at the big Appell place
    for being counted, and the selection started.
    The older people, you raus, you left,
    and this would go on for about an hour in the mornings.
    So until they had already weeded out sick people,
    and maybe younger ones what they could select for work.
    The fear here was again.
    We lived with fear.
    You knew what happened to the others that were chosen
    for the other right path?
    The answer dawned on us very quickly,
    because the people, the elderly people, we didn't see anymore.
    So a presumption was that they are gone.
    They had taken them.
    The younger people we had hoped they
    would stay alive, until then we found out later
    what they had done.
    They had already organized some workplaces in Riga itself,
    and they took those people by [NON-ENGLISH],,
    and brought them to those work places, mainly men.
    And selections were going on quite frequently,
    because they had to weed out the older people.
    They had to make room.
    And children, well, the children they left at first alone.
    They had to make room for new people coming in.
    They had to make room for new people to come in.
    Also, there were already people what we found out
    after being above this first shock,
    we found out that there were already
    people from other cities.
    There had been people, I believe,
    the first ones were from Prague.
    Then we found out that my father's brother and his family
    was there, included his wife, a son, and a daughter.
    They were there.
    So here, we had some family.
    But we couldn't help much each other.
    My little cousin lost her mind.
    And they killed her.
    They took her, as far as I know to the cemetery
    out there in the ghetto and shot her.
    Her brother and father got evacuated to one
    of the outside work places.
    What had become of my aunt, I don't know,
    if she happened to die in the ghetto or outside
    of the ghetto, I have no idea.
    Then they evacuated my father.
    They took him to one of the work places.
    And we had words from him, because there also
    were people going from the ghetto working out there,
    until they could make room enough for a new transport
    to put them permanently out at a work camp.
    So was that the last time you saw your father when
    he was transferred?
    No.
    No.
    When they finally had room enough,
    they also took my mother and me to the work place.
    And the work place was at the airport.
    In Riga, what the Germans had occupied,
    and before this it had been in Russian hands.
    And they had done a little bit of destruction there.
    They needed us to--
    cement some runways, mixed cement,
    unload some bricks from a barge, and do general hard labor work.
    So, you actually did hard labor?
    Yes.
    We did hard labor.
    Your mother--
    Oh, yes.
    --and your father?
    My parents too.
    They had us at the place, what became later the concentration
    camp, where men and women were separated.
    Men were on one side in barracks,
    and the women on the other.
    When it became concentration camp,
    we had Appells every morning and every evening
    when we came back from work.
    From there, they would take us by [NON-ENGLISH]
    to our workplace.
    What year is this?
    What year?
    1946, no.
    Pardon me, 1942.
    OK.
    So this lasted for quite some time
    that we were first in the work camp.
    And we had the possibility even to cook a little,
    so we could be like a family, and my father
    could come to eat.
    But then it changed into the concentration camp, of course,
    it changed.
    The picture changed completely that we couldn't be
    with the men together anymore.
    We couldn't.
    We saw him at the men's camp on the barbed wire fences.
    But this was all.
    Then later on, the group what worked at the airport
    would get a camp where we were separated from the main camp,
    and had a place on our own.
    All those workers would work at the airport.
    What was very good, because over there
    we had quite a few luxuries.
    For instance, like a hot shower.
    And we could sit on a table and eat,
    and the men could come and visit.
    They could be with us, and things like that.
    But there was going word along that they
    would evacuate a group of men from the ghetto to our camp.
    And since we had actually quite a bit of freedom
    at the workplace, that we were not
    working by that time under SS, but civil workers, so somebody
    had chosen me to work at the office, to make out payrolls.
    And I had the opportunity to hide something, if I wanted to.
    Now this man from the Riga ghetto
    had not much memorables left, except maybe a few pictures
    from their family, their children.
    And they were afraid before they going to send them to the camp
    that they would lose everything.
    So they begged me if I would hide some of the pictures.
    I agreed to this.
    I did.
    With me, was one other girl, what
    had a 16-year-old daughter.
    And she did the same thing.
    She would hide some of the memorables of those people.
    Only to my misfortune, one fellow
    got caught when they came back from work.
    And the Nazis in the ghetto found
    a note what contained my name.
    They got to the ground out of it,
    and found out then they were two girls by the name of Laura
    in this group of workers.
    So the order came to bring us both into the ghetto,
    to the Kommandantur.
    Well, the other girl didn't have not the faintest
    idea why she was there or what was going on.
    But I did, because I had done something which
    they didn't like too well.
    The Kommandant asked me questions, what I had done.
    And I played a little stupid.
    So he asked me also if I knew that somebody else was
    hiding some documents.
    I said, I have no idea.
    Because I could very well implicate
    a mother of a 16-year-old girl, since we knew
    some punishment would follow if I would have admitted it.
    Well, the Kommandant had a very good day when he questioned me,
    because my punishment was to separate me from my parents,
    and bring me first back into the main concentration camp.
    Well, I was heartbroken, because the feeling was that I
    wouldn't see my parents again.
    And my feelings didn't betray me at all.
    I was at the main camp.
    And by that time, they took me to work at a AEG, Allgemeine
    Elektricitäts Gesellschaft.
    So this is the break, and this would
    be the last time that you--
    what was actually the last time that you saw your parents then?
    The last time I saw my parents, we
    had when I was about from the camp from the Luftwaffe
    where we worked to the ghetto, that was
    the last time I saw my parents.
    I went to work for AEG, and I contracted a bad cold
    and got hepatitis.
    So here you were really alone and you were ill too as well.
    I was alone and I was sick.
    But I was very lucky.
    One of the SS women we had in the main camp, Miss Kova,
    took quite a liking to me.
    And she protected me a little bit.
    Well with her protection or whatnot,
    I was transported from work into the ghetto lazaret.
