acked 100 to 120 people into a sealed car. There was no food on the train. Fortunately it took us only about two days to get to the concentration camp. Train from places farther east or south, like Greece, sometimes took ten days. Many of the people on these trains did not survive the trip. When we got to Auschwitz, we had to undress completely and line up before the gate. We had to line up in fives. A Nazi officer was pointing left, right, right, left. I was fortunate. I went to the right. The ones to the left went to the crematorium. The ones to the right went into the camp. It was dark, but I could see the people to the left were mostly elderly or young children, so I realized that we were going into the camp. Inside the camp first they shaved our hair. We were stark naked and they tattooed us. I am 161253. They gave us cold showers. It was November. Bitter cold. Then they put us in striped uniforms and took us into Birkenau (Beer-Kin-Now), the killing center at Auschwitz. I was fortunate. After I had been there four weeks, they picked several hundred men to go to Bunno, another part of Auschwitz. It was a labor camp and they gave us a little better food. The barracks were a little nicer. There were about 300 or 400 men to a barrack. We had double or triple bunks. The bunks were actually single beds, but two people had to sleep on one bunk. The capos woke us at five o'clock each morning. The capos were prisoners who were in charge of the barracks and the work groups. They were mostly Germans, Poles, and some Jews. The Nazis assigned them to guard us. In the morning they gave us one piece of bread mixed with sawdust to eat. We also got a piece of margarine and a cup of coffee. It was not real coffee. We had to work until the evening. In the evening we got soup. If we were fortunate, we might sometimes find a few potatoes and a piece of meat in the liquid. Most of the time it was just hot water and a few potatoes. For that we had to wo...
