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Oral history interview with Marsha Segall

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1995.A.1285.43 | RG Number: RG-50.149.0043

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    Oral history interview with Marsha Segall
    Transcript
    Marsha Segall, reel one.
    Marsha, can you tell me something
    about your family background, the area
    you were brought up in, and a little bit
    about your early education?
    Well, I was born in 1922, the 16th of January,
    to a well-to-do Jewish family, traditional but not religious,
    and in Siauliai, Lithuania.
    It was a small Jewish community, but in proportion
    about 7% because the whole population of the country
    was small.
    I had a very happy childhood and a very happy home.
    I had two sisters, one two and a half years older than I
    and one about five years younger.
    My father was an industrialist, and he also represented
    American oil for Lithuania.
    And Mommy was a very happy woman, loved entertaining,
    loved people, always used to sing.
    And it was a really very happy atmosphere.
    We had everything we wanted.
    We used to go regularly to holidays,
    which we had a bungalow in the seaside,
    for three months almost.
    And we all started schooling from kindergarten
    at the age of four and proceeded normally from kindergarten
    to primary schools, which was attached to the high school.
    I finished high school in 1939, which actually
    was my downfall because I had all intentions to go
    to study to France.
    My sister, who finished school in 1937,
    went to England, London, and studied in school of economics
    till the war broke out.
    And I, of course, had all intentions
    to go on the fateful day, the 3rd of September,
    with a young couple who lived in Paris
    and came on holiday to see their parents in Lithuania.
    But neither they nor I left Lithuania in September
    because war was declared, and Poland was
    attacked by the German army.
    Whilst you were growing up in Lithuania
    were you aware of any antisemitic feelings
    from the Lithuanian Gentiles?
    Not for a long time.
    I mean, not in childhood and not in my early teens, but later,
    in about '37, '38, there was a lot of--
    I mean, if you didn't--
    lots of youth, Lithuanian youth, who
    used to tell you very often, why don't you go to Palestine.
    Because to them, it seemed that Palestine was a place for Jews
    because they didn't go in, really,
    to all the finer points of it, that you couldn't just
    get up and go.
    But generally, it did not worry us.
    Did the Jews tend to live together,
    as communities and in particular areas,
    or were they generally spread out
    amongst the rest of the population?
    That's a question which I find difficult to answer
    because, when Lithuania became a state,
    there was a very small proportion of educated
    Lithuanians or professional people.
    And that was the majority amongst the Jewish population.
    And they mainly dwelt in the cities.
    And Lithuania was a country which
    was about 80% peasants-- very good soil, exported
    agricultural goods.
    Even a lot came to England before the war.
    And it was more a country like Denmark,
    which only in the later years industry started to develop.
    And it was the main exports to the world used
    to be amber and amber products.
    It was a wealthy country.
    All the Baltic states have been wealthy,
    in view that there were no poverty-stricken people.
    I mean, we hardly saw beggars or very poor people.
    Naturally, there were better off and worse off,
    but not like in other places of Europe, starving or beggar.
    Marsha, was there any effect that was obvious in Lithuania
    from, say, 1933 on, given what was happening
    in Germany under Hitler and the Nazis
    and their attitude towards the Jews?
    I think so.
    Well, I learned it from the point
    of-- from a Jewish point of view.
    I remember very clearly, in 1933 I was 11,
    that it was proclaimed a boycott on all German imports
    and goods, which naturally didn't break
    the Germans because it was such a small community who didn't
    buy German because we used to get everything,
    being neighbors from Germany, from pencils, paper, cars.
    Even films used to be dubbed in German.
    And all American films used to be in German.
    And that we also weren't allowed to go and see
    UFA films, German films, which we've
    been very heartbroken because they were good at the time.
    But that made on me a very deep impression
    because it was the whole community,
    and it was the rabbi, and it was very solemn.
    But it didn't influence our life.
    And of course, having a neighbor right on the border with Nazi
    Germany, it stuck quite a lot because people
    used to hear, on the radio regularly,
    Hitler's speeches, shouting.
    And it was always attacks on Jews.
    But I think one gets used to it.
    And nobody thought that it will be really executed,
    what he said, that it's just political speech.
    But as a child and as a teenager,
    it didn't affect me at all.
    Did you know anything about the labor camps in Germany?
    No.
    No.
    No, not at all.
    I don't-- I don't--
    I don't think-- were there any at that time?
    Perhaps the beginning of--
    From about '38 on.
    But, no, we didn't.
    Actually, we had some connections with Germany
    through my cousin, who married in Berlin.
    But she was in Palestine.
    But her brother-in-law remained in Berlin.
    And I knew that anybody who used to pass
    Berlin used to stop and take out some things for them.
    And they sent them parcels all the time.
    Was there much fear amongst the Jewish community in Lithuania,
    considering what was happening in Germany to the Jews?
    I don't know how the head of community thought at that time.
    But if I recollect myself, not at all, and also no
    fear in my home.
    It wasn't even discussed much because you
    thought it was a local evil, just in Germany.
    And we didn't think it will spread.
    Or we didn't think that we'll be occupied by Germany.
    Can you tell me something now about the effect the Ribbentrop
    agreement had upon Lithuania?
    Well, actually, the first effect that we had, which was--
    which shook the country was the annexation of the Memel,
    or Klaipeda, Memelgebiet in 1938.
    Because not only Jews ran.
    Actually, they left everything and came across the demarcation
    border.
    Can you give us some more details on this annexation?
    [INAUDIBLE]
    There was a small part of Lithuania
    which were German speaking, like in Czechoslovakia,
    Sudetengebiet.
    We had it, Memelgebiet, which the language was actually--
    they spoke German, and lots of German nationals, who've
    been Lithuanian subjects but considered themselves
    above and as Germans.
    And in '38 it was annexed, like the other parts
    of German-speaking people in Europe.
    And Jews, of course, ran.
    And they crossed the demarcation line,
    which wasn't a border really because it was part
    of Lithuania the whole time.
    And also quite a few of Lithuanians
    left, not wanting to be in Germany.
    But they didn't have to hurry because they
    didn't think anything will happen to them physically.
    And they took their time, and they let them cross normally,
    but not the Jews.
    And I had-- my mother has a friend who lives
    there, who came to Scholai.
    And she used to--
    she had a daughter more or less my age.
    And she always used to be terribly upset
    that they lost their home.
    They lost everything.
    But slowly they've been integrated in Lithuania,
    actually.
    This annexation, Memel, was in 19--
    '38.
    --'38?
    Yes.
    And very few left the country.
    They wanted, but it was very difficult to immigrate, some
    to Canada, some to the United States.
    And the majority stayed in Lithuania,
    in Scholai and Kaunas mainly.
    But the Ribbentrop agreement affected us in a way
    that it was--
    when the Polish war started and the Russians joined
    the Germans, and Poland was partitioned half
    to Germany and half to Russia, the Russians
    gave back to Lithuania the natural historical capital
    of Vilnius.
    And for that they got bases, military bases
    on the whole of Lithuania and in the Baltic Sea.
    So in fact, we've been blind to this effect.
    We've been occupied, really, in 1939
    because we didn't have an army or strong enough
    to push out the Russians.
    But people didn't think of it deeply.
    And I'm thinking about Lithuanians
    because they have been the last majority of the population.
    They have been so happy getting their capital
    that it distracted them from seeing, actually,
    what it meant.
    How did the Russian occupying forces treat the Jews?
    Were they in any way antisemitic?
    In '38, they didn't consider themselves as occupation army.
    And they've been very isolated.
    They had nothing to do with the internal government
    of our country.
    And we still had the same president and one-party system.
    And the communism was still prohibited.
    And people who were found having communist literature
    were still jailed.
    Also, the Russians have been in military townships and barracks
    all over the country.
    How did the Lithuanians feel towards the Russians,
    considering that--
    They had always-- they always felt
    they had animosity against the Russians, which is historical,
    because they have been occupied so long by the Russian tsars.
    And Lithuania was a special--
    in Russian you call it guberniya district.
    And they have been-- the language
    was prohibited to write or speak.
    And that's why you found it even difficulty when
    the state was created in 1918.
    There have been a lot of Lithuanians
    who didn't know how to write their own language.
    They could speak it.
    They preserved it in songs, and they spoke it in hiding.
    But officially, they were not allowed to use it.
    So they weren't welcoming to the Russians?
    No.
    No.
    They didn't like the Russians historically.
    I mean, that applies to all this part of the world who used to--
    who was, for years and years, subjugated by the Russians
    and only became a free state in 1918.
    It applies to Poland, to Estonia, Latvia.
    How long did the Russians stay?
    Well, they-- in 1940, end of May,
    they occupied Lithuania proper.
    And of course, they called it liberated.
    And our president fled, I think, via Germany to America.
    And then we became part of Soviet Union.
    And they created the 16th Soviet Republic of Lithuania.
    And also, they selected Lithuanians
    who ran the country, but basically the Russians did.
    And we had also a tremendous influx of army personnel
    and Red Army soldiers, who have been brought to Lithuania.
    Where did they stay?
    They stayed in military barracks.
    And officers have been billeted in private homes.
    Were any in your home?
    Yes.
    They've been in any home.
    And later on, their families came,
    their wives, grandmothers, children.
    What was your reaction and your family's reaction
    to having [CROSS TALK]
    Well, we haven't we haven't been very happy
    because we've been, really, the first family that they
    asked to vacate our own home because they made--
    it was a big home, lots of rooms.
    And they made there an officer's mess.
    But we were given--
    Mummy was given 48 hours to vacate it.
    And go where?
    Well, in the beginning, they visited us in a slum area.
    And then through connections, we got a very small flat.
    It was three rooms.
    And even in these three rooms, they sent us in a couple,
    two teachers, married, who occupied one room.
    Because in Russia, you couldn't have lounges and dining rooms.
    Every room had to be slept by somebody, especially
    in those days.
    I don't know how it is now.
    Tell me about the incident when your aunt was sent to Siberia.
    Well, you asked before how we felt
    about the Russian occupation.
    I mean, it is-- we didn't have really an alternative.
    The other alternative was the German occupation.
    And from the two, the Russian occupation was a blessing.
    We've been treated like anybody else.
    I mean, there was no distinction if somebody was Jewish or not.
    And it was difficulties because everything was nationalized,
    and goods became scarce.
    And they took out everything the country had.
    And we knew that it's--
    the good times are temporarily because they
    started to send out certain peoples and categories
    to Siberia.
    Some thought Kazakhstan.
    We didn't know exactly where, but it
    was transport trains ready.
    And of course, anybody who was well-to-do
    was right away an enemy of the people.
    That was natural.
    Then they had certain parties, certain views of people.
    And the only thing, which it was then exactly like now,
    is that the Zionists were sent out to Siberia right away.
    They've been-- leaders had been interrogated.
    And that applies to any party because you
    couldn't be anything else but obey to their way of life.
    And we also changed schools because we had private Hebrew
    medium schools.
    They changed it right away.
    They didn't close them, but they changed them
    to Yiddish-speaking schools.
    Anything with Hebrew and with Palestine, at that time,
    was prohibited.
    But that's more or less the only real restrictions
    that it was against the Jews.
    But life was to them the same as to the rest of the population.
    Naturally, when they started to send out people to Siberia,
    they sent out more Lithuanians than Jews
    because proportionally there have been more.
    But they haven't been left behind or anything.
    What happened to your aunt?
    Well, I was a student then in Kaunas.
    And I had a telephone call from Mommy,
    saying that my aunt and her--
    my father's sister-- and her two sons,
    all married with small children, have been taken out
    from their homes.