    We had a lazaret in ghetto with Jewish doctors.
    And they're supposed to take care of us,
    with as little medication that they had, but they did.
    I was for three weeks in the lazaret.
    So I was very fortunate I was alive.
    I got over hepatitis.
    I got transported back to the AEG and worked there.
    We made transmitters for cars.
    We rewired them, the generator.
    Generator.
    And also we had quite a few children with us.
    And by children, I mean under 11 and 12 years old.
    But we were very fortunate that the children would
    go to work with us, and there was an order
    as long as the children were working,
    they could not be eliminated.
    We had our Lageralteste, Rosanov Tally,
    she was a very wise woman.
    And she saw to it that if there was a possibility
    that everybody would go to work, so not an unexpected razia,
    why is they in bed?
    Why is this there?
    What is [NON-ENGLISH]?
    So that we could be protected, we were 500 women in this camp.
    The children would every day go to work with Us.
    Even if they didn't work, they would sort nuts, and brackets,
    and things like that.
    But they were working.
    We had heard there would be an inspection.
    So everybody was on their toes, and trying
    to do the best we could, keeping up with the work,
    and getting those kids busy.
    She found that the inspection came.
    And we were all very, very afraid.
    Would they take the children or not,
    because the mothers were with them?
    When was this?
    Do you know about the date?
    That was in 1943.
    '43.
    The kids were with us.
    Well, the kids were very fortunate.
    They were all busy, and they could not be taken.
    Of course, I did not mention that I had witnessed,
    when we were first in the concentration camp,
    that there had come a transport from Poland
    with little children.
    And we saw the tragedy what happened, that the kids were
    taken from their mothers.
    And we found out then the next day
    that the kids and those mothers what
    did not want to let go of their children
    were shipped to Auschwitz.
    See?
    By that time, we had already had communications, more or less,
    with some of the kapos in KZ, we knew them by name.
    And they would tell us something,
    and be careful what to do, and they helped us a little bit.
    Maybe they had a piece more bread,
    so we could get this, and things like that.
    Did you get any news about your parents?
    Once in a while, I would get some news
    over one of the so-called kapos, were also
    either political prisoners.
    Some of them had mellowed in the time,
    and they would help us a little bit,
    or let us at least know what was going on.
    Yes, once in a while, I got word from my parents.
    They were alive, and they were all right.
    Naturally, they were worried about me.
    But there was no way that I could get out and go back
    to them.
    I had no chance.
    Like I said, the children were safe with us.
    They stood with us until we were freed of the concentration
    camp.
    None of the children from our camp got lost.
    And this camp was--
    did you tell us the name of this camp?
    No.
    It was [PLACE NAME]---- was the name of this particular camp
    that we were in.
    But then of course, I was separated from my parents,
    and was working for AEG, like I mentioned before.
    And working for AEG naturally, we
    had also now one of the SS men there had fallen
    in love with one Lettish woman.
    And he wanted to bring her into the camp.
    Marie was her name.
    And oh, Marie was all for it.
    She had gotten dressed first in several clothes, what
    came naturally.
    It was all clothes what they had stolen from us.
    Since by that time, we had already our beautiful striped
    dresses.
    And here she came one day in boots, in a skirt,
    in sweater, in gloves.
    And she started to imitate one of the SS women, Miss Kova.
    Oh, she wanted to be just like her.
    Well, since [? Miss ?] [? Kova ?] was talking to me
    and she was furious how Marie acted,
    how he ever could bring her in, but at this time,
    I think the Kommandant looked very favorable on it.
    They had to have women, and this one was very handy.
    So they allowed her to be an SS woman.
    Worse than anybody else because, well, she was from Latvia.
    And she wanted to show off what she did for the Germans.
    She didn't impress us too much.
    And she did not have the guts really to be forceful to us,
    because this would go back to Miss Kova,
    and Miss Kova would know how to handle her and complain,
    since [Kova was the girlfriend from the Kommandant,
    she would complain to him, and this would go around then,
    and it would wind up with the SS man, Bruno,
    that he should do something about his girlfriend
    and keep a little bit in line.
    Now this went on for a while.
    Until for all of a sudden, Marie is gone.
    What happened?
    There was somehow a fall-out and if my memory is right,
    I think they had transferred him or wanted to transfer him,
    and they had no more use for her.
    So one day, we came.
    We went from the camp where we were stationed at AEG,
    across the street where the factory was.
    And there is Marie in civil clothes.
    So they had gotten rid of her.
    And we were very happy about it.
    Coming back to the camp itself, I
    mentioned before we had 500 women.
    Yes.
    And we had received a transport of Hungarian women.
    They came quite late to the concentration camp.
    If my memory is right, in Hungary,
    they started to evacuate the people quite late,
    beginning in '44.
    And they bought those women in.
    Well, they worked with us for a while.
    But then there was something, if they
    wanted to go somewhere else.
    And they were very specific with the Hungarians.
    They asked for the Hungarians.
    And most of them disappeared, and were never heard of.
    So, do you know what happened to these?
    Well, I presume that they had taken them either
    to Auschwitz or Treblinka to those concentration camps,
    to the death camps.
    Now, we did not have the death camp at our site,
    but people would die of starvation, and weakness,
    and no medical attention, and whatnot.
    Sure.
    So the conditions weren't--
    The conditions were atrocious like everywhere else.
    We were not-- and so far we were only better off
    because we had a little bit more hygiene in our camp.
    We had access to hot water where we
    could take a bath, what was a very big luxury for all of us.
    What kind of food did you have?
    Well, food we had at the last stage,
    we had chicken feet, what would be cooked for us.
    And the smell alone was enough to make you throw up.
    But what are you going to do?
    You have to live, or want to live, at least,
    even if you don't know for what, or what the future will bring.
