Tag #139574 - Interview #101729 (Bella Steinmetz)

For example in Auschwitz we had to change clothes, and we threw down the old ones, there was a big-big heap of clothes. We had to pass one by one, but ‘Quickly! Quickly! Quickly! Schnell! Schnell! Schnell!’ – this was the slogan all the time. We had to pick up the clothes fast, so we tried to choose from afar. Well, but we couldn’t see from that far. I picked up one, but I could see that it was for a corpulent person, and I threw it back, and I took other one. I got two big slaps in the face from a soldier, but tough ones. He looks into my eyes and says: ‘Didn’t it hurt?’ I say: ‘No! Not from you.’ He looks at me: ‘From me?’ ‘No. Why should it hurt?’ Having heard this he went on. If he asks me one more question, he shoots me in the head for sure, because I would have told him: ‘You’re not a human being, but an animal…’ After this I thought over: ‘You fool! It costs you one word, and with a ball [they shoot you]!’ Maybe it would have been better, because after that I had such a hard life.