    And they are in trains, which have been cattle trains.
    And they're at the station because it still didn't leave.
    And she also told me that we are on the list
    to be transported with the next train.
    And they thought it would be the best for me
    to come immediately home if I wanted to be together.
    And that's exactly what I did.
    I didn't pack or anything.
    I went straight to the railway station,
    and I went home, which took also much longer this time as normal
    because it was a tremendous movement of army.
    And when I came home, I haven't seen my aunt because none of us
    used to go to the railway station or to see this train.
    But we had our cook, or who--
    I wouldn't even call her cook.
    She was like part of the family.
    She was such a long time with us, a Lithuanian.
    She used to go every day and give them food.
    They used to push out a stick with a little box.
    And she used to put the food.
    And that's how they fed before the train left for Russia.
    They had a baby with them.
    And my uncle left glasses, and that is the only thing
    they let him to bring him.
    Mommy asked for a little mattress, and she said no.
    And about the 15th--
    or I'm not quite sure-- the 15th or the 16th of June, the train
    left.
    The destination to us was unknown.
    And it was rather tense and very sad
    atmosphere after the train left.
    It somehow all of a sudden, we felt
    that events are taking place which we can't control.
    And I remember Daddy giving us, everybody, some valuables
    in case we'll be separated.
    But we never used them really because the Russian-German war
    was about a week after it.
    Can you tell me a little about the German invasion of 1941?
    Well, under the agreement, the Russians
    used to supply the Germans with a lot of goods.
    And I think the 21st of June still
    the trains went through to Germany.
    And it was a very heavy atmosphere.
    People spoke about the war.
    The BBC used to mention about the war, that it's unavoidable.
    But of course, we didn't want to believe it,
    and we hoped it won't.
    And we had exercise sirens the whole time,
    that the population should be prepared
    in case of-- so we were told that it will never be a war,
    that the war is raging in Europe, that Europe is on fire,
    and the Soviet Union is in peace.
    But nevertheless, we used to have the sirens occasionally.
    And this Sunday morning, it was sirens.
    And we've been all annoyed that they did it on a Sunday morning
    very early.
    And I think Daddy was the first who went out
    to have a look what's happening, because we
    had a noise like bombardment, which we couldn't believe
    it is because we thought it was, again, an exercise siren.
    And when he went down, he saw already a lot of refugees
    from the border on lorries, on army lorries,
    and all shouting and screaming and saying that the Germans
    have attacked the whole border.
    The border, from us, was about 80 kilometers,
    which is very near.
    The Russians didn't let anybody to leave their place of work.
    And they kept on telling us that they have victories
    and they may enter and occupy Berlin.
    We had been also promised to be evacuated in case
    the luck will be reversed.
    But we saw the chaos, really, because they
    have been taken so unawares that the airport was destroyed.
    It was they didn't have any commands.
    Russian officers with tanks ran around backwards and forwards,
    didn't know really where to go.
    It was also an organized Lithuanian resistance,
    which they shot the Russians in the back
    because they wanted to get rid of them.
    And it was very chaotic, these days,
    because the Russians didn't quite retreat,
    the Germans didn't occupy, and people
    didn't know really what to do.
    We didn't have lots of casualties.
    The bombardment was a very short lived,
    because they didn't need it really.
    How did the Lithuanians feel about the Germans coming in,
    given that they were shooting the Russians in the back?
    At the beginning, they regarded them as liberators
    from the Russians, who changed after the German occupation
    because the Germans didn't treat them exactly
    as they thought they would.
    But in the beginning, they have been very pleased.
    And what we didn't know is that, in this chaotic times,
    before the proper German occupation,
    the Lithuanians on their own accord
    killed all the Jewish communities in small places.
    And the only two places which remained
    was Kaunas, Scholai, and Vilnius.
    Also, with lots of people being taken out
    from their homes, arrested, shot,
    but they didn't manage to kill the lot.
    Were the Jewish population shocked
    at that antisemitic feeling?
    Very.
    Very, because actually, we didn't
    know how deep the resentment was against the Jews.
    Because after all, the Jewish community in Lithuania
    is 500 years old.
    And we thought we lived in peace.
    But apparently, it wasn't so.
    What happened once the Germans entered the town
    and massacred the Jews?
    [CROSS TALK]
    No.
    No.
    Because the first who marched in was the German Wehrmacht.
    And the first Germans I've seen actually
    have been in a semi-air-raid shelter
    in a different building.
    And the first Germans I saw were the feldgendarmerie,
    which were looking for Russian soldiers,
    with big dogs because lots of Russians remained.
    They couldn't run away.
    And they took them prisoners.
    But we had no Russians at all.
    And when we saw the Germans, we knew that that's it.
    And we made our way back to our flat.
    Marsha Segall, reel two.
    Marsha, you were just telling me about the German invasion
    and how you had taken refuge from the bombing
    in the cellar of a house.
    And you were now just able to return to your own flat,
    and the Germans had entered the town.
    Yes.
    Well, the whole block was empty, actually,
    because nobody was in the flats.
    And we have been the first ones who came back.
    It was right away, the next day, were Nuremberg Laws
    introduced in the full.
    Because in other places like Poland, they did it gradually.
    But we had it all done.
    And we couldn't--
    What did this mean?
    It meant that we couldn't go out of the flat.
    It was certain hours that we could go shopping
    in certain shops, certain food.
    You were not allowed to go on the sidewalk.
    These were all because you were Jewish?
    Yes.
    You had to put yellow stars.
    And they had to be a special size, 8 centimeter in--
    Square.
    --square.
    That's right.
    And you had to put it on the left side in front
    and the left side on the back.
    So they should see you from both sides, that you are Jewish.
    You could not not put it on because the Lithuanian
    population cooperated with the Germans.
    And the Germans didn't know who is a Jew and who is not
    because you didn't-- you had very little, in Lithuania,
    Jews who were dressed differently to the population.
    We didn't have Hasidim or the very Orthodox,
    like you had in Poland.
    So they didn't look any different
    to the rest of the population.
    But we were denounced.
    I mean, you couldn't pretend that you were anybody else
    because everybody knew you.
    And that lasted about two days till before they
    took my father, which was the saddest day we had.
    They used to grab people in the street
    or from houses to do all sorts of undignified work.
    They also burned books from libraries,
    from Hebrew schools and Jewish libraries and elsewhere.
    Publicly burned?
    Pardon?
    Burned the books publicly?
    Yes, on the spot.
    It wasn't like in Germany.
    But they just destroyed it.
    They also took people for cleaning toilets,
    for cleaning-- sweeping streets and so on.
    But we've been in the house, and there
    was two school friends of mine came to see how we were.
    And also a teacher in French literature
    was in our flat, when it was terrific knocks on the door.
    And two so-called partisans--
    I've never seen them before--
    Lithuanian partisans with guns and [INAUDIBLE]..
    And they had my father's name on the list.
    And they said that they're taking him, not
    for work but for interrogation.
    We have been-- really, we didn't know what it meant.
    And he just, just left without even
    saying goodbye or anything.
    And they took also the other males
    that they found in our flat, my school friends
    and this French teacher.
    And that was the last time I saw my father.
    Did you know--
    Well, we knew that they have been arrested and taken--
    taken to a security, heavy security jail, which
    before used to be criminals.
    And it's one of the most guarded jails in Lithuania.
    And Mommy used to stay in the queue
    every morning at a German town commandant's place
    to be able to see him and to ask for release of my father.
    Did she get to see him?
    Yes.
    But the answer used to be that not to worry,
    that they are safe, and they shouldn't stay in queues.
    They should go home, that they will return
    or they are taken into safe custody elsewhere.
    But she never actually got to see your father?
    No.
    No.
    And some people they released from jail.
    But that was the ones who told them that they
    are specialists in certain--
    I wouldn't say trades, but if they had been engineers or--
    people of professions they needed
    were released in the beginning.
    And the rest, I got to know after the war, really were
    shot in a mass grave in about--
    in a forest, Kuziai, about 15 kilometers outside the town.
    And also some Lithuanians hinted just that they are no more.
    We thought that they came to ask for clothing or something
    of Daddy's, which we actually left with our foreman
    in the factory for safekeeping.
    And he assured us that, if Daddy will need it,
    he will give it to him, but knowing that he was not alive.
    What effect did this have on the rest of the family?
    It's very difficult even to explain.
    It had a terrible effect.
    But yet, we thought that he he's alive.
    And even our Marija, which I said
    before, she used to go and give food to my family
    at the station, my aunt.
    The family cook?
    She stayed-- she stayed-- yes.
    Well, I can't say cook.
    She was really like--
    more like one of the family.
    She never left during the Russian occupation,
    which she had to.
    And she said that nobody pays her salary,
    that she is one of the family.
    Because you weren't allowed to have any help or servants.
    And she also stayed when the Germans occupied the town.
    And she also-- she was terribly fond of Daddy.
    And she thought we shouldn't believe
    that anything happened to him.
    He's definitely alive.
    And she was a great help to us.
    But a few days after Daddy was taken, five German officers--
    I don't remember their rank, but I
    know that they've been high up in the rank with special--
    they used to have young Germans, which
    belonged to the arbeitsamt or arbeits group or something.
    It's a pre-army army.
    Like the Hitler Youth?
    It's after the Hitler Youth.
    They used to be like pre-army.
    They weren't quite the army age.
    And they used to wear different-- they
    have been ordinants.
    They used to polish their shoes, look after their--
    they moved in.
    They started actually for asking us to brew tea
    and telling that the Jews won't have it very good.
    But after they discovered we were Jewish,
    they said that it's not too bad, that we'll
    be isolated during the war.
    We shouldn't do any harm to the German army.
    But after the war-- which will have our own administration,
    and we will be looked after.
    And after the war we, of course, will be free citizens.
    And they, when they discovered-- in the beginning,
    they didn't think we are Jewish.
    But when they discovered we are Jews,
    they decided that it's a good place like any to stay.
    And they left us one room, and they took the rest of the flat.
    And that was a very difficult time too also.
    They have not been SS.
    They have been army, Wehrmacht.
    But they used to have orgies.
    And we used to be absolutely quiet, hidden in one room,
    frightened to breathe in case we'll be discovered,
    that there is some more women in the house.
    They would bring in Lithuanian--
    Lithuanians, yes.
    And they used to ask Marija to make--
    to cook for them and to take out the china and glasses
    and to wait on them with the help
    of their young German ordinants.
    And they stayed till they've been moved on,
    also inquiring where it's better to live,
    as I told you before, whether to choose Leningrad
    or Moscow because they've been absolutely sure that in three
    weeks the war will be over.
    And that's why they told us that we needn't worry
    because the war is a short one.
    They felt they were going to just sweep across Russia.
    Oh, yes, a blitzkrieg.
    And they even burned all the Russian winter supplies
    and clothing because they needed it badly afterwards.
    But they thought that the war will never
    last to winter, that in autumn it will be finished.
    And after, when they left, it was already the negotiations
    with the Lithuanians about a ghetto
    because originally they didn't want
    to have a ghetto in Scholai.
    They wanted us all to be taken to a small place, Zagaré.
    But that we knew that there is a massacre happened there.
    And people who were dealing with the Germans were very good
    friends of my father's.
    And besides the ones who were taken away,
    they've been the left leaders of the community
    because the actual leaders of the community
    have been arrested and shot.
    And they knew that if they want to save us,
    that the only way to remain a ghetto on the spot,
    not to be taken out to a small place where they could
    kill without anybody knowing.