    But every day, you stay alive is a day won.
    So we try to eat if we could.
    I had also contracted a gallbladder problem
    in the concentration camp, and we were suffering with that,
    and frequent colds, and the usual sickness you would get
    with the lice, and all the good things what came with
    the [NON-ENGLISH] in the camps.
    We are kept at this camp.
    I was in from AEG until it started
    to get where the offensive would start.
    What--
    The offensive, the war would come closer.
    What, if I remember right, was about August or September
    1944, when it started in Russia.
    The Russian troops were starting, was on the border.
    And we were at work where the restroom was half a stair down,
    and we stood by the window and heard Z-Z-O-O-O, the airplanes.
    And they were starting to bombard there.
    Until the Germans got the idea they
    had to do something, because according to the Geneva
    conference, the concentration camps had to have lit towers.
    They had to have the lit watchtowers
    so they would not be bombarded.
    They did hold fairly well to it, that there were not a mistake
    and maybe a bomb would fall on the camps down there.
    But the Germans got frightened.
    So by the end of '44, the exact date I can't remember.
    They started to eliminate camp after camp.
    And from what we had heard, that some of the outsides came
    [NON-ENGLISH],, and a few more had already been either
    completely eliminated or only were working with very few
    people.
    A lot of them had died.
    I did not mention that I had seen,
    when I was in the main camp, back to the main camp,
    that they had brought in my uncle, my father's brother,
    from an outside camp.
    He was sick.
    They called me, since I knew some of the [NON-ENGLISH] who
    were working in the infirmary.
    I knew them.
    They told me, listen, your uncle is here.
    I talked to my uncle.
    And I had promised him the next day
    I would get some bread to him.
    Well, the next morning when I inquired about my uncle,
    he was dead.
    They had eliminated him during the night.
    But what was that experience like for you
    to hear about that?
    Well, it was naturally very tragic for me.
    See, the way the concentration camp was built,
    we had the latrine in the women's camp
    was built where we could see over to the men's camp
    and to the end of the infirmary.
    And we saw quite often some coffins standing there early
    in the mornings.
    So they were there for some reason.
    I had been in the infirmary during my stay
    in the main camp.
    And the one night, there was a baby born.
    Well, this particular SS man, Wiesner what
    I testified against, came in.
    There was a doctor from [PLACE NAME],, a Jewish doctor,
    and a Polish doctor.
    And I got up from my bed and talked to the doctor.
    I said, what's going on?
    Oh, that's none of your business.
    And you better stay back.
    What was good, because when Wiesner
    come in he saw me that I was out of bed,
    and he inquired what is she doing there.
    And the doctors mentioned my name, and said,
    oh she just got out of bed, but didn't give any other details.
    What had happened that they must have induced labor or the woman
    had gotten into labor.
    The baby was born.
    And we heard the baby cry.
    Well, after a while, there was no more crying.
    And since I was nosy and wanted to see what was going on,
    there was a trash can.
    And there was something rolled up
    in a sheet in the trash can, what
    could have been the form of a baby,
    because it sure looked like it.
    And they had killed the baby.
    So things like said pray on your mind.
    And we knew exactly what was going on.
    We had, for instance, one girl was
    like the Lageralteste in the main camp over the women's
    barracks.
    She had the Appell sheets and all this,
    and would call out the names from everyone
    what was in the barracks.
    She became very friendly with the cook of the camp.
    Well, she also became pregnant.
    Everybody had the hope when the Russians were coming
    close that we might be freed.
    And she would be free and could have the baby.
    But it didn't work out this way.
    As I stated, when they started, the Russians started to bomb,
    the Germans got frightened, and started to eliminate the camps.
    They started by groups or in any way they could transport us.
    Now for us, they had foreseen we would go by ship, by boat.
    Naturally, it was quite a preparation to transfer us.
    And most of it would go in late afternoon or at night,
    until the ship was--
    the boat was full.
    They had finally decided they would transfer us to Stutthof,
    which is by Danzig.
    Fine.
    We had some military boats with us.
    And later on, they had told us that one or two got sunk.
    But we made it through to Danzig.
    And we'd been brought to Stutthof.
    Our whole group, from the AEG supposed
    to go from Stutthof to Thorn, where the AEG had
    another workplace and a camp.
    In Stutthof, coming down there, they had to put us in barracks.
    And since we were too many, we had
    to share one bed with three other women.
    That means four to a bed.
    So if anybody knows what a military barrack looks like,
    or a military bed, I can't imagine
    how those skeletons of us would look and infantile sleeping
    in one bed, if you call this sleeping.
    And then there were interruptions,
    where they would tell us we had to either stay out
    at the Appell place in front of the barrack for hours,
    or they would get us out maybe at 5:00 or 6 o'clock
    in the morning for some reason unknown,
    stay out at the Appell place, no time to use the bathroom, out.
    And we stood in the cold, things like that.
    Now, I mentioned this woman that became pregnant.
    Yes.
    She had her baby in Stutthof.
    And from what we had heard, it was a very healthy baby.
    But mother and child both didn't survive.
    Then I had not heard from my parents,
    and didn't know what had happened.
    But we knew that from hearsay, that they had eliminated
    a lot of people over 50.
    So--
    We started by groups, or in any way they could transport us.
    Now, for us, they had foreseen we would go by ship, by boat.
    Actually, it was quite a preparation to transfer us,
    and most of it would go in late afternoon or at night,
    until the ship, the boat was full.
    They had finally decided they would transfer us to Stutthof.
    It's by Danzig.
    Fine.
    We had some military boats with us,
    and later on they had told us that one or two got sunk.
    But we made it through to Danzig,
    and we'd been out to Stutthof.
    Our whole group from the AEG supposed
    to go from Stutthof to Thorn, where the AEG kept
    as a workplace in the camp.
