The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry is an adaptation of an on-campus course that has been co-taught by Murray Baumgarten, Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature (Literature Department), and Peter Kenez, Professor Emeritus (History Department), for over 20 years at UC Santa Cruz. In this course, you will explore the Holocaust from the overlapping perspectives of literature and history—through memoirs, historical documents, poetry, documentary footage, filmic representations, and novels. You will expand your knowledge of the literature of the Holocaust