    So the Jewish leaders of the community were negotiating--
    Yes.
    --with the--
    With the Lithuanians and the Germans.
    The ones who objected mainly were the Lithuanians.
    And they didn't want to give up the housing, which
    was very poor ones.
    But yet, they objected to it.
    And it was-- the negotiations took till September
    because we started going into the ghetto in September.
    In our town, it was divided.
    It was two because it was very small areas which were given.
    Were they close to each other, the areas?
    No-- close to each other, but in the middle was a main street,
    and the Lithuanians lived.
    And one was called Troki and one Kaukasus.
    Which one did you go into?
    Troki.
    And there the-- actually, this was a better place
    from the two.
    And we got there because, one, a bachelor, manager of a bank,
    who was a very good friend of ours, took us under his wing,
    so to speak, when Daddy was taken.
    And he decided that, if we will move in a ghetto,
    we'll live together.
    We'll look after him, and he'll look after us.
    And that's why, I think, we could
    move into the ghetto in the beginning.
    And we had comparatively one room,
    but a better room than others.
    What were conditions like in the ghetto?
    Was it overcrowded?
    Yes, very crowded.
    Well, let's say we had a very tiny room, which
    we had two beds, couch, a small, round, little table, two
    chairs, and that's all.
    And there was an oven, which you don't see.
    You see it only in the Baltic states.
    I mean, in old housing, it was tiled, a big tiled oven.
    And you couldn't-- you couldn't walk amongst all these things
    because there was no room.
    It was just crowded.
    In the front, we've been in this room with my mother, myself,
    my sister on the couch.
    And a young girl from another house
    used to come with her pajamas to sleep with my sister
    because she had no sleeping accommodations
    where her parents lived.
    So we've been four.
    In the kitchen, on a dais, a little bit higher
    with a curtain, slept this Mr. Katz,
    who was one of the three leaders of the community in the ghetto.
    And opposite him, also in behind a curtain--
    that's all in the kitchen--
    slept a couple from Austria, who've been caught up
    in the war in Lithuania.
    And of course, everybody used the cooking facilities
    in the kitchen because the stove was
    in a big old-fashioned, wood.
    You had to put wood to make a fire
    to heat the stove and a bit of water in the side.
    And then it was another room in this part of the house.
    Actually, it was all originally one half
    of the house where one family lived.
    So there was four of us sleeping in this tiny room that we had,
    four in the kitchen.
    There was a small hall, and there was another room
    where another family lived.
    It was a husband and wife and two small children,
    a little girl and a younger little boy child,
    who was afterwards taken with the children's aktion,
    in German they called it, when they took out all
    the children from the ghetto.
    Could you tell me about that?
    Well, we-- in the ghetto, we had also an office,
    which was called the labor administration,
    which the Germans used to give us lists of how many people
    they need for the railway, for other German--
    food-- I don't know how to call it even,
    where they kept it all.
    Storage.
    Storage, as in all sorts of--
    where they had to service their cars or--
    that was the main work.
    They also used to ask--
    come with requests from the German labor office in town,
    that they need 20 Jews to clean windows, 15 Jews
    to do something else.
    That was going on the whole time.
    In the beginning, they even used to pay,
    which was absolutely nothing.
    I think one mark 50 for a man and one mark 30 for a woman.
    But we've been very happy with it
    because that gave an excuse for people
    if they've been searched and found money, that because money
    was in circulation.
    But that stopped very quickly.
    In the beginning, we've been under the jurisdiction
    of the Lithuanians.
    And the police, which guarded the ghetto was Lithuanian.
    But later on, when the Gestapo took it over,
    it was Lithuanians and Germans.
    The Germans very often used to come and make raids
    with Lithuanians.
    When the columns of workers used to come back to the ghetto--
    they used to go out early, very early
    in the morning, used to call them out, the names, lists.
    And they used to, like a column, you know, four abreast
    and with Lithuanian guards both sides with guns.
    And they used to bring them like this to their workplace
    and bring them back in the evening.
    Well, we have got a very long winter,
    we had in Lithuania, and very short days.
    So it used to be very early dark.
    So all these raids used to be really at night in the dark.
    They used to wait for the columns.
    And they used to check at random--
    not everybody because they couldn't manage.
    And if they found something--
    people used to bring rotten, smelly potatoes or something,
    a cigarette or an egg.
    They used to be beaten.
    And one case like this, which was a terrible case,
    was they wanted to put him as an example,
    that nobody should bring anything because the ration was
    starvation ration.
    And they took a young man, and they found him
    with rotten potatoes and some cigarettes.
    And they put him-- he was very tall.
    And they put him in the car boot of the Germans,
    and they took him to jail.
    And everything was done to get him out
    because it was impossible.
    And the gebiet's commissar, Geweke,
    who actually, he was bad, but you could bribe him.
    And he used to avert some laws.
    He was pressed by the Gestapo himself
    to make it as a showcase.
    And he was hanged publicly.
    And then it was still two ghettos, as I mentioned before.
    And he was hung in Kaukasus.
    And I remember that we went in columns
    to cross the Lithuanian part of town
    to go there in a clearing, where the gallows were erected.
    And his family was there.
    And that was something terrible.
    Were you made to go watch it?
    Yes.
    And he was brought, and he was hung in public.
    And it was terrible because his wife still
    had a petition of mercy before the gallows.
    And it was the gebiet's commissar
    came and from the Gestapo.
    The Lithuanians to watch it.
    I think his wife is still alive in the United States
    because also his brother lived in the United States.
    He came in Germany after the war to the case
    of Geweke, the gebiet's commissar,
    because he was caught and tried.
    What exactly is a gebiet's commissar?
    Gebiet is a district.
    He was the commissar of a district, gebiet.
    Can you tell me about what happened in 1943, when
    the children were all taken?
    Well, in '43, we, actually, have been--
    that is very difficult for me to talk about it
    because I was involved in it.
    We got to know, which was lucky, before,
    that in the ghetto of Vilnius and in Kaunas
    the children were taken out.
    And we hoped that we will be able to save some.
    We tried everywhere-- churches, monasteries, everywhere,
    and just people, they should take children.
    But it was a brick wall.
    And on the 5th of November, 1943,
    we got up, finding ourselves being surrounded completely
    with three kinds of guards, Lithuanian, German, mainly
    Ukrainians, who had vodka flasks, drunk.
    And we didn't know exactly what is
    going to happen because, in the beginning,
    they said that nobody should leave the ghetto
    or would leave the ghetto.
    Then the second command came that all the people who work
    should go out as usual to their working places.
    And of course, lots of parents guessed
    that is coming here, the children and the old.
    And they tried to hide them as much as they could,
    in cellars, in attics.
    Some bigger children who looked bigger, they
    tried to smuggle out to the work places where they went to work.
    But to describe what happened later
    is very, very difficult because the gates opened.
    When the people went to work left,
    and hundreds of Ukrainians jumped from lorries
    and started running from one house
    to the other in the street.
    And wherever they found children,
    just grabbing them from the hands of their mothers
    and chasing them to where the lorries stood.
    The children have been--
    not trained, but instinctively.
    For the three years that they've been in the ghetto,
    they've been always terribly frightened for Germans
    or for Lithuanian guards.
    And they tried to run back to the mothers.
    And the screams and the shouts of the mothers
    was something which is--
    it is-- there are no words to describe.
    And babies, little ones, lovely children--
    they also looked everywhere.
    They opened every cellar.
    And they just fished them out, like--
    like catching rabid dogs, and from the attics,
    from gardens, from everywhere.
    Mothers tried to give them their wedding rings,
    everything they had.
    And some of them pretended that they're going away,
    but sent in others to take it.
    They also robbed what little--
    I mean, hardly anything was left in the ghetto.
    But still, they-- whatever they found,
    something, they took that along too.
    But to describe that, how the children have been herded
    to these lorries is simply impossible
    because they have been-- some have been toddlers.
    And the bigger children, who have been terribly afraid,
    frightened because they already realized that they're taking
    them away from their mother.
    Their fathers, were there, we all have been all out working.
    And also, some children were left alone, hidden,
    because the mothers had to be out to the workplace.
    And I know I told you that in one
    room of the house, the house where we lived,
    there was a family.
    And they had a daughter and a little boy.
    The little boy was the most beautiful child
    I've seen-- huge gray-blue eyes.
    And he was-- I always used to tell him
    every evening some stories.
    I loved him.
    And he was found hiding in the garden behind the bushes
    and was taken.
    He tried-- he jumped from the lorry.
    And then we knew that they are beyond rescue
    because he was shot in the leg.
    His-- you saw--
    there some scenes that the Germans talked in,
    that they are taking the children to nurseries,
    big nurseries elsewhere because them being with the parents
    doesn't let the mothers go to work in certain cases.
    And their work is not so good as they
    wish to because they have to attend to the children.
    They also said that the old people are going to homes,
    to old people homes.
    You don't know what happened in the minds of people.
    But what I'm going to tell you, it's unbelievable.
    Because we had like an administration in the ghetto.
    And we had a police force, internal.
    But they have been extremely nice and helpful,
    not like in other places extremely nice.
    Marsha Segall, Reel 3.
    The chief of police was somebody we knew very well.
    And he wanted to be an example.
    And it's difficult to believe that he really believed
    what the Germans told him.
    And he took his little girl, which
    was a beautiful little girl, blonde with curly hair, lovely.
    And on his arms, he brought her to the lorry
    and gave her to the Germans.
    And he wanted everybody to do the same.
    Either he was insane at that time or something,
    nobody knows.
    But he thought that they're really
    going to a children's home.
    It's unbelievable.
    Did you find out later what happened to the children?
    Yes.
    Well, first of all, when we saw that they shot a child, when
    he jumped from the lorry, that was the indication
    that they're not going to a home.
    Secondly, by this time, we more or less
    knew that anybody who is taken out from the ghetto
    is not going to something nice because we never
    saw them again, we never heard from them.
    And we started to believe that they are being killed.
    We didn't know how or where, but we didn't believe anymore
    their stories.
    And especially when they took our young children.
    What are they going to do with babies?
    And I don't also have to tell you the state of the mothers.
    And the mothers who came back in the evening from work
    and found the children have gone.
    It was-- the crying and the screaming
    was so terrible that it was impossible to be there.
    And one, who didn't have anybody with children,
    we just couldn't take it.
    And we had already contacted a Lithuanian peasant who
    was willing to hide us and help us
    and perhaps even to contact partisans, which in '43 already
    started to exist in Lithuanian forests.
    How would you contact the--
    Well, we didn't actually.
    We went to the wrong part of Lithuania.
    There weren't-- but we didn't know exactly where they were.
    The partisans have been in Vilnius and around Vilnius.
    And today, I know quite a few who
    have been there, some who have had
    a lot in common after the war crossing borders to Italy
    and who lost arms and who fought a long time.
    But where we went, we didn't encounter.
    But we had this contact.
    And we decided that we cannot take any longer,
    that we have to leave because it was impossible.
    And I also felt that by leaving we would make some sort of way
    and a hideout for Mommy and my sister.
    Who was going to leave the ghetto?
    I did.
    And--
    Alone?
    No, with my husband.
    By this time you were married.
    Yes.
    Well, it was sort of a commission made in the ghetto,
    like a civil marriage, because there was--
    you couldn't marry a rabbi because it didn't exist.
    They've been taken in the beginning.
    My daddy was taken--
    Had you--
    Pardon?
    Had you met your husband in the ghetto?
    Yes.
    Did you go out to work from the ghetto
    before you were planning to leave?
