European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

I arrived home in the morning and my mother was there.

She was a textile worker, but they sometimes had days off, and she was home. Ah! That was …!

My father arrived in the evening. He was a coppersmith, working very hard. He was also very firm.

He said:

“So there you are! Where are you coming from?”

Quite nice. That was how he was. I had already imagined it would be that way. But things got straightened out in the end.

I had been called to the police headquarters because a family was asking for information about their son.

I hesitated for a long time, but finally I decided to go, as it was to help.

When I walked into the police office, one of these individuals who had arrested me, entered.

I did a huge leap, with my 35kg at the time, yelling at the police officer:

“Ask that cop what he did in the night of October 21st, 1941!” I made a big fuss.

The officer calmed me down and sent the other one out.

Every-day live at Auschwitz-Birkenau

Day to day life in the camp started with the morning role-call.

The camp was huge.

I think we were a hundred thousand prisoners.

Birkenau was especially huge.

Then we found out that Birkenau was no holiday resort.

The days were very long: from 4h00 or 5h00 in the morning ‘til 21h00, 22h00 in the evening,

because if one of the 22,300 people was missing during the evening role-call, he had to be found.