European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

I took this offer.

We were travelling, watching and making notes, all things which were important enough we made notes about,

for example a story like this – we are going through the field,

there was supposed to be cabbage but were only dried stalks,

the ground was creaking and giving way under our feet.

Those were human bones,

it was the rest from the crematorium,

everything from there was emptied out there and dug up and then they planted cabbage there.

Then we came closer to the crematorium.

There were parts of bodies, some of them prepared to be taken to the chamber.

They did not look horrible, they were brown,

the smell was disgusting, it was such a hot day, August, in the middle of August in 1944.

We always had a scarf on our head to cover our hair and protect it from the smell,

the smell which was in Majdanek. After coming back from Majdanek we put our clothes onto the balcony.

We lived in barracks, men together with women.

Then we saw loads of shoes taken from the people who were going to die.

Little children’s shoes, male and female shoes, some clothes, and we had to write down everything.

Then we finished going to Majdanek and two or three times went to some forest,

I do not remember the name of it,