just a few days. Then we were transferred to Neustadt Glewe
19 by train in
cattle cars.
After liberation I was in a hospital. I was operated on several times for
gangrene and then I refused to be operated on again. Finally we were repatriated, but I decided that I didn't have anything to go back to Poland for. I
convinced my camp sister, Marta, to come with me to Belgium because one of
the nurses was telling us that the best ice cream in the world was in Belgium. I
said, "We are going to Belgium." We were flown there by the Red Cross plane
and I stayed in Belgium for a year before I went with Youth Aliyah to Israel. I
married in Israel in 1950. We came to the States in 1958, and after two years
we went to Canada.
I find it very difficult to speak about it; I find it very difficult to remember,
but I understand that this is my responsibility and I want to bring about the
commemoration of the four girls who were executed in Auschwitz. This is
what I wanted to do; this is the essence of my talk.
My Auschwitz number was forty-eight, one hundred and fifty. (48150) The
numbers add up to Chai.
20 The girl who tattooed my numbers told me: "You
are going to come out alive because your number is Chai."
Interviewed by: Bonnie Gurewitsch, 10/14/85
NOTES
1.Lager A in the main camp, Auschwitz I.
2.Prisoners stayed in the quarantine camp for a few weeks, where they were physically and psychologically "broken-in" to the inhuman routine and torture of the
camp. ( Auschwitz 1940-1945, Guidebook Through the Museum, pp. 45-46.).
3.Lager B, also in Auschwitz I..
4.The Union Werke munitions factory was located near the base camp. ( Amidst a
Niqhtmare of Crime, p. 155.) Its full name was Weichsall-Metall Union Werke.
5. Esther Wajcblum, born in 1924. She was eventually executed for her part in
smuggling the gunpowder.
6.Explosives were brought from the Union factory by several women, including Esther Wajcblum, Alla Gaertner, and Regina Saperstein and given to Roza Robota, who worked sorting clothing and luggage in Birkenau BIIg, adjacent to
crematorium IV.
7. Roza Robota. According to Israel Gutman, a woman named Hadassah transferred
the explosives to him or to a fellow prisoner in the Sonderkommando. ( Israel Gutman
, Smoke and Ashes: The Story of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Israel: Sifriyat Poalim, 1957.) A footnote to the diary of Salmen Lewental says that it was Roza Robota
who transferred the gunpowder to a Jewish prisoner named Wrobel. ( Amidst a
Niqhtmare of Crime, p. 155.).
8. Esther Wajcblum, along with other girls from the Union factory, was interrogated
in Block 11, the punishment barrack of the men's camp. "The upper windows
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