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We had to get on the wagons, then destination Auschwitz. We didn’t know that of course, just as we traveled, traveled and traveled, and one day passed, and we were still traveling in the wagon. We traveled for three days. Eighty people in one wagon…, so it didn’t mean that everybody could sit down. We were happy if we could let somehow the elder people sit down. I was shocked for the first time in the wagon, when a mother was holding her child in her lap, he was crying badly, and she didn’t manage to calm him down, and in her despair she caught the urine in the nappy, and that’s how she wiped the child’s chapped lips. Nobody had water anymore. Everybody brought a little water, a bottle – there weren’t plastic bottles yet –, but that was off for a long time. And that little baby… he didn’t even suck anymore…, and one couldn’t put bread into his mouth yet. This was the first shock I got, so ‘Good Lord, what’s this?!’ There weren’t any problems after, they went straight into the gas…
Period
Interview
Bella Steinmetz