    No.
    My husband did.
    I worked the whole time in the Arbeitsamt,
    which is the work force division of the Judenrat.
    What were you doing?
    I was just a secretary.
    We used to get the requests from the German authorities.
    We had to discuss it with our elders, who to send,
    because we used to send the right people
    to the right places.
    If it was heavy work, we used to send younger people, able.
    If it was something easy and they
    could get food or something, we used
    to send younger children or older people.
    Where would they be working, in the town or--
    No.
    No.
    In the beginning, it was one building
    outside the barbed wire.
    And actually, it was very beneficial
    because it was outside the barbed wire.
    You didn't have to get into the gate of the ghetto.
    Any outside contacts that we had to make with Lithuanians
    or if we had news from somebody, they
    used to come to this particular house.
    Did your Judenrat have to provide labor for the Germans
    to go to Germany?
    No, not to Germany, in Siauliai.
    And also afterwards, they took--
    they amalgamated both ghettos in one.
    And of course, they couldn't fit in.
    So they took some more housing from Lithuanians
    who lived right next to us.
    And they also sent out quite a lot of people to outside camps
    when there had been a lot of peat around, to digging peat.
    And it was quite a lot of camps outside Siauliai,
    but within reach.
    How did the inmates of the ghetto,
    the people who lived in the ghetto,
    feel about the Judenrat?
    How did they feel about the Judenrat?
    Oh, they'd be very grateful to them
    because they did everything possible to help.
    If somebody was in jail or somebody was caught in a raid
    before the gate, they already negotiated right away
    on the spot.
    And it was-- lots of police, [NON-ENGLISH],,
    was bribed with very lavish gifts.
    I asked the question because in a lot of ghettos,
    the Judenrat became very unpopular.
    Oh, yeah.
    To us, if you would read the book, which
    is a diary of everyday life in the ghetto,
    you see that they are absolutely admired.
    They're like heroes because whatever
    they decided, the Germans, to punish and to take out people
    and they wanted three or four, they always
    used to present themselves.
    And every day, they used to go out in the morning to have
    a discussion with the [NON-ENGLISH] commissar
    and to plead for people's life and to let them out from jail
    and to abolish certain laws.
    No, no, they are like heroes in our mind.
    Was there a curfew imposed in the ghetto?
    Yes.
    Well, it was a curfew because of the war.
    Because in the evening, it was very strict that it should be--
    the windows should be covered, no light.
    And we could only read till I think 8 o'clock, something.
    Not in the beginning, in the beginning it was free.
    But when the war started going the other way, it was strict.
    Altogether at the end, where we've
    been taken over by Gestapo, I haven't
    been at the changing period because we've
    been in the village.
    Can you tell me now about the escape, yourself
    and your husband, made from the ghetto.
    Well, my husband and I, we had the contact
    with the Lithuanians.
    Actually, they came to the ghetto.
    And we told them that-- they told us
    that we should come in a house which was not far away
    of a Lithuanian family, which lived in Siauliai.
    And they had the peasant who they
    knew who was willing to come with cart and horses
    to take us to this place.
    It wasn't near.
    It was completely a different part of Lithuania.
    And we went to the leather factory, which was part of it.
    It was almost on the street.
    It wasn't inside.
    It was the fur department.
    And it was somebody who was a specialist, who was Jewish,
    ran it.
    And we came to him.
    And from there, you could get out to the streets.
    Generally, very often, to be able to change food
    and also when I went to see our manager,
    which was working for somebody else,
    and she had for me made things of food or something.
    I used to take off the stars, dressed very properly
    and go out in town.
    I went out also once with a friend who saved a child.
    When he was born, she took him to a Lithuanian family.
    And I went with her also without stars, dressed properly,
    with very nice hats.
    And I mean you could do it.
    You couldn't do it for long, but you could.
    And when we came to this place of the fur section,
    we had a little case.
    And we took off the stars.
    And we went to the Lithuanian family.
    We spent the night.
    And next morning, the peasant Laureckas came to fetch us.
    He did it-- perhaps he was a good man because in a way,
    he was--
    a big slice of his life he spent in Detroit,
    in the United States.
    And he came back to Lithuania when
    he heard Lithuania got independence in 1918.
    And also, he expected after the war to be rewarded,
    to be paid for it.
    And, of course, we told him that we got family
    in Rhodesia and so on.
    We knew Jews and quite a few in small places around the village
    was.
    But they have been all killed right in the beginning.
    So it was a long time that they didn't see a Jew at all.
    And it wasn't a village that they all lived together.
    It was scattered houses in the forest.
    Lithuania is covered with forest,
    which goes as far as Sweden.
    And we couldn't imagine that anybody
    could find us ever there because it was so secluded.
    But yet, the peasants used to come and visit him.
    And we had a special hideout made in the barn.
    And then they started to order him to dig a hideout in a room
    under a cupboard in the house, in the ground.
    What they tried to do is to make an escape route
    if the house should be raided to be able to get out.
    They didn't manage to do it and they've been found before it.
    It was half till the foundation that it wasn't ready.
    We traveled with him with horse and cart
    for nearly a whole day.
    And when we came there, it was a family
    of his wife and two daughters and two sons, the younger ones.
    The sons were young.
    One was just about six, eight.
    Approximately what month would this be?
    What month would it be in 1943?
    In November, right after the children were taken out.
    But our main reason of staying there
    was to be able to make an escape route for my mother and sister
    because Mummy was afraid to get out or to do anything.
    She was very spoilt in life, and everything was done for her.
    And my sister was young.
    How old was she then?
    She was a teenager.
    I mean she was over the age of 12.
    But when she entered the ghetto, she was about 12 then.
    And actually, that was the reason
    we've been found and denounced.
    Two reasons, one, it was suspicious because the older
    daughter who didn't normally go to the next little towns,
    [NON-ENGLISH],, once a year, all of a sudden started to travel
    to town.
    She never traveled by train before.
    Why was she going?
    She was going to see my mother and my sister.
    And she used to bring letters.
    And we gave them instructions.
    And she also brought money and medicine, which we needed.
    One village, it was impossible to get in the village
    because I got very ill.
    And that was a calamity because I couldn't
    be in the hideout in the barn.
    I had to be in the room.
    And that how they found us.
    And also, Christmas, Laureckas' wife
    decided that she is going to invite her sister, which
    was the biggest mistake ever.
    We tried to talk her out of it.
    But we weren't in a position to do so.
    And the sister was very jealous of my personal things.
    She liked my shoes.
    She liked my dresses.
    And Laureckas' his wife wouldn't give her anything.
    She told her--
    Had you given these to Laureckas' wife?
    Well, it was there.
    And she promised her the shoes--
    I had new shoes made--
    and that she will have it in spring, that these
    are in exchange for you.
    And we think that she was the one who denounced it
    because it was about a week or 10 days
    after Christmas when the Laureckas went
    to the next little town to sell some food products.
    And she walked in shouting, oh, Jesus, the house is surrounded.
    And they found me also in a very bad time
    because after Christmas I had a terrible cold, my chest.
    It was from a sauna because they had a sauna in winter
    just before Christmas, once a year.
    And it was almost in the open.
    They took the ice from a little lake
    and putting it on heated stones, which
    they had heated for a day.
    And I had very high temperature.
    So I would be in a room in the bed.
    And actually, I slept in the bed.
    They wouldn't have found us in the hideout.
    But when they walked in the room.
    It was obvious that somebody was there
    just now because the bed was not made.
    It was like if somebody slept in it.
    There was money on the table because the daughter, Kozuzia,
    just came back from Siauliai, and some ring
    that John made out of silver.
    And the windows have been shut, and it was dark.
    So they knew that we are there.
    And they knew that they have to find us if they look properly
    everywhere.
    And they did.
    They looked in the cupboard.
    They found something loose.
    And they had a look at the [INAUDIBLE] entrance.
    It was just unfortunate that it was the same day that Kozuzia
    came back, and I was ill.
    Yes, it was also medicine on the table.
    And would one policeman arrive, we could have made a deal.
    But there were three of them with letter.
    Because to hunt Jews at that time
    wasn't popular anymore because it was after Stalingrad.
    And in Europe, the front--
    I know exactly how the war went because I
    used to read a newspaper.
    They have been illiterate.
    And I used to read it.
    Anyway, I wanted it to be the Allied advance quicker
    than the newspaper said because we had to give them some reason
    to keep us.
    And actually, the Russians were advancing.
    And the Germans were shortening the front.
    That's what they used to write.
    They're shortening the front for defense, for better defense.
    And the Allied were fighting in Monte Cassino in Italy.
    And so it was to them, they saw that the war for the Germans
    goes the wrong way.
    They didn't they really didn't want
    to kill Jews or anything, to have their name back in front.
    But there have been three of them,
    so it was very difficult to bribe all three.
    We were taken during the night to a small town,
    where there was a small police station and a cell.
    And we believe, because we know that he
    was in jail, that Laureckas, when
    he came back, he was arrested and put in jail.
    But he was a short time, and they let him out.
    And when we came in the little town,
    we were told that we were going to be shot.
    They told us even the time, 4 o'clock in the morning.
    And I now understand what it means to be condemned to death.
    But 4 o'clock passed.
    And 5 o'clock passed.
    And 6 o'clock passed.
    And nobody came.
    Were you put in a cell together?
    In a cell together because there wasn't a proper jail.
    And the funniest part was that all Lithuanians
    came to look at us.
    And they brought us food.
    We had pounds and pounds of butter and all sorts of things.
    It was all piled up.
    And I remember the police chief's wife came.
    And she said, we should die very bravely
    because the Russians are here, and our lives will be avenged.
    It didn't help--
    How did you feel?
    It didn't help.
    I asked her for poison.
    And John didn't.
    He was more optimistic than I. I didn't want to find us alive.
    And then they send us to a bigger district town
    because nobody wanted to shoot us.
    They didn't.
    They didn't want to do it anymore.
    And they had no reward.
    I mean we had nothing.
    I mean they couldn't loot us because that
    was the main reason that they did it in the beginning.
    So they couldn't find anyone in the town
    who would actually execute you?
    No.
    And they sent us to another, a bigger town, a district town,
    [PLACE NAME].
    And there, I was put with women, women separated, and John
    with men.
    And the women were very decent.
    And to me, it was very funny to meet a woman, which
    I heard about her case before, because the peasants told us
    about a murder case, that an old peasant's wife, young one,
    with a farmhand killed the husband.
    She was extremely nice, by the way.
    I had all my hair knotted.
    And I had them long because I had them in place.
    And she tried to comb it through.
    And we had to go to a transport to the main jail in Siauliai.
    And when it came to it, we have been taken just John, myself,
    and two Gypsies, a father and son, and two armed police.
    And we've been taken on a train.
    That was what a very funny story because Laureckas
    told us once before about a dream, because peasants
    in Lithuania believe terribly in dreams, because every day they
    came with some story.
    And he told us that he saw in his dream two people that he
    knows very well, but he couldn't make out who they--
    they were Jews, but he couldn't recognize them--
    and two Gypsies at the railway station.
    It's true.
    He told us that about a week before.
    And then we found ourselves with two Gypsies.
    The first thing we thought is about Laureckas' dream
    may sound funny, but it really happened.
    And we had trouble in the train.
    We had jewelry in our coats, in the padding.
    And that we had to get rid of.
    Why?
    Because we were not supposed to have anything.
    We had to deliver everything to the Germans.
    What did he do with the jewelry?
    We pretended it's cold.
    And we hugged each other.
    And we took out from each other's coat.