    In Stutthof, coming down there, they had to put us in barracks.
    And since we were too many, we had
    to share one bed with three other women.
    That means four to a bed.
    So if anybody knows what a military barrack looks like,
    or a military bed, can imagine how those skeletons of us
    would look in infantile sleeping in one bed,
    if you cause a sleeping.
    And then there were interruptions
    where they would tell us we had to either stay out
    at the appellplatz, in front of the barrack, for hours.
    Or they would get us out maybe at 5 or 6 o'clock
    in the morning, for some reason unknown.
    Stay out at the appellplatz.
    No time to use the bathroom, out.
    And we stood in the cold, things like that.
    Now, I mentioned this woman that became pregnant.
    Yes.
    She had her baby in Stutthof.
    And from what we had heard, it was a very healthy baby,
    but mother and child both didn't survive.
    Then I had not heard from my parents
    and didn't know what had happened.
    But we knew, from hearsay, that they had eliminated
    a lot of people over 50.
    So one morning, before we went to the appell,
    I wanted to find out what had happened to my parents,
    since there were some people that
    had come earlier to Stutthof, and I knew
    they had been in Riga, too.
    And I questioned them if they had seen my parents,
    and they gave me the correct answer,
    that my parents had been eliminated
    both at the same day in Riga, before they emptied
    out the concentration camp.
    And by waking up the next morning,
    I had gray hair from shock.
    So you still had these feelings, throughout it,
    all these terrible things that you saw?
    It seemed like you weren't dulled.
    Your emotional life wasn't dulled.
    You were still experiencing these things.
    You were experiences every day.
    Because don't forget, you would come into the barrack
    and would see somebody had died.
    Well, you would sit right next to it and eat.
    So those experience you had every day of your life.
    For instance, the elderly were with us,
    and we had to try with our might, if we could spare
    a little bit of food, to keep them alive,
    at least as long as possible, because we knew
    we didn't have any way out.
    What would happen?
    None of us had money, or at least we were not aware of it,
    if there were or some still had something hidden.
    Some of the Polish people, they did do very smart,
    but we were too stupid.
    We were not raised to really understand
    that atrocities like that could happen.
    Since the German people, there is a little different.
    The Polish people had seen pogroms.
    The Polish Jewish people had seen this.
    They had lived, more or less, even without fences,
    but they had lived in ghetto-lie situation.
    We had not.
    So we were not so much aware of it
    that you could maybe hide something
    in a piece of clothing, if there was a possibility
    to get a piece of bread or maybe an onion or something.
    When we were in Stutthof, well, we
    got the water soup and the piece of bread, and this was all.
    In Stutthof, for the time we did not
    work until they started to transfer us to Thorn.
    When they brought us from Stutthof to Thorn
    into the camp, the same group, about 500 women,
    we started to work again at the AEG.
    Well here was the situation a little bit changed,
    because we had quite a ways to walk to the place
    where we worked.
    It was where we could observe a little bit what was going on.
    There was an airport close by.
    And since everything had to be camouflaged, or also
    the lights had to be very dim, but we
    knew there was an airport.
    And then we had a little contact.
    Once in a while, when the SS people were with us,
    would not look too close, we could maybe
    get a word in from the civil workers that were there.
    We talked to them, if it was possible,
    and they would let us know what was going on politically.
    We had heard, when we still were in Riga,
    about the uprising at the Warsaw ghetto.
    We thought it was crazy.
    You thought it was crazy that they rose up?
    Yes, because we didn't understand
    how can Jewish people do this?
    How can they?
    Where did they get the courage, the weapons?
    How can they?
    This was an impossibility for us to understand.
    Now see, at the airport where we were working,
    there were also working Germans from the Luftwaffe.
    And we got our nose.
    Always they left the newspaper very inconspicuous some place,
    and we grabbed it and would read it,
    would hide it on us until we would be in our barracks
    at night and would study what was going on,
    and things like that.
    So we were yes and no a little bit informed
    what was going on during the war.
    But the uprising of the Warsaw ghetto
    was something else, impossible for us to understand.
    Was there a feeling of pride in the uprising?
    Yes, there was a feeling of pride, but on the other hand,
    still there's disbelief.
    How could it be?
    How could it be?
    Since we were so pressed, we're sitting ducks in the camps
    and didn't know what will happen the next hour to us.
    Yeah.
    So it was hard for us to understand.
    Time went on.
    And when we came to Thorn, well, here
    was from November till January.
    14th?
    1945.
    In January of 1945, as you know, the offensive
    started from Poland.
    In the camp, we had the little communication going there
    with the workers, and they would let us know what was going on.
    Some of the guards spoke Russian.
    And there were some of the Latvian workers,
    they spoke Russian.
    They would communicate.
    Some spoke German.
    We would try to have an idea every day what we heard,
    what had naturally been discussed in camp.
    Also, we had typhoid in the camp.
    But as I mentioned before, the name of our lageralteste
    was Naphtali.
    She was very smart.
    And she saw to it that no harm would at least
    come to those people.
    It was possible to soften the SS a little bit
    so nobody got killed because they were sick.
    Well, we had gotten provisions.
    Instead of giving us a little bit better to eat,
    no, they would dig out spaces in the ground and put straw in it,
    and put the potatoes and rutabagas and carrots
    and whatnot, would put this in on the straw.
    Put straw on top, put pipes in the middle,
    and put straw in the pipe so air would filter very slowly to it
    and cover all this food up.
    Because they are afraid, in case of us being cut off,
    that there was still some food in the camp that could be used.
    So here we were with the water rations
    and the little bit of bread.
    The rest of it was supposed to have gotten for us most of us
    [GERMAN],, like sausage and margarine and jam.
