Tag #133876 - Interview #78150 (Magda Fazekas)

In the meantime, during these seven weeks my sister Hermin fell ill. There was a so-called sick-bay, it was called 'Revier,' where they put those who could be, let's say, healed. She had an eruptive illness, it is called erysipelas. It started on her neck, and went down to her shoulders, and so she was in a sick-bay, where she was taken care of by a Polish woman doctor, who was a prisoner like we were.

I got beaten in Auschwitz once, when my sister was ill and was in the sick- bay. There was no water, and one day they brought one cistern of water for such a huge camp. And there was a stone tank in it. It was forbidden to approach it, nobody was allowed to go there. When this cistern was taken away, I ran after it, because water was still dripping out of it, and I wanted to get some water to take it to my sister in the hospital. So they trashed me, because even this was forbidden. They hit me and beat me...

Something else I recall was that we agreed not to talk, if possible, because talking too makes you tired, you loose energy, and so we decided not to talk and save some energy. Thus we remained silent for days, and that's how those weeks in Auschwitz passed. It is interesting that we thought we had a slight chance to survive: if we went to work. But we were afraid of selection, and that we would loose my sister Hermin. When she got better, she'd be let out from the sick-bay.