In 1939 we moved in with my uncle in Lodz who had a store selling winter shoes. From 1939-1944, we were in the Lodz ghetto, we had a cleaners. We ironed uniforms and my mother cleaned spots. Our food was rationed. Everyone worked twelve hours a day, six days a week. People stole for food; we had to look the other way. If you went out and you were caught you were stripped naked, embarrassed, and humiliated. We hid in a house behind a false wall and dresser. The Germans threatened to shoot if we didn’t come out, they took my mother to jail. We siblings were sent to Auschwitz by train, it took four days.
After Auschwitz, we were sent to Mauthausen. I don’t know how we survived. My sisters banded together, an older man brought us bread. We made screws for bombs. We worked in an ammunition factory and also washed toilets. We stayed together for warmth, and knitted mittens, and scarves. We spent five months in Bergen-Belsen. We spent eight days on a wagon and were given bread. The camp was under water when we arrived. We volunteered to work in the kitchen, and were given bread that was stolen by the some gypsies. I caught typhus. My sisters held me up for inspection when I had typhus. They saved my life.
When the English liberated the camp, out of 500 girls that we came with, only 200 survived. We told the English that the guards were criminals; they locked the commander in the freezer. At Bergen-Belsen, we adopted a woman who became one of our sisters.
After the war my sister who moved to Israel died from depression. My brother in Sweden is involved in Holocaust education. I am still angry at Germany; I hate them even today, I would never go to Germany.