    Then John said that he has to go to the toilet.
    And one of the guards, policemen, went with him.
    But he didn't go inside, and he dropped it--
    it was double windows.
    It's always double windows in our climate.
    And he dropped it.
    And he memorized the number of the train
    code, which is human nature.
    I mean it was silliest thing when you think now
    because in one way we were going to die,
    and the other he memorized the number of the carriage.
    So he could retrieve the jewelry.
    That's right.
    It seems now like a joke.
    And they brought us to Siauliai.
    And here again, you'll see what Judenrat really
    was because although they didn't have at that time
    any big power at all, that is a part
    we missed being in the village.
    That it changed.
    The Gestapo took over the ghetto.
    And they semi-dismissed the Judenrat.
    I mean they had no say.
    And they put a stooge of their own.
    He was Jewish.
    His wife was from a very high birth German family
    from Memelgebiet, from Klaipeda.
    And they promised him freedom eventually if he
    takes the ghetto in his reins.
    And it was a reign of terror.
    But we didn't know about it.
    And yet, the Judenrat did help us
    a lot because going to the jail-- the jail was overlooking
    the ghetto.
    It was right next to it.
    From the windows, you could see the ghetto.
    And so everybody, the columns, who came back from work
    or who went to work--
    I don't remember what way it was--
    they saw us being brought.
    So they knew that we are in jail because we
    couldn't communicate it.
    And then it started--
    they did everything possible to save us
    because the ghetto wasn't a very cheerful place to be either,
    but the jail was death, earlier or later.
    But nobody came out alive from there unless you took them out.
    Because the first thing we heard is we heard that they knew,
    and they're doing everything.
    So we had the prison priest contact us both.
    Also told us individually because we were separated,
    it was a women's part and the men,
    told us exactly if you'd been interrogated what to say,
    not to contradict each other.
    When I think now, I mean our crime
    was that we left the ghetto.
    So I don't know what they told us to say to the Gestapo
    because usually the Gestapo is to interrogate.
    --because it's not here.
    Is there a trick?
    [AUDIO OUT]
    Marsha Segall, Reel 4.
    When they brought me to jail, I was separated from John.
    And the first day was absolutely terrible
    because they put me to a single cell, which
    had no lights, nothing.
    And they put with me a woman who was crazy.
    She was mad.
    And she was going at my throat the whole time.
    And I never knew where she was coming.
    Because it was dark, I couldn't see her.
    And this was a cell which they used
    to put people before execution.
    And it was all sorts of scribblings on the wall, which
    was frightening.
    I only could see what was written
    when the warden used to come because I
    used to bang the door.
    I was scared of the crazy woman.
    So she used to come, switch on the lights.
    And then it all gazed at me, all inscriptions.
    You know, it's my last day.
    And she said nothing she can do.
    I have to be with her to the morning
    and try to sit in the corner so that she
    shouldn't come from the back.
    I don't know who she was or what she did.
    But next day, I was taken out and put--
    they didn't change our clothes.
    I mean we didn't have prison clothes.
    But they took away my little things that I had.
    And they put me in a cell with Lithuanians
    because there wasn't a special jail for Jews.
    And we been quite a lot in a cell, all sorts of--
    some for murder, some petty thieves.
    But they all had a sentence.
    And I was terribly jealous of them because in my case,
    every minute of the day, the door could open
    and they could take me out and shoot me.
    And then one day, the warden came.
    No, in the meantime, before then, the priest came in.
    And I spoke to him.
    He spoke to me actually.
    And he told me he spoke to John.
    And he spoke to my mother and that they are trying very hard
    to take us out from jail.
    They're trying all sorts of ways and means.
    And he told me that I should say that I
    couldn't bear being in the ghetto and that we just--
    not that we tried to help my mother and sister, but just
    individually we ran away.
    And he will contact us again if necessary.
    A few days later, I was called, my name, from the cell,
    and told me to put on my coat.
    And I went down.
    And there was John with two guards, police with guns.
    We've been taken by foot to the Gestapo headquarters.
    It was snowing.
    It was winter.
    And it was dark.
    And we came late.
    It was about 6 o'clock, something like this,
    in the evening.
    That was our luck.
    Because I have seen interrogated people from Gestapo,
    I didn't have a row--
    face and their body, I mean it was all blue and black.
    And they had special torture rooms there.
    But first, Dr. Charlin, and the chief of the Gestapo
    spoke to us, first to me.
    And he asked me all sorts of questions, which I don't even
    remember what it was, but nothing of importance.
    And then he called John.
    John must have said something differently
    because he started shouting, who is lying your wife or you?
    And then he wanted to take us down to the cellar.
    And secretary came, Bavaria with white socks,
    I remember exactly, her hair up, brushed.
    And she said, aren't you coming?
    The potato pancakes are ready, and they're getting cold.
    He called the guard.
    And he said, take them back.
    And he went to have his dinner.
    So we were really lucky.
    And they never called us again.
    And after that, with John's connections,
    because through the warden, which
    he did for them all sorts of repairs and things and jewelry,
    watches, whatever they needed, he
    lived very near the ghetto, his mother-in-law.
    So he had all sorts of messages from the ghetto.
    Through the warden?
    Through the warden.
    And also, he influenced--
    in the women's jail, there was a workshop.
    I mean they repaired German army garments.
    The ones who had been shot at from bullets, wounds.
    They used to have big washers.
    They used to wash it and then mend it--
    underwear and uniforms.
    And the one in charge, her bookkeeping was very bad.
    And also, she couldn't speak German.
    So she knew from the warden that I can do it.
    And I was transferred to a different cell
    with the workers, which was much better conditions.
    It was not the bunks.
    But it was beds.
    And it was much cleaner and not so crowded.
    And in the beginning, she gave me to mend.
    But I couldn't.
    I wasn't very good at it.
    And then I took over her whole bookkeeping.
    And I used to receive all the garments.
    And I used to deliver it.
    And the Germans used to come with accounts, how many there
    are and what it is.
    And that improved my conditions very much because--
    although they used to make all sorts of jokes about Jews,
    but they didn't mean me personally.
    A lot of women have been illiterate.
    And I used to read their letters and write for them letters
    home.
    And because of that, I was exempt from washing the cell
    because we had the rotation.
    They used to do it for me.
    When were you finally released from the prison?
    Yes, not released.
    We had been bought out.
    They didn't release from the prison.
    There have been in my cell was another Jewish girl, which
    was interesting because she was saved
    by a guard from outside who guarded with a machine gun
    the whole jail because she used to stay at the window
    and he fell in love with her.
    And my son, the rest which I knew,
    were in different cells have been executed.
    We went out after quite a--
    I think 105 days.
    John knows it exactly how long we've been there.
    We've been there February, March, April, May.
    Because May I remember very clearly
    because May are lots of people in jail, used
    to sing the songs of Maria, because it's
    the month of Maria, May.
    So now May 1944.
    May 1944.
    And we used to stand at the window
    because the others you could see, in the other cells.
    The windows were small, right on top.
    But the workers room was over the workshops.
    And it was very near the wall and the towers,
    the watchtowers.
    But he used to pretend he doesn't see.
    And if people came to the ghetto to the house which faced it,
    talking like deaf and dumb, with fingers--
    Sign language.
    --sign language, we could understand.
    I used to see Mommy.
    I used to see my sister.
    I used to see friends who used to come and talk to us.
    And we've been told that they're hoping.
    I saw Mommy very often in distress and crying.
    But it's nothing any of us could do.
    What happened in the end?
    What--
    We didn't know what happened.
    We knew that one day very rudely, they came in and said,
    take your coat--
    or you don't need your coat anymore.
    You're going out.
    We're taking you out of the cell.
    And I came in front and John was there.
    And they opened one gate and another gate and a third gate.
    And they took us out from the jail to the ghetto.
    But then I knew from Mommy how it happened
    is that she was introduced and it
    was made for her possible through somebody
    who was an engineer and very important to the leather
    works, which was next to the ghetto and lots of people
    worked, to the chief, to the manager, the German manager.
    And Mommy gave him a very valuable bracelet.
    And he still mentioned that he hadn't
    seen anything so beautiful, that his wife was would wear it
    even.
    But he made a deal with the chief of Gestapo
    that as he was going on holiday to Berlin,
    he will take for the chief of Gestapo's wife
    a leather jacket and boots.
    And for this favor, he will let us out
    from the jail to the ghetto.
    I mean he didn't take much chance.
    He let us out from jail, which perhaps would have been death,
    but to another one.
    I mean not in the freedom.
    We have been terribly restricted when we came to the ghetto.
    And we couldn't do anything because I would have run again.
    But we've been checked every evening if we are there.
    We were not allowed to go to work outside.
    I was painting clay pots, pottery,
    to make it with all sorts of designs and lacquer.
    And it was taken to the hotels, which Germans lived.
    John was also working in the ghetto.
    And it was such a short period from there
    to the time they took us to the concentration camp
    that there was no way of escape.
    It started in July.
    It started-- it was the Russians advanced.
    And they have been about 15 kilometers from our town.
    And it was very heavy bombardment.
    And a lot of it fell in the ghetto
    because they tried to bombard the leather
    works, some other factories, which were right next to it.
    And they didn't bomb very accurately.
    We had a lot of bombs in the ghetto
    and actually injured very badly the man
    who was the top of the Judenrat, who was a wonderful person.
    His whole family actually, his brother, his other brother
    was shell shocked.
    And when they build a makeshift hospital,
    and when they evacuated the ghetto,
    they shot them because they have been very badly injured.
    And the whole family actually there didn't survive,
    neither their wives nor their children.
    Was the ghetto completely evacuated?
    Forcefully, yes.
    Some went earlier because they didn't have trains.
    In Siauliai, they didn't have trains.
    They didn't have even railway lines
    anymore because it was bombed.
    They left everything, German supplies, everything.
    But they found trains about 12 or 15 kilometers outside.
    And it was a struggle because before the last bombardment
    when our heads, the previous heads have been so badly hit,
    they tried to make a deal with Lithuanians that they
    should not find any trains.
    But the one stooge who was in charge of the ghetto,
    he tried very hard to get it because they promised him
    freedom in Germany and to his family.
    Well, eventually, he won because the Gestapo also
    wanted to take us to Germany.
    That was already their policy, which
    not to leave anybody behind.
    Individual people managed to escape.
    And they have been really liberated in a few days.
    But the bulk was taken to another place.
    And we slept one night in the barns.
    Were you marched to the--
    Yes.
    Actually, it was the last time I've seen my hometown,
    I seen our building, everything where
    we lived before because we had to cross the whole town.
    It was early morning.
    And then it was cattle trucks, a whole train.
    And I believe people who had some luggage,
    the luggage was taken to one carriage
    because they knew that they will never give it to the people.
    We had nothing, because John and I, whatever we had we
    threw out.
    We couldn't organize anything.
    We couldn't get out anymore.
    So we have been actually the only people
    who didn't have food, who didn't have luggage,
    who didn't have anything.
    And we didn't--
    Were you still with mother and your sister?
    Yes.
    We didn't know-- and also with John's cousin, which
    lost a child in the ghetto.
    They took away his child, and his wife
    and her sister and her two children.
    And we've been crowded, but not in the extent
    that you couldn't breathe.
    You could breathe.
    And you could sit.
    And there was two Gestapo soldiers sitting in--
    a little bit open was for air.
    And they were sitting in the front with machine
    guns in every carriage.
    What were the sanitation arrangements?
    I don't think there was sanitation.
