Tag #137432 - Interview #78776 (jiri munk)

Then when in 1944, at the age of 16, skinny but tall for his age, my brother was standing on the ramp in Auschwitz in front of the selection, some SS-man noticed his watch and asked him, 'What kind of watch is that?' My brother answered something back, and the SS-man said to him, 'OK, give it to me!' My brother gave him the watch without hesitation, because you then had to give everything away anyways. But the SS-man then also asked how old my brother was, and when he answered that he was 16, he gave him this advice, 'During the selection, say that you're already 18.' And my brother has always been convinced that this incident saved his life, because if he would have said that he was 16, he would probably have gone straight into the gas.