    That was very much been taken from us,
    and they got booze for it and whatnot.
    Who provided that food?
    The Germans had to provide food.
    Because you worked in the factory?
    Yes.
    We had to have at least some food because otherwise we
    would not be able to work.
    What were the things that you built in the factory?
    We made generators for LKWs and also for the smaller cars.
    And we did, naturally, more damage than we could if we--
    we would go to it and we wouldn't wire them too
    correctly.
    But they would bring them in big things
    like this, where we couldn't lift, and had
    to clean them and revise that and rewire them,
    and things like that.
    Oh, we did all sabotage.
    Before they started to transfer us from Riga to Stutthof,
    there were a few escapes from the camp sites,
    where people had been bought out from the concentration camp
    to a workplace and been taken back in the evenings.
    There were few escapes.
    So there came an order, they would cut our hair.
    Until then we still had hair.
    So what did they do?
    The men, they cut only a piece out in the middle,
    and the women were shorn completely.
    From that time on, there was a saying,
    that the word fell about 60%, because our morale was broken
    and we would not work anymore.
    We could have cared less.
    When we were in Thorn at the camp, like I mentioned,
    it would go on.
    We would work every day, to work and come back in the evening,
    going in the dark and coming back in the dark.
    And we would observe a little bit
    what was going on at the airport and by the sites,
    and if we saw people or military or what.
    Well, it came to the 25th of January, if I recall right.
    We went in the mornings to work, and around noon, the SS men
    appeared at the factory.
    We didn't know.
    Or we had some idea what was going on,
    but we didn't know what would happen to us.
    We had seen that morning, when we were going to work,
    there was no light at the airport.
    And we were very shocked about it.
    What happened?
    Why is there no light?
    Sure, we had heard the airplanes.
    We had heard the bombs fall.
    But why was there no light?
    The SS men had come and had told the people down there
    we had to go back to the camp.
    They had to bring us back to the camp.
    This was around noon.
    It was going to the end.
    They had tried to communicate with Danzig what to do with us,
    because we were, in turn, what was actually
    doing the war time in years where
    the Germans had occupied it.
    It was a military town, completely
    stacked with military forts.
    The whole town was very well-known for it.
    Even in war time it was well-known
    that it was a military town.
    They had heard that the Weichsel, the river,
    was undermined.
    And it had to be crossed until a certain time, otherwise
    they would bombard it and that would cut off
    the transport and everything from Poland
    into Germany, back to Germany.
    So when we came back into the camp,
    the SS had gotten very busy.
    Oh, they were busy burning all the records we had, everything.
    Because naturally, they had records
    of every person that was there.
    Then they would give us some rations for to carry with us,
    So proviant, what they had--
    so-called proviant, what they had.
    Some jam and some sugar and some bread
    they would give each one of us to carry with us, packing up.
    Then they made sleds, and on the sleds first
    they carried their personal belongings.
    Everything would be loaded.
    What are we going to do with those people from sick bay?
    Well, naturally, they have to go, because they were afraid.
    They didn't shoot nobody.
    Nobody got shot from our camp.
    We took those people with us.
    At nightfall, they had it sorted all together,
    and they started to shoot out the lights from the towers,
    and we would start on our walk.
    But I want to mention, a day or two
    before, there was one girl who had a little help from outside,
    from a friend, a foreman, where she worked with.
    He had helped her escape.
    They had cut a hole in the barbed wire and out she went.
    Well, the Nazis were very upset about that,
    but on the other hand, they were very afraid of their life.
    And they didn't search too far, because they
    knew if they would make haste, they would be caught.
    So on the 26th of January, they took us out from the camp
    and we start marching.
    What was it like for you then when you were marching?
    Well, the question was, is there hope for us?
    What will happen?
    Where will we go?
    You have to understand that we had a lot of people, women,
    from Vilna with us, and children.
    And also, I would say at least 1/3 were elderly people,
    people start in their 60s and not all into good health.
    But our commandant had the order to bring all of us
    back to Stutthof, not to eliminate anybody on the way.
    So when we started working, first we
    didn't see nobody because most camps were always
    outside of populated area.
    But we were on our march maybe three, four hours.
    All of a sudden, we get company.
    Everybody is running.
    Come finding out, there had been a whole battalion
    of Latvians, Lettish soldiers being stationed
    somewhere around there.
    And the civilians started running,
    "the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming."
    So the marching got a little difficult.
    But we passed some place out in the country,
    and we saw a hay wagon.
    Well, the commandant says, anybody
    that can't walk on that wagon and you make the horses.
    So kids and whatnot went on the wagons.
    We made the horses.
    We had also carried their belongings on the sleds.
    Well, he had found out that the sick ones, something had
    to be done with those, because we were holding them
    up and marching, and it got slower and slower, naturally.
    So he ordered the suitcases thrown on the sides
    and the sick ones on the sleds.
    And you carry them if you want to take some with you.
    You be the horses.
    So we did.
    We waled all that night until the next morning.
    We came to a paper factory.
    It was already deserted.
    And the Germans decided we should have some rest there,
    so we did.
    Now, here we were already in Poland.
    This was Polish territory.
    And all of a sudden, those Polish people came out.
    They all spoke Polish.
    By that time, I didn't understand any Polish.
    Yiddish I had learned in the concentration camp, but not
    Polish.
    So the Polish women were going a little bit in the back.
    And the SS were marching the women,
    were marching the carbines by the side.
    They were marching.
    They didn't have no strength whatsoever, less than we had.
    Because with us, it was the force.
    We want to live.
    With them, well, the uncertainty maybe.
    What will happen to them?
    So they've gotten slower, too.
    When we arrested there that paper factory,
    well, I can't remember really how long we were there--
    several hours, half a day.
    We waited until nightfall again because we
    had to meet the deadline for crossing the river.