    You know, it was such a horrific experience, the whole--
    that I-- it was everything so quickly organized.
    And then we didn't travel very long.
    Because if you'll see on the map,
    to Stutthof, to Danzig, or Gdansk, as you call it now,
    it's very near.
    It's just a bit of Prussia.
    In one station when we came, I think it was water
    and it was bucket or something for sanitation.
    I mean like in the jail, it's the same thing.
    And it was a bombardment.
    That's what always worries me because saying
    that they couldn't reach Auschwitz because in Prussia,
    which is much further, it's almost
    on the border of Lithuania.
    When our train came there, the Gestapo locked us.
    And they hid.
    The took cover because it was a bombardment.
    And I always think that human beings do things sometimes
    instinctively.
    Everybody who took off shoes, put on the shoes
    again, ready to run.
    And we couldn't get out.
    And then we've been brought to a place, an open place.
    We're told to get out, still not shouting, and more or less
    normal or orderly command.
    And there was a narrow gauge train, an open one.
    And that was the train, which went to Stutthof.
    We arrived at the gate of the concentration
    camp, which the normal slogan that work makes free.
    And I know it in German.
    It's very difficult to translate.
    It's not actually-- it was Arbeit macht das leben suss
    [NON-ENGLISH].
    And then it was a confusion because we saw inmates.
    We saw people with striped suits with red, pink, and green
    triangles, looking terrible.
    And we really didn't know what's happening to us.
    It was like a shock because we didn't know where
    we were going to be taken.
    The only indication, the only time that we heard the word
    concentration camp, which is in short in German, [NON-ENGLISH],,
    was that our train stopped in the middle of nowhere opposite
    another train with young Hitler Youth, children.
    Being summer, July, they must have been taken to the seaside
    on holiday, I presume, because it was
    a full train of young children.
    And when the doors were-- our doors were open,
    they began chanting, [NON-ENGLISH],,
    it means Jews are being taken to a [NON-ENGLISH],,
    which is a concentration camp in short.
    I mean they knew.
    We didn't.
    And also, even if we knew, we didn't know what to expect.
    We had no idea.
    We never met anybody who had been there.
    And we never knew they existed.
    What date was it when you arrived at the camp?
    We arrived on the 20th of July 1944.
    It was a significant day.
    Perhaps it was the 21st.
    I'm not quite sure because they knew already
    there was a British prisoner of war.
    Where?
    At the camp?
    Not at the camp.
    They've been at the railway station.
    I don't know whether there was a prisoner
    of war camp near there.
    They haven't been in the concentration-- or they have,
    I don't know.
    But they have been at the platform near the train.
    And they told us, you came in a good day because he's dead.
    So it may be that it was the 21st.
    But it was more or less the day when
    they tried to kill Hitler, the German officer.
    But he wasn't dead, as you know.
    And then the Stutthof, we've been put on like a clearing
    and told to put to-- everybody to put their cases
    or whatever they had to leave it.
    He even told that whoever has got food,
    they can eat it because that will be the last time they'll
    be able to touch it.
    Who was telling you this?
    The commandant.
    He told us that he is the commandant of the camp.
    And that it's Stutthof.
    And it was again a bombardment of Danzig.
    And the sky was lit.
    And then he told us that we shouldn't
    be very happy because there is gas chambers
    and there are crematorium.
    What was the reaction to this information?
    No reaction because we've been like dumb.
    I mean you don't have feelings at all because we've been--
    I mean it was such a shock, the whole Stutthof.
    But I don't think you have feelings.
    You don't what you feel.
    Is this the first time you'd heard about gas chambers
    and mass killings?
    We didn't hear about it at all.
    I mean, everything was a shock, the whole surrounding,
    the barbed wire.
    He told us the barbed wires are electrified with high voltage.
    And it's the best way to commit suicide if you go near it.
    And I mean the whole bombardment and he's shouting,
    and the funny noises, which came from barracks and at night--
    and also, it was a funny smell.
    Why?
    I think charred bodies.
    Or I mean what a terrible funny smell and all
    mixed with the smell of the sea because we were terribly
    near the sea.
    It was-- the soil was sand.
    How was your mother and your sister?
    We've been all together.
    But nobody spoke.
    I mean it was as if you lost the speech because I
    think everybody went through a terrible shock.
    What happened after the commandant's talk?
    Well, we had SS guard, surrounded by SS guard.
    And funnily, enough they've been Lithuanians.
    And they took us through many barracks,
    which have been divided with barbed wire, to the last one.
    And they just opened the gate, and they let us in.
    And I remember clearly one thing,
    that somebody, a voice, which I recognize, came to me.
    And she gave me a rolled, like a cigarette from wood.
    It wasn't tobacco.
    It was wood.
    And she says, have it and it will soothe your nerves
    because I'm here already a week.
    And it was a very good friend of mine from Kaunas.
    They arrived before.
    What had she given you?
    Something to smoke.
    But it was wood, you know, rolled in paper.
    Did it calm your nerves?
    I don't know.
    It was-- and then we were given numbers.
    But in only Auschwitz was tattooed.
    The rest they--
    I don't know whether you know it.
    You don't use it anymore.
    But it used to be chemical pencils.
    But if you made wet, it used to write down.
    And your number was?
    And they put it on the arm, the number.
    My number was 54,260.
    And does the number remain?
    No.
    No.
    But we've been so afraid that it will go down that one girl had
    a tiny little pencil.
    She managed to go through.
    I forgot to tell you that before we've been brought to--
    which is very important-- before we
    were brought to this barracks, we
    were brought to a brick building.
    And they told us that it's showers,
    that we're going to take a shower after our journey.
    So we had to undress and to go through the--
    before we went to the shower, we've
    been completely searched if we don't
    have anything taken through.
    Well, I know now that they looked for jewelry or things
    like that if people swallowed or did--
    and after that we've been just rushed
    in into a square, which had nothing,
    only had like little pipes, like hats of showers.
    But there was no water, nothing coming from it.
    And there was no soap, no water, no towels, nothing.
    And we just been shouted to go in quickly
    and the same way shouted to get out immediately.
    So it wasn't a shower.
    But we knew afterwards that it was the gas chamber.
    But they didn't gas able people who could work
    because they needed everybody.
    They had no labor.
    And at that time they needed labor.
    And we've been-- from the other side, they were thrown to us--
    because our clothing was left out in the beginning
    because they used to search it.
    They used to X-ray it for jewelry,
    for all sorts of things.
    And on the other side, we've been
    thrown a dress, no underwear, no bra, nothing,
    just a dress and shoes.
    I mean you also been lucky if you
    got shoes which fit because they didn't put you down
    to look for your right size.
    And that was very important.
    Some people who got right shoes, it was very important later on
    with marching and walking.
    Some got rotten.
    Marsha, given that the only piece of clothing you had
    was a dress, did the SS make any arrangements for you
    for sanitary use when you were menstruating?
    No, none at all.
    Actually, when we came out, we had this funny dresses on,
    we really didn't look ourselves anymore
    because we looked funny.
    Usually, they threw to tall ones short and to short ones long.
    And we looked odd.
    That was very, very depressing.
    And it was degrading.
    We really didn't feel any more like human beings.
    And it also killed any will to live or resistance.
    And, no, they provided us with nothing.
    Marsha Segall, reel 5.
    Marsha, you were just telling me about the clothes that
    were given to you, and we were talking
    about what provision was possibly
    made for personal needs, such as women needing provision
    for menstruation.
    Well, none at all.
    There was no provision for nothing.
    No hygiene and no nothing for sickness.
    There was nobody to see about it.
    There was nobody to demand.
    Every hut had a couple.
    At the time when we arrived, there were, from Hungary,
    Hungarian.
    I still remember her name.
    It was Magdus, and she was very cruel.
    And she was only waiting for excuses to hit.
    So everybody tried to be about 10 meters away from her.
    What did you do about personal needs?
    Nothing, because as far as I remember,
    perhaps, we had periods one time, but then it stopped.
    And that was general to everybody.
    So there is a trend of thought that it was--
    we were given something.
    It was never substantiated, but it is very odd
    that nobody had periods.
    Perhaps it is because of the food
    or what we ate or the lack of vitamins or anything,
    but we only had it in the beginning.
    Nobody had it afterwards.
    What kind of food were you given and how often?
    Well, we had, in the morning, we had,
    like, wash-up water, brown one, which was cold coffee.
    And we had to drink it.
    It was very hot, given to us in iron dishes,
    and we had to drink it hot.
    What happened if you didn't?
    We had a kapo, a Pole, Max, and he
    was standing with a big stick and hitting over the head
    if you didn't swallow it.
    And then we had a tiny slice of bread
    and a tiny bit of margarine which was the first time
    that we ate it.
    Now it is used a lot but at that time, nobody knew about it.
    And we had sometimes, given a bit of jam, also
    very inferior quality.
    And the soup was water, really, water with a potato
    or some grain or something.
    But we were terribly hungry.
    Was there much rapid weight loss?
    Was there a rapid weight loss?
    Did people lose weight?
    Yes.
    Well, not right in the beginning.
    You couldn't see it.
    But altogether, we changed rapidly to something
    different what we were.
    But it took some time, you know, a good couple of weeks.
    In Stutthof, it was, we didn't live,
    and we couldn't think about anything, because we weren't
    left alone for a minute, not even
    to lie in the straw bunkers, which was
    with a gray, worn-out blanket.
    Because we stood almost the whole day on Appell.
    Roll call.
    Yes, and counted.
    They always use to count us, how many we were.
    And lots of people, they couldn't stand any more.
    And they used to drop.
    What would happen to them?
    Well, they used to be hit, and they
    used to put them down to stand.
    And it happened quite a few, who dropped dead.
    It's mainly older people, which they didn't weed out
    in the beginning.
    They did it afterwards and the gas.
    But in the beginning, we'd been all together.
    Did you know they were gassing people?
    No.
    But we knew that to be left out from everybody, to be picked
    out from so many, we knew that it, the meaning is not
    a good one.
    That it's either extermination or--
    gassing we had it from the commandant
    that there is gas chamber.
    So we, more or less, were aware that there is a crematorium.
    We knew we smelled it.
    We had always this funny chimney and this funny smell.
    And the most horrifying sight was the shoes.
    There was pyramids, huge ones, of shoes of the dead people.
    And you almost could fit in people, according to the size
    and according to their fashion of shoes.
    It was from baby shoes and nicer shoes, high-heeled, low heeled.
    But it would be stacks of shoes that was outside the barracks,
    and that was a terrible sight.
    How many people were there to a barracks?
    The barracks had been terribly crowded,
    but I really couldn't tell you how many there were.
    You mentioned the sleeping arrangements
    consisted of bunks.
    Yes, wooden bunks and straw a bit,
    but it wasn't even a lot of straw.
    Were these separate bunks or one long bunk?
    There would be not one long one.
    Separate but the separate wasn't for one.
    It was more than one.
    You slept where you could find a place, really.
    Did you sleep with your mother and your sister?
    Yes.
    I mean, we tried very hard to be together and also
    with these other two women.
    What did you do during the rest of the day in the camp
    when you weren't on the Appell, the roll call?
    Waiting for something else to come.
    Because we've been counted.
    We've been looked over.
    We've been sent to do cleaning.
    I mean, we'd been always shouted at, always given orders.
    But perhaps it's a good thing because we couldn't think much.
    And then we used to be exhausted,
    absolutely exhausted, standing in the heat.
    And we had very little sleeping time.
    And all we had this Magdus shouting in rage or Max
    or hitting somebody.
    And what he did is something.
