Mira Radová

“We detrained the cattle cars and one uniformed man asked me: ‘Wie viele Jahre alt?‘ I answered: ‚ Vierzehn.‘ He waved a bit to the right – what meant he sent us to the side of life. This way my aunt, cousin and I happened to be in Auschwitz. We had no clue where we were. People used to say it was somewhere in Sweden or where… There were 1200 people in one barrack in Auschwitz-Birkenau. So four of us lay on one small bed without any blanket, or maybe there was one for all. It was very sad. When we came there, we got one little cube of something dark. It was already evening; we were naked and cut, dressed in some gray cloth. Well, I didn’t mind that, but I was completely shocked by the whole situation. I looked at the cube and I thought that probably it was soap. Not at all – that was our breakfast. And about the soap we hadn’t heard for a very very long time.”

“There was a railway on the Main Street, due to distribution of goods to the shops. And that was where our deporting train stopped. There we were waiting certain time and people were bringing us water, or maybe secretly even something little more through the small window, as the door was locked. We couldn’t say they agreed with what was happening, to the contrary…”