    Something happens there, what was very astounding to me.
    The shoes I had worn were no more shoes.
    And one of the SS women gave me a pair
    of shoes with wooden soles to wear.
    And I survived.
    I could walk again.
    It came on then commander was given the marching.
    Rouse, everybody rouse.
    And groping again and let's go.
    So we were marching again.
    Now, I won't forget this, that Sturmbannfuhrer
    is up there in front--
    the machine pistol around his neck, fur boots, a fur coat on.
    And I think he had gotten a little delirious already,
    because when he talked, he would say he didn't care anymore.
    He want to get this over with.
    He was walking.
    Maybe he had the little Schnapps to drink.
    He was walking a little quicker.
    But they all were getting to the point
    where they were very downcast and didn't
    know what would happen.
    Well, here we were.
    We got thinned out a little bit.
    Some of the women, I didn't even suspect
    that had hidden at that paper factory.
    How many, I could not tell because, well, we were not
    allowed to leave the place where you were walking in and maybe
    going a little bit to the back and finding out.
    But when we came, finally we made it over the bridge
    and we came into Bromberg.
    With all the military was running
    and the civilians running, we thought
    something must be going on.
    Maybe they were all running for their lives.
    They left us at the train station with the SS men.
    They are to watch.
    And he had to go and find out what to do.
    All of a sudden, there appears an LKW to my left,
    and there are a couple of soldiers in it.
    And they kept hollering, idiots, where you think you are going?
    There is no way.
    Everything is blocked off.
    You can't go nowhere.
    Where you think they lead you to?
    There is no place where you can go.
    There is no train.
    And here we were standing at the train station.
    Well, the SS disappeared.
    Obersturmbannfuhrer disappeared to go to make that phone call.
    We were standing there, and this LKW was hollering
    at the SS woman, you are idiot.
    Get the hell out of here.
    You think you will--
    go.
    So here they are.
    We had two with us.
    They threw their guns down, hopped on that LKW
    and hollered at us, you are free, and disappeared.
    Well, we were not--
    per se, we were not free because there were still
    some SS men watching us.
    But I was friendly with one girl who was from Riga.
    And I told her, listen.
    If we are going, I will not go in a big group if we disappear.
    If you want to go with me, fine.
    But I will not go with a large group,
    because first, we didn't know what language would we hear.
    The second, two people might have a bigger chance
    to hide somewhere as a group of 10 or 15 women.
    Right.
    So finally she agreed with me.
    She said, OK, I'm going with you.
    So some of the girls, like I mentioned
    before, the SS, they were tired, frustrated,
    didn't know what to do.
    They had been ordered not to shoot.
    They stood there, cold, miserable, and more miserable
    than we because they were not used to hardship like we were.
    So the girls said, talk to them.
    You don't see anything.
    Let us go.
    Let us go.
    So they turned around and we went.
    We left.
    We found a big apartment house, and so light in a cellar.
    And I told the girl I was with, I said, let's go down there.
    Let's see.
    Maybe we can hide.
    Well, here we were clamping down those cellar stairs.
    Boom, boom, boom, boom.
    And we found out people were living down there
    in the cellars, because also their housing was very scarce,
    and they had taken some cellars left in there.
    And then also, air raids.
    So they were fearful for their lives the same way.
    Those people first got scared stiff.
    They heard somebody talking.
    They heard somebody coming down there.
    In Germany, it was the same thing.
    They were afraid for their own lives.
    Couldn't trust nobody.
    One would tell on the other and whatnot.
    The totalian regime was there, and they
    had to fear for their lives.
    But they finally decided they wanted
    to see what was going on, and they found us.
    Where are you coming from?
    What happened?
    What language were you speaking?
    In German.
    They were Belgian German.
    And the first they did, they gave us something hot
    to drink and to eat.
    But we were more dead than alive.
    We needed also a place to stretch out.
    From the cellar, there was another stairs,
    what would lead into the house, into the apartment house.
    Well, we asked them, is there anywhere we can hide?
    Is there anywhere we can sleep?
    And they told us, well, go up there and see what you
    can find where you can sleep.
    Well, we didn't care much where we
    would sleep, as long as we could stretch out.
    So I believe we went either second or third floor,
    up there, and laid in front of an apartment door.
    Stretched ourselves out and slept marvelous.
    We didn't feel anything, it was hot or not hot.
    We slept.
    But in the morning, we woke up and we heard people
    behind the door, and those people had hurt us that night
    before, and we were scared stiff to come out and see
    what was going on.
    So down the cellar we went again.
    We were very fortunate.
    In one of the cellars lived a man and his wife,
    and he had worked at a women's clinic down there.
    The doctors had already left.
    The woman's clinic was untouched.
    And since he worked there as maintenance man, better said,
    well, he knew his way around.
    The first thing he did, he gave his wife what for,
    that she had not taken us in and had given us something to eat.
    Then he provided us with more food.
    And then he said to us, listen, I have been outside
    and I have seen.
    So we asked him, have you any idea?
    Because we came in a group of women.
    Did you see anything?
    Did you hear anything?
    He said, yes.
    They had taken the women about 30 kilometer from there
    into a barn.
    The remaining SS men and the commandant and his girlfriend
    and the rest of the women, they had taken them there.
    And they had told them, now, if the Russians are coming,
    you tell them that you are political prisoners.
    And they disappeared.
    The Germans disappeared.
    They had found out there was no way they could take us back
    to Stutthof.
    The men would help us-- was maintenance men--
    took us to the clinic.
    And finding out later, those women that had heard us up
    at the apartment, they are cooks at that clinic,
    and there was plenty of food to eat.
    I mean plenty.
    Those women would cook.
    All the proviant that was there, they would use.
    The woman would start cooking.