    He took a little girl, a child, which
    we managed to smuggle through, and he hung her on his belt.
    Can you expand on that?
    Well, yes.
    Well, she was running around, and she went to rooms where
    she wasn't supposed to go.
    So he grabbed her and he says, well, this child will
    be killed in any case, so I'd better shorten her life.
    And he, in front of us, he took her and he hung her
    on his belt.
    He took his belt off and--
    Yes.
    Yes.
    Well, he was an animal.
    I think he was ill.
    He wasn't normal.
    And usually-- he was a criminal.
    Because in the camp, there were criminal prisoners, as well.
    Were most of the kapos were criminals.
    Yes, and they used to make kapos from the criminals, too.
    We've been called political.
    I don't know why.
    But we had red triangles, which was a red stripe.
    Men had a red stripe in their trousers,
    which meant political.
    Pink was homosexuals, and green, criminal.
    Were the men and women in separate barracks?
    Yes, always, very much so.
    But we did see the men before they
    had been sent out to Dachau.
    I saw John once.
    And I saw also, before there had been exterminated,
    some who tried to escape from a ghetto in Kovno
    and been shot and had amputations of the legs.
    They had been given brooms to walk.
    Why were their legs amputated?
    They tried to run away from the ghetto and was shot,
    and the leg was amputated.
    I'm talking about somebody I knew very well.
    And I saw him the first time.
    I hadn't seen him for years, because he was in Kaunas,
    and I was in [NON-ENGLISH].
    And I saw him through the wire, and he
    was sort of jumping on a broom.
    But they killed him.
    He was gassed.
    Anybody who couldn't work.
    They took all the men to Dachau.
    All fit--
    The able, yes.
    But also, when John was sent to Dachau,
    he was with his cousin, the cousin's nephew,
    and another friend, they knew very well.
    And he tried to smuggle through his youngest son, which was
    under 12, and he wasn't tall.
    But they took him out, and he didn't survive.
    Otherwise, he was, in a way lucky,
    because his wife and his two daughters survived.
    This is one of the more or less whole families that I know.
    Because it was very rare that a whole family survived.
    How long were you in Stutthof?
    About three to four weeks.
    I mean, time didn't matter.
    We didn't know when a day, how long days.
    We didn't know the date.
    We didn't know what day it was, whether it was
    Sunday or Monday or Tuesday.
    It was one big horror.
    And we didn't know what the next morning will bring
    and where are we going to be and where
    are they going to take us.
    I had also a special very bad experience because somehow,
    whenever they made a group of 100,
    they used to make it in 100s to send out to work.
    My number was omitted.
    And I was separated from my mother and my sister.
    Why was this?
    Mistake, but it's nothing I could
    do because when I told them, they didn't want to know.
    And perhaps, in my case, it would have been much better
    if I would have remained in Stutthof,
    because the able women who remained,
    they sent quite a few to factories,
    which was on the roof.
    And some, who I met after the war, who remained in Stutthof,
    were sent to factories.
    And they had it better than working outside and fighting
    the elements of nature.
    So your mother and your sister--
    I exchanged with another woman, who went to another 100.
    And I gave her my marching ration.
    So that you could--
    Food so that we changed the numbers.
    And you were then with--
    She was with my mother.
    So she went in the other.
    She remained, and I went instead of her
    with my mother and my sister.
    And what happened then?
    Were you then leaving Stutthof?
    We have been given a ration, and we've been leaving by foot.
    We marched.
    And we didn't know where.
    It was summer.
    It was a very long march, but we still have been,
    it was the beginning.
    I mean, we still had some strength.
    But for me, it was very bad because that was actually
    the first terrible migraine headache that I had on arrival.
    We arrived in a field with lots of tents,
    and women already have been there, who came before us.
    How long had you been marching?
    From Kaunas, they've been there a few days before.
    And they erected the tents, and they had a makeshift kitchen.
    Actually, not really.
    The food they used to get from German army
    food in big containers.
    And that was the only time that we had more or less food.
    Because we didn't have our own.
    And we've been there a short time,
    about three weeks in this particular place, which
    was in a forest.
    And we dug trenches.
    You spent three weeks in these tents.
    They moved around the whole time.
    How did you dig the trenches?
    With a shovel and pick.
    And it was all women.
    All women.
    What time would you get up in the morning?
    About 4:00.
    How long would you work for?
    18 hours.
    How did this affect the women?
    Were there many casualties?
    Not in the beginning.
    We've been in very beautiful forests,
    and we used to find the berries and after rain, mushrooms.
    And they used to let us about 15 minutes rest,
    and when you've been lying on the grass
    and looking at the beautiful pine trees,
    you had the illusion that you are somewhere else.
    But the reality was it wasn't a picnic at all.
    And it was summer, so we didn't feel cold.
    How was your mother coping with this work?
    How was your mother coping with this work, this heavy labor?
    She was coping better than I am, because I mean,
    she tried to build up her spirit,
    especially in my younger sister.
    And she had a very cheerful disposition always.
    And she proved herself being terribly strong.
    How was morale between the women?
    In the beginning, we tried to.
    It was perhaps, a lot of us knew each other.
    And also, when we met up with the women from Kaunas, well,
    I met a lot of students that I went University together.
    So we tried to recite poetry in the evening,
    lying in the tents.
    But our waking up was rather in a most peculiar way.
    Because what they did, they used to come with a stick
    and hit over the tent.
    As our heads were very near the edges,
    sometimes we used to get hit in the head, shoulder.
    That was the way of waking up.
    They used to go through the rows and just hit over the tents.
    Would this result in any serious injury?
    To be honest, nobody knew and nobody cared.
    And then very few admitted because we, at the time,
    we knew already that the only way of keeping alive
    is to be well.
    Because if you couldn't cope or you couldn't do
    or you couldn't work or you been behind,
    you were either sent back to Stutthof
    but not back to Stutthof camp but to Stutthof gas chamber,
    because they didn't need you anymore.
    You were not an asset at all.
    And they couldn't use you as a working horse.
    They couldn't use you for anything.
    So that we learned very soon that one should not
    have a headache.
    One should not be ill.
    I mean, my headache did cost me a lot because when we came,
    we had to run and to grab straw.
    And usually, I was the one in our family
    who used to organize food or straw or anything.
    And if I was incapacitated, we had very little.
    How deep were the trenches that you were digging?
    Well, somebody from the army used to come
    and they used to map out right in the middle of forest
    or something that where they were going to dig.
    And we just were given a spade and a pick,
    and we had to start digging.
    But we had to make a norm.
    So much per day and whatever it took.
    I mean, there was no time limit.
    You'd work till they were satisfied.
    No till, I would say, if they decided
    that 100 meter had to be done this day at this depth
    and width, we had to do it.
    And it's amazing how one does it.
    Because in other places, people have been brought on.
    They've been told that they're going to build a factory.
    And they thought, how?
    But at the end of it, with hundreds of dead, they did.
    That was actually in the first camp.
    There was one SS guard who used to bring me, out of the blue,
    throw me in the tent, some bread.
    And apparently, he wanted to make my lot easier,
    because every one of them picked up somebody
    that they wanted to give them a more responsible, in brackets,
    job to make their personal life easier.
    Because when we arrived, there was already
    a camp eldest, which the Germans allocated,
    somebody we knew but she wasn't helpful at all.
    She looked after her own affairs.
    All of them did look after number one, after themselves.
    And they had already people who helped to bring the food.
    It was already all allocated when
    we arrived, because we came three days late.
    And when we dug the trenches, the same SS man came.
    And he told me to get out of the trench, which we dug already.
    And he said, he asked me to watch how they dig
    and to see that the women who are inside the trench
    should finish their allocated norm of digging per day,
    and I'll be responsible.
    But that will enable me to do nothing,
    and I won't have to dig or work physically hard.
    Well, I had a look at the trench.
    And I saw my working women, and there
    had been a lot of mothers of my friends and older people.
    And I thought it is an impossible task
    he was asking me, because I was more fit and able to do it
    as they did.
    And I declined.
    I said, I can't make them work faster or harder.
    So he just kicked me back.
    And he said, well, if you don't want it,
    so you'll have to join them.
    And he found somebody else who was quite willing to do it.
    He was asking you to be a couple well that how
    that how kapos started.
    We didn't know what he was asking.
    Well, what he offered me is something more
    lazier and easier work, but it wasn't acceptable.
    And from this, it developed two kapos
    because the ones who supervised the work have given other tasks
    to collect the picks and the spades
    when they came back from work.
    They had better-- when coats arrived or something,
    they had the first choice.
    They had the first choice of shoes.
    They had the first choice of food.
    And eventually, it led to separate--
    when we came to the camps, where they have separate rondavels,
    they were housed in separate rondavels.
    They had better food, and they have
    been befriended by the guards, by the SS guards.
    How long did you stay at this place, the camp with the tents?
    Well, we stayed till it was finished,
    the work, the digging.
    And then, they took us in trains because we were shifted further
    on.
    And that was only one time have we traveled in a normal train.
    And this experience, I'll never forget,
    because we forgot what it is normal life.
    We didn't think it exists anymore,
    because we had been so cut off from normal life
    that we didn't believe it exists anywhere.
    And we passed the German town of Elbing,
    in Prussia, and also later on, Strasbourg.
    And it seemed to us, we saw houses and people
    sitting on balconies and terraces.
    And it looked terribly odd.
    We just couldn't believe that people look normal.
    They dress normal and behave normal.
    What we did was also something which is incredible.
    We almost dismantled the train.
    Why?
    Because we took off the little curtains from the windows,
    because we had nothing.
    We never saw a little piece of material.
    We took the string, where you put luggage.
    You know, the small packets there was from string lashing.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Yeah, we dismantled it.
    We took it off.
    Some even, if they could, ripped the upholstery.
    Because it was like vultures, really,
    because we haven't seen anything, string, material.
    We picked up strings which were left,
    foot strings because everything was marvelous.
    Because we lived like in Stone Age.
    We just had nothing, absolutely nothing.
    Nothing that, I mean, the lowest human being
    is supposed to have.
    Were there any reprisals from the SS because
    of this damage to the train?
    The only reprisals were that they never
    took us with a ordinary train.
    We've been always, after that, given cattle trucks.
    How long were you on the train?
    Well, about six hours.
    Where did it take you?
    Took us to Polish territory because actually, Stutthof
    is really near Danzig, near the free state Danzig that was.
    But they took us to Liepe and to near Torun.
    I don't know whether I pronounce it even
    properly, because all the Polish towns have
    been called in German names.
    When I look at a map now, I don't recognize it.
    Again, because now it's all what they are in Polish.
    But it is Bydgoszcz because that I hear on the radio
    quite often.
    And really, we came nearer and nearer the Vistula
    and the river branches of the Vistula.
    Because there where they hoped to defend,
    the Germans, on the Vistula.
    Because the Russian army was on the borders of Prussia,
    on the outskirts of Warsaw, but they stopped there.
    And they expected a offensive any time.
    Were you aware of how close the Russians were?
    We were aware because we used to see people, refugees, running.
    And we'd been always told that we should not be happy.
    That if the war were finished 12:00,
    we will be all dead at quarter to 12.
    That we heard always, and then we
    used to hear abuse, from morning to night, that we are rubbish.
    That we are worthless.
    That we are nothings.
    That after a time, you start to believe it.
    Because they just drill you in, you know?
    You hear it all the time that you think, perhaps, it's true.
    But they also were right about killing us
    because very few survived the 12:00 at the end of the war.
    What happened when you reached the banks of the Vistula?
