SPEECH OF ZDZISŁAWA WŁODARCZYK,
AN AUSCHWITZ SURVIVOR
Dear Guests. Colleagues here, from the camp.
My name is Zdzisława Włodarczyk (nee Bogdaszewska). 78 years ago, with my parents and younger brother, I ended up here.
I was 11, and my brother – 7.
When we were pushed to the fright carriages, being taken from the transition camp in Pruszkow, someone asked aloud: where will we go? The answer was: to a village near Krakow. We were going for a long time. We were the first transport from the Warsaw Uprising. The first days. My father tried to watch the train route through a chink between the planks. It was already a twilight, when I heard my father’s desperate scream. He held his head in the hands, beating it against the wall of the carriage, shouting: God, where did they take us, where did they take us? I looked through the chink and saw a white plaque with a black inscription: Auschwitz.
We were driven through the gate. Then we drove on the right side of the ramp. The train stopped. They were opening the carriages, shouting: ruas, schnell, banditen. Those were the first words.
At once they separated men and women with children. We were led along the barbed wires, It was dark. We were brought to a dark wooden barrack with the floor covered with sand and chloride. We sat on the floor. This is how we spent the first night.
In the morning, Mum told us that men were near the barrack and Dad was there, too. We sat the whole day with our Dad near the barrack. People were looking for their families and friends, they also burned paper money.
In late afternoon, Mum told me to go to the barrack and she stayed with Dad. This was the last time when I saw him.
Next day in the afternoon, we were brought to a brick building. It was a bathhouse. We had to take off everything and stand naked. Then our hair was cut and we were shaven.
They herded us along the corridor further to another room. Someone shouted: now they will let out the gas. But rhere was no gas. This was water, once cold and once hot. There was no soap or towels.
The continuet to chase us. Women stood separately, colorful dresses were thrown at them, so it was hard to recognize them.
We, the children, got our own clothes in which we arrived. After the disinfection, they were very stiff.
They lined us to wait for the numbers on pieces of fabric. My Mum got 85 281, and I had the next one, and the brother received 192 798. And then we got the first piece of bread. It was a small loaf – for adults it was ¼ of a loaf, and for us, children – 1/8. It was our first meal.
And again we were led along the barbed wires to brick barracks. We were completely separated then: children separate, and mothers separate.
The barrack had some walled cages inside – they were called bunks. An older female inmate, block prisoner, said that we had to squeeze only in two parts of them – the upper and the middle one, because on the bottom part, there was only brick and we could be cold. In each bunk there was one blanket and a straw mattress with some rests of straw.
Night were the worst. The children were crying that they were cold and hungry. With time, they became silent, because they knew that no one and nothing would help them. Mother would not come to us. In the morning there was a roll-call, obviously with no food, in the evening a roll-call again with 1/8 loaf bread, a cube of margarine, sometimes marmalade and herbal tea or coffee. We could not see our mothers.
At the end of November or the beginning of December, they moved us to wooden barracks, to so-called Zigeunerlager. There were wooden bunk beds and a long stove, along the whole barrack. But we were not allowed to sit on it.
From afar we could hear the sounds of cannon guns, so we knew that the front was advancing.
The Germans were destroying the documents, and blowing up the crematories and warehouses. We were afraid, but we waited for freedom.
On 17th January 1945, we were lined up for a general march-out and they gave us a double portion of bread. Our children’s block was behind the women’s block for the mothers. Then my brother was pushed away from the line, as he was not apt to march. I wanted to let Mum know that he was staying so I started to call her aloud. An SS-soldier jumped up to me and he hit me very hard in the face, so I turned away and squatted so that he stopped hitting me, and thus I stayed behind. Then I no longer cared what would happen, so I jumped out of the line and ran up to my brother. I did not want him to be alone. So we both stayed in the camp.
Zdzisława Włodarczyk