    Oh, we were safe at that clinic.
    It was warm.
    It was clean.
    We saw beds with white sheets, and we
    thought we were dreaming.
    Was this a happy time for you then?
    God, happy time, can you imagine?
    We were free.
    We didn't see the Nazis anymore.
    And we had a bed with a white sheet, and warm.
    And so we asked the men if there would be a possibility
    that we could take a bath.
    He had already seen to that that the women were there
    let go of some of their clothes, and he provided us with clothes
    or what we needed.
    The women from the barn, what happened to all those women?
    The women eventually got freed.
    OK.
    Yes.
    But I believe they were liberated
    by either the Polish army or the Russian army,
    more likely by the Russian army because they were
    the first ones who were coming.
    Now, we stayed at the clinic.
    He made us a bath and really gave us a piece of soap.
    Now, we saw a piece of soap-- we hadn't seen, I don't know,
    in three years?
    A real soap.
    So we got cleaned up and we told him
    to take our beautiful striped dresses
    and put them in a furnace because we
    had enough of the lice.
    So he did.
    He burned the dresses and we had some civil clothes.
    And they started to feed us, but we were smart enough
    and realized that we could not eat as much as our eyes were
    seeing.
    We could eat only very little at the time.
    And I remember that one night, I got up and went
    into the kitchen and got a bowl of pudding.
    My friend said, are you crazy?
    What do you want?
    I said, I might be hungry.
    I want a little bit of that, eat tonight.
    And sure enough, we ate some in the night.
    But we were very careful not to eat too much since we knew
    our stomachs couldn't take it.
    Was that the main thing you wanted to do, to eat?
    What were some of the--
    Sure.
    And you see food that is naturally,
    where you had nothing to eat but water soup and a little bread
    with jam on it.
    Actually, your eyes get big when you
    see all of a sudden that much food, what
    you haven't seen in years.
    Maybe you could remember the taste but didn't have it.
    So that's all what everybody was dreaming of.
    If we ever get free, we will eat this or we will eat this
    or we will buy this.
    How and when and where, that was not the question.
    We would do this and that.
    That was the hope of us.
    We stayed at this hospital, and the second night we were there,
    we slept like we didn't hear absolutely nothing.
    People from the other side of town had come in.
    The hospital was crammed full, because the Russians
    had come closer.
    They had invaded one part of town already.
    They came into the hospital.
    Didn't do us any harm whatsoever.
    The Russians?
    The Russians.
    And they had the orders.
    They came and they left, because this was the fourth troop.
    The first ones would come, and they had
    to stay with their battalion.
    They had to go further.
    They couldn't do anything until the Polish army
    was following them.
    We stayed there.
    And then I had mentioned to you before that they
    would ask for people to work.
    And we volunteered because we felt like we
    have to do something in return.
    Those people have helped us.
    They saw to it that we were safe,
    so we had to do something in return,
    maybe earning also some food for helping them
    because they were sharing what they had with us.
    So we went to work.
    What was the work?
    They wanted to clean out a four-square block
    school, what the Germans had first used for a lazarette.
    They wanted to have this cleaned out
    so they could bring the wounded there
    before they would put them safe on transports for the inland
    closer to a big hospital.
    And we started to work there.
    Now don't forget, this was still the end of January of 1945.
    The war was still going on.
    Right.
    When the Polish army was coming in,
    we found out that there were some Jewish soldiers
    in between the military.
    And they were very shocked to see Jewish women,
    because they had seen them on their way
    back or coming in to Poland.
    Everywhere they found a concentration camp had been
    deserted, people taken out.
    So to their surprise, when they found us,
    they made sure that we had enough to eat
    and that we had a place to stay and that we
    were dealt with humanely.
    So they helped us quite a bit.
    And then they did not want us to stay there,
    but there was a possibility.
    They tried to help us to either stay
    with the military, wherever they would go, as civilians
    and take care of us, or see that we would reach eventually
    a place where there was already a Jewish committee.
    But they took still several months
    before this could be accomplished, since we
    had been behind the front.
    And then sometimes it was also dangerous.
    But we stood in with them, and we
    stood with the civilians, what would help out
    with the wounded soldiers.
    Now, the scene changed a little bit
    later on because we helped out in a lazarette
    was under Russian supervision.
    Some of them were prejudice of race and some of them
    could have cared less because they
    have had their own share of tragedy in their lives.
    But we worked our way through until the front got away
    from us.
    We stood behind.
    And here was something to see.
    Again, how do we survive?
    So we had to figure out what to do and which way to take.
    Now, people were trying different ways,
    and the safest way was to hop a freight train
    and see if we could [INAUDIBLE] Lodz.
    Right.
    Because there had already been some people in Lodz
    that had tried to open up a Jewish committee.
    And eventually, we did this.
    We hopped the freight train and went to Lodz.
    When you say we, you mean you and your companion?
    Yes.
    And also, there on the way, we met a few more people.
    There were some girls from Riga left, and we all met again,
    and then we hopped this freight train.
    I remember there were coats on one train,
    and overnight it was an open wagon.
    We hopped on there and we made it.
    Finally we reached Lodz.
    And so they remind us of the ghetto in Lodz.
    Still saw the bridge there.
    There was an overhead bridge on one part the ghetto of Lodz.
    And to our surprise, there were already
    some people, some Jewish people that had found their way back
    in search for family.
    They were Jewish people living there actually?
    Yeah, there were some Jewish people already living there,
    because don't forget that all those places had
    suffered quite badly through the war from the bombardment.
    And where they found houses, safe where they could live,
    well, they went there and inhabited them.
    That was just plain.
    There was no question, yes, can we?
    Or no.
    Or can we afford it?
    They went and there was no question,
    how paying or not paying.
    They lived there.
    So how did you finally leave Lodz?