    Well, we have the last camp we've been in rondavels.
    and that was the worst camp, because it was already cold.
    Because in this part of the world, the winter sets early.
    It's east north, and it's very cold early.
    This is the camp you just traveled to on the train?
    That's the last camp.
    We'd been changed from one to the other,
    but the last camp, it was plywood rondavels.
    And we slept in two shifts.
    One was with a wooden, round, halfway,
    and others slept underneath with a little stove in the middle,
    which wasn't warm enough.
    We also didn't have anything to burn.
    We were not given wood or anything.
    Sometimes, we used to bring some twigs, hidden,
    or leaves or something to burn.
    And we also, by digging, we sometimes dug out raw potatoes.
    And we used to cut them and bake them on this little oven.
    Marsha Segall, reel 6.
    Marsha, you were telling me about rondavels, the last camp
    you were at, on the Vistula.
    The last camp was already the hardest.
    Here, we started losing people every day.
    What time of year was this?
    It was end of November and December,
    because it was winter.
    And the soil was hard, frozen, and it was snowing.
    We had very little clothing and very little food.
    And we'd been away from town or from anybody.
    It was from nowhere to nowhere.
    And even the SS, they suffered cold.
    And they used to put under their very heavy black coats,
    newspapers, because it's insulation.
    But if they saw somebody of us having some papers,
    they used to rip it.
    And they used to wake us very early.
    And they insisted that we're doing exercise,
    which will keep us fit and warmer,
    when nothing could keep us warmer
    because we had no clothing.
    How many of you were there?
    Well, we'd been a good couple of hundred.
    And then we used to give them the spade and the pick
    and send out to dig.
    They made fires for themselves to warm their hands,
    but they wouldn't let anybody come near it
    And the thing was that we never could get rid of the cold
    because the rondavels were so cold.
    There was no heating.
    We had no blankets.
    I mean, everybody had one gray blanket,
    which was very thin, worn, old.
    And we slept more tight together that each body
    warmed the other one.
    We protected each other but that was the most miserable camp
    there was, because we didn't have hope anymore.
    What did you do about sanitation at this camp?
    Well, sanitation, they used to dig big holes.
    It was in this camp we had a lot of dysentery.
    And the whole camp was dirty because some women
    couldn't manage to run quick enough to the dug out holes.
    And next morning, when they used to find it dirty,
    the SS used to beat up the whole rondavel which
    were near some dirt.
    And we started to be infested by lice,
    which we didn't have before.
    Because we tried very hard, as long as we could,
    to wash our hair in the coffee water.
    Instead of drinking it, we used to wash our hair.
    And we tried very hard to keep clean as much
    as it was possible.
    But when it was cold, it was impossible,
    because nobody could take off their clothes.
    It was so cold that you couldn't do it.
    And also, we didn't have any resistance.
    And lice is a combination of dirt
    and that the body have got no resistance.
    And we knew that if we saw somebody lice
    and if we saw a woman who didn't lace
    her shoe that she's a goner.
    Why lacing her shoes?
    Because that was apathy.
    That she didn't care.
    I mean, she didn't care what happened.
    And it was like a sign.
    And it's funny that the name given to these people
    was, in all camps, the same also, we've
    been hundreds of miles apart.
    We used to call it a Muselmann.
    We don't know how the name came, who created the name
    and how it spread from camp to camp.
    And it means somebody who's--
    Somebody who is about to die.
    I mean, he's already, he's got no resistance.
    He's already finished.
    He couldn't even lift a spade or anything.
    But we didn't have it till the last camp.
    But in the last camp, it was already,
    it was accumulation of hunger, hard work, sleeplessness,
    lack of vitamins, lack of medicine, lack of everything.
    Would you have to go far from the camp to the place
    where you'd dig the trenches?
    Was it much of a distance?
    Quite a way off, yes.
    And I mean, when we came back from digging the trenches,
    I mean, people used to throw the pick and the spade.
    It was like a collecting place.
    And a kapo used to take it.
    And if you didn't give her in the hand,
    she used to hit you over the head with it,
    because they didn't want even to bend and pick it up.
    And you just went automatically to your rondavel
    and you just slump on the bunk.
    And you didn't even want to eat what there was.
    So we were terribly hungry.
    What food was available at this time?
    They used to give us like big radishes.
    The food was also getting from bad
    to worse, because there was no supplies.
    And I suppose at that time, all of Germany
    had less food than before.
    And what came to us was hardly nothing.
    We still used to get a bit of margarine
    and sometimes jam, which was like a delicacy.
    And what there was food, the best part
    of it, the kapos and their helpers used to come.
    So we used to get the leftovers
    Had you lost much weight by this time?
    Very much.
    But I was lucky in a short period.
    I became a wood chopper.
    And I was chopping wood with two permanent wood choppers,
    which used to chop the wood for the kitchen and for the guards.
    Were the permanent wood choppers also inmates of the camp?
    Inmates of the camp.
    But that was a good job, because it was inside the rondavel
    and they didn't go to dig.
    And there were big logs.
    Used to chop it and we used to also, what do you call it?
    To--
    --saw.
    Saw, yeah, and they needed helpers.
    And a very good friend of mine and myself were sent there.
    And our tragedy was when they told us
    they don't want us because we don't know how to do it.
    And they needed helpers.
    So we begged them that we'll learn
    and would they give us a chance to stay?
    Because what it meant was that all these big radishes
    were stored there.
    So we could pinch, each of us, a big radish
    and bring it to the families, bring it
    to my mother and my sister.
    So that meant more than actually being under the roof.
    And they tolerated us.
    For how long, I don't know, because we
    haven't been very long there.
    Because we were sent out to the march.
    So I don't know how long.
    Then the condition and the dirt and the lice
    were so bad that they brought a fumigation unit.
    And the mistrust to the fumigation unit
    was so great that nobody-- they told everybody
    to leave their things and to be inside that nobody
    wanted to go inside.
    What did you think it was?
    Well, we thought that it's a gassing unit,
    but actually, they needed us and they wanted
    us to work till we drop dead.
    And the lice, they were frightened, will bring disease,
    and they will get it, catch it from us.
    So they brought, it was really fumigation.
    And some of the clothing became as hard as leather.
    They couldn't put them on again.
    Because of the--
    Because of the--
    The spray.
    Of the spray or whatever chemicals they use.
    And also, they didn't manage to fumigate all.
    So the ones with the fumigate were the lucky ones,
    because they got rid of lice.
    Were you fumigated?
    No, they didn't reach us, our rondavel,
    because we've been sent out to the march much quicker
    than the SS thought.
    Because they got, all of a sudden,
    the order from above that the Russians advanced,
    had advanced very fast.
    They started the big offensive in mid-January.
    And instead of leaving us, it happened in some camps
    that they left and they ran.
    The guards.
    Yes.
    They took us with, and in the beginning,
    it was terribly difficult to escape,
    because they used to count us.
    We used to sleep in the snow, in barns,
    and it was very carefully guarded.
    How did you go?
    On foot?
    On foot, oh, yes.
    But it was already an epidemic spread of typhus before,
    and some have been left.
    They didn't take them.
    They left them in one rondavel, all of those who were ill.
    I know a few, who voluntary stayed.
    Well, we knew that they wouldn't be alive.
    And we begged them to come with us.
    And I remember a very primitive Hungarian girl, from Munkacs,
    in Carpatho-Rus told me, I'm not going.
    I said, please.
    What do you want to die here?
    She said, look, do you see the weather outside?
    How far do you think you'll march?
    I'd rather die on this spot.
    She was clever because she was liberated, in a few days,
    and she was alive.
    But I'll tell you, they were meant to die.
    And the ones who were left when we marched off,
    they all got death injections.
    I don't know whether you know about it.
    But I know quite a few have got marks of it.
    What the Germans didn't realize, that they had to inject it
    in the veins, in the blood.
    And as they were not doctors or nurses, they injected anywhere.
    And some, by accident, they injected in the right place,
    died.
    But the majority survived, but they
    have got burns, flesh burns.
    Where they were injected.
    What was it they were injecting?
    Do you know?
    No, I don't know, but it's something which burns.
    I, perhaps, could find out.
    But I know one has got like a big pockmark, all burned.
    She lives in Tel Aviv, in Israel.
    And I know she never wears short sleeves.
    And another one, who lives now, in Frankfurt.
    She got on her leg, at the thigh,
    there are big burn, big marks.
    Because actually, they were supposed to be killed.
    And the rest of you marched.
    They didn't look for the results,
    because the Russians have been on their heels.
    They injected them and left them and joined
    the marchers, the SS.
    And what happened to them was that they
    had been hysterical, all of them,
    because they thought that's the end, which was meant to.
    And then they found out that they are still alive.
    Some died but some died because their disease went, already,
    beyond help.
    What happened to you?
    I marched.
    We went out on the march.
    Where were you marching to?
    We didn't know.
    It was in snow.
    We didn't march on the roads.
    In the beginning, some, but afterwards,
    when we encountered army, which moved from place to place
    and tremendous amount of German refugees,
    from Prussia, who ran, they didn't
    let us march on the roads.
    We marched on the fields, and that
    was terribly difficult to walk, because it was plowed soil
    with bumps, frozen.
    So it was really a tremendous effort to walk on it.
    And when you realize that we had no food, because every time
    they thought, they said that if you come in the next town,
    they'll manage to get.
    We didn't have even water.
    We used to eat snow and that makes you more thirsty.
    You get like snow mad.
    You have the snow and you're on your--
    we made ourselves some sort of gloves from the blanket.
    On this dirty, gray piece of blanket,
    we used to take some ice and snow and lick it.
    But you get more thirsty from it.
    You want to drink more.
    And we had no food at all.
    And whenever we came in the next place it was already empty.
    It was evacuated.
    There was nobody there.
    And the Russian Katyushas, you know, zooming from one side
    to the other.
    And the SS didn't even know where
    are we going, whether it's Russian occupied or German.
    Were they panicking at all?
    What was their thought?
    We were very unlucky, a lot of kapos in their death march
    got up in the morning and there was no guards.
    But ours took us right to the end, to Praust.
    And we used to lose, daily, tens and tens of women
    from exhaustion, who used to fall behind in the snow
    and frozen.
    And they used to be, they used to shoot them.
    They'd be frozen.
    Frozen, exhaustion, everything together.
    They just couldn't move anymore.
    And they used to, if you fell in the snow,
    you couldn't get up anymore.
    Did many people get frostbite?
    Oh, yeah.
    Oh, yes, the majority.
    Did they know what was the matter with them?
    Yes.
    How did they react?
    You can't move.
    I mean, when I froze my hands, I couldn't move.
    I wanted to do something, and I realized
    that my fingers are stiff.
    I couldn't bend them.
    And no matter how much somebody rubbed it, it didn't help.
    How long--
    Now I know remedies.
    People told me what you do, but I didn't know it at the time.
    How long would you march for each day?
    We don't know how much we marched.
    We marched from one barn to a second one,
    where they decided to stop at.
    And the worst day was actually the night
    before was my lucky night before I had my frostbite.
    That we've been in a estate, a Polish estate, a big estate,
    and there was lots of army stationed there.
    And they had anti-aircraft guns.
    And the kapos always used to go with the SS.
    You don't have to count on them like ordinary prisoners.
    They all survived.
    But we've been in a barn, which was a tragic and happy.
    What was happy about it that I was picked out with another few
    to bake potatoes.
    But that was inside, next to an oven.
    To have a potato to give because we didn't have
    food for about six, seven days.
    So I was inside, in a warm place.