Das war schon was dort. I can tell you, if you went through this for two weeks only! You’d say: „For my life I’ve had enough!“ And we had to do it for six years! So many were shot, even though they hadn’t done anything. Just because they couldn’t walk any more. We marched out to the fields, to work there. The old women broke down, there were many old women with us, and when they broke down, the SS women immediately shot them with a revolver. Then they laughed! One of them said to the other one – most of the time it was three or four SS women and two SS men with rifles: „Did you see what a shot!“ And both laughed. Then I thought: „My God! If there is a God in Heaven, he shall punish you!“ And there was a woman with her mother. The mother couldn’t bear it any more, and shut herself into the lavatory. Then someone wanted to use the toilet, but it was closed. The block chief – they, too, were inmates, the block chiefs and the room chiefs – she said: „We’ll have to check what is going on there.“ She took a chair and looked into the toilet from above. The woman sat there, on the toilet. She had killed herself, hanged herself, the mother of this young girl. And then they forced the door open, and carried the woman out. The girl broke down and cried. It was her mother. I asked her: „What happened to your mother? Why do they carry her away?“ She hugged me, and cried, and told me: „Just imagine, my mother has killed herself! And now they are taking her away.“ What do you think they did to this young woman, because she cried for her mother? The SS man took her along and burned her with her mother. You weren’t even allowed to cry for your own people. You should have laughed when they murdered our people!

Some older women also died because they couldn’t take it any more. They were all burned. Us young ones had to work like beasts..

And the roll call in winter, in summer it was bearable, but in winter, from four o’clock until six in slippers. Standing in one place! We weren’t allowed to move, arms down like soldiers...

The SS women never talked to us, they only ordered us to work, nothing else. And when someone didn’t do as they wanted, they struck out. I had a striped dress too large for me. It hung down around me because I was so skinny. I couldn’t sew the dress tighter, I didn’t have a needle or thread, therefore I had tried to tighten it with a safety pin. One day an SS woman ordered me to get the laundry for the others. You couldn’t talk back, you could only say „Jawoll“ and do it. And I had stuck my dress together with that safety pin. When she saw that, she slapped me hard, I thought my head would fly off. She asked me: „Where did you get that?“ I couldn’t say I had it from a German friend, so I said I had found it in the yard. She took the safety pin and put it in her pocket and said: „Once again, and you’ll be in for something!“

Whenever we got mail, we told those who knew each other. I also got letters from home. We were allowed to send one letter each month. You were allowed to write: „Dear parents! I am very well. I wish you the same.“ And sign your name, no more. When someone wrote anything else, the letter was ripped up and the woman beaten. There were many who couldn’t write, and I and some others who were able to write wrote letters for them. I often wrote 30 letters. The old women came crying, and asked me to be so kind and to write a letter for them. I couldn’t say no to that.