And I also want to tell you - I worked in four commandos, in the camp. In the first commando, I collected nettles. And these hands of mine bled. 12 hours each day. And when we were woken up, everyone sitting here experienced it, at 4 a.m., they gave us a drink from the nettle, and they also used the nettle-soup. Aufseherin, that is, the one who kept guard over us and everyone knows what Aufseherin is, she was very cruel, she had a dog, and a stick and she would beat us if the baskets weren't filled, tall enough with the grass we were using. I was in this commando for many months, and later in the second commando, the Kartoffelkommando, where I was briefly and on this Lagerstrasse (camp street), I met a cousin who was a doctor's wife and was working at the sick room. What about the sick room? On one side, the chimneys were on burning and on the other side were hospitals. But what kind of hospitals were they? All the diseases I could have had there, Flecktyphus, Bauchtyphus, it all remained in my head in German. And the terrible scabies that bit me, and I was the first, the best candidate for the chimney because I got there when Dr Mengele conducted the selection process, with us, lined up naked and thus walking to our death. And I said: “I won't go”. And I hid under the bed cover and somehow saved myself from it. And then, one more Commando. I was working in the sick room and my daily task was to observe the type of lice and I also learned that there are two kinds of these creatures - one is head lice and the other is clothing lice. And so, I was killing these lice with my fingers. It was my first job from the very morning.
What I'm going to say... well, you can't talk about it to everyone. I had overcome that terrible illness of mine, and after that illness, the actual illness, I was posted to the "Canada" Commando, and the prisoners invented the name Canada. So, I worked in Canada. Surely there are people from Hungary here and I was holding Hungarian clothes in my hands. At first, I cried but later had to get used to the fact that it was to be my job. Then, on these huge mountains of different clothes from all over the world, I came across photographs of my teachers from Łódź, because they liquidated the Łódź ghetto in 1944. Since Jewish schools were closed, I decided that I had to learn something, and there were so many languages! About fifteen languages were spoken, I heard so many languages and I said, "I must learn something, I will learn a language”. And so, I found a lady from Belgium who was my teacher, no pencil, no paper, nothing and I'm learning. And I finished Auschwitz-Birkenau with fluent French.
The other things I learned were poems and melodies created by various prisoners. One of the poems was by Krystyna Żywulska, which became our prayer. I learned the poem; it is a very long poem that I will not recite because I remember it today as I did then. Krystyna Żywulska's poem "Wymarsz w polu" (March out into the field) was known to us as " March out of the gate" and it became our prayer.
The description of those sufferings was an expression of each of us, but not every prisoner was able to describe the painful reality in such a manner. The main source of strength was a mad desire for revenge for so much torment, for so many complaints, bayonets in the brain, daggers in the neck. The words of rebellion went from mouth to mouth and changed slightly depending on the female prisoners' memory and personal associations. The thought of revenge became a source of strength to endure long days and nights of human suffering. I continue to learn and learn all the time. And what helped me to survive? The fact that I decided to do something for myself and choose what I want, not what they order me to do. But I wasn't liberated on the 27th. We already heard the canons of the Russian army, but then it wasn't liberation, they only chased us out to march. That's what I thought there, I mean here. There, in hell, it was a pipe dream - a dream about freedom. There, the heart was beating with a cry of revenge for so much suffering, for waiting in line for death predestined from above, and the countries of the world did nothing. And to this day I have this feeling; where were you all, where was the world that saw and heard and did nothing to save so many thousands.
And what’s next? Since learning was my dream.
I'll speak from my heart, not from paper. I was in Auschwitz-Birkenau until the liquidation of the camp and my last job in Canada, that was the name given by the prisoners, in fact, by the Sonderkommando, because Canada is a rich country, and all the things that prisoners from all countries brought with them were gathered in Canada, and I saw it all there;