Tag #150649 - Interview #90536 (Tibor Gohman)

In Katovice we were accommodated in very big plank barracks. There were narrow two-tier plank beds. It’s hard to say how many inmates were in barracks. I think there were about 500 inmates in one. The majority of inmates were Jews, but there were also Polish, Czechs, Slovaks, Austrians and people from other countries. I talked with Hungarians and Czechs knowing both languages.  There was a senior inmate in each barrack. Management of the camp knew those headmen. German soldiers with machine guns and trained dogs guarded the camp. Since it was a work camp Germans gave us food to be able to work. We had three meals per day: in the morning we had a cup of surrogate coffee with bread, then we had lunch at work site delivered from the camp. In the evening we had some boiled cereal and a little soup. Of course, there were bed sheets or pillows, but each of us had a blanket. Every morning after breakfast we marched to work sites. Katovice like other Polish towns was ruined. Almost a whole town was in ruins. We were to remove this debris. We piled bricks and debris to be loaded on trucks hauling it out. So we were cleaning up the town, street after street. We were given spades, picks and crowbars in the camp.  After work we carried our tools back to the camp. We worked without days off and didn’t know the count of days or months.