    Well, Lodz, of course at that time, we were thankful.
    We tried, and we finally found the committee.
    And we finally were able to get some papers, at least some type
    of identification paper.
    And they were still war on, but maybe some normality for us.
    We felt some normality going on there.
    So until all this, then I met few Jewish people.
    And later on, I also met my husband in Lodz.
    Got married there.
    And I remained in Lodz until '46.
    And then in '46?
    1946, we went illegal over the border into Germany,
    and I went back to my home town.
    What was that like?
    Well, of course I was home.
    And I knew I had still relatives what I was searching for.
    I knew two sisters of my father might be still alive.
    I had no idea that they had taken them to Theresienstadt.
    But they were alive.
    They survived.
    So I had family.
    I was home.
    And I felt like, well, I have survived so far.
    I came through the war, more or less if you call it healthy,
    but I survived.
    You survived.
    Right.
    How did it change you?
    How did your experiences change you to think?
    Well, I tell you, the aftermath came quite later
    when we returned back to what was normal life
    at that time in 1946.
    So here I was home for getting legal papers.
    I had no problems whatsoever.
    I went to the police precinct, where we used to live,
    and I told the policeman, I am so-and-so.
    We lived at such and such place.
    My parents were so and so.
    He said, just wait a moment.
    He bent down and got out a book.
    And he said, yeah, this and this and this, fine.
    What do you want?
    So I told him what I was after.
    He said, OK, wait a moment.
    It took me about five minutes.
    I had all the information I wanted.
    Then I went across the street and there was the registrar
    where my parents got married.
    So I went there.
    And I told the fellow there, listen,
    my parents got married here at such and such date, such
    and such year.
    He said, would you please wait a moment?
    He went into the back room, came back with the book,
    gave me my birth certificate ad the certificate
    for my parents' marriage.
    So I had already my legal papers,
    because there later on came a doctrine
    that you had to get married for making it legal in Germany.
    Well, at that time, I had two children
    and I had no legal marriage papers,
    so I had to remarry in Germany.
    But I needed all the legal papers there,
    and I got them very fast.
    So there was still some civil life going on even
    through all the war and whatnot.
    My home town has suffered.
    One part of the town has suffered quite a bit,
    got all bombed out.
    And then other part did not, luckily.
    What was it like for you to return to this town
    after all that had happened?
    How could I live there?
    How could you live there?
    I tell you how I could live there.
    But first, I had to find communication
    with my brother, what I had when I was in Poland.
    I had already written to him in Israel.
    I had communication with my brother.
    But by that time, you could not emigrate to Israel.
    Where would I go?
    I was not smart enough.
    Then there were DP camps opening up.
    So this was the alternative.
    I didn't know there was other life than going back
    to your hometown and starting over,
    trying to start a life there.
    And then also, don't forget, I had hoped that maybe I
    would find something, what belonged my parents,
    what was mine rightfully.
    Literally, I didn't find anything.
    Our time is almost at the close.
    I suppose it's important just for you
    to tell us the final part of your move out of Germany.
    OK.
    My sister-in-law's father, Peretz Naftali,
    was the first minister from the Israeli government.
    Went to the first congress in Geneva, Switzerland.
    And he had seen to it that we would get immigration papers
    to Israel.
    Then in 1948, my husband, my family--
    By then you had--
    Two children.
    Two children.
    Emigrated to Israel, and we lived in Israel
    for eight years.
    And then from there?
    From Israel we came to Dallas.
    So then when did you arrive in Dallas?
    In Dallas we arrived 1955.
    And you've been here since?
    And I've been here since.
    OK.
    Basically, we finished your story.
    Is there anything else that you think
    of that you want to tell us for this testimony
    about your experience?
    Well, there are so many things still
    to tell for the testimony, for what I have seen in the ghetto,
    in the concentration camp, but it would
    take such a terrible long time.
    There should be, actually, another taping made on that--
    my way through the camps, what I have seen there,
    the atrocities I saw in the camps itself,
    like the hangings, the shootings, the selections,
    things like what we have seen in the camps.
    But this would take at least another three or four hours,
    without an end really to talk.
    There are always-- some things would come into your mind.
    For instance, when I was in the main camp,
    in for the amusement of the German that were there,
    they brought in what they called in Germany asocial women, what
    were prostitutes and political prisoners and whatnot.
    They built a barrack for them outside from our compound.
    And here, one day they bring those women in.
    I can't remember if there were maybe 25, 30 of them.
    More of them were prostitutes than anything else.
    Oh, they thought they'd do the German men a favor,
    so they would have some women for them.
    All right.
    But they were so wild, horrible.
    They had been in prison.
    They were horrible.
    They would steal food from each other.
    They would beat each other up.
    And in the mornings, we were all witnesses of that.
    We could see them.
    They had to be out on stand appell, as we had,
    to be counted.
    One morning, one comes out.
    And nothing is looking out but the slits
    of her eyes and her mouth.
    They had beaten her up real good because she had stolen
    a can of food from another one.
    One of them, she went into the men's camp.

    Overview

    Interviewee
    Lori Price
    Interviewer
    James Pennebaker
    Alan Griffin
    Date
    interview:  1985 October 27

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    2 videocassettes (VHS) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
    Conditions on Use
    No restrictions on use

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Price, Lori.

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    James Pennebaker and Alan Griffin of the Dallas Memorial Center for Holocaust Studies conducted the interview with Lori Price on October 27, 1985. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History branch received the tapes of the interview from the Dallas Memorial Center for Holocaust Studies on January 8, 1991. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received the interview by transfer from the Oral History branch in February 1995.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:09:04
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn506609

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    Contains interviews with 31 Holocaust survivors in the Dallas, TX area

    Date: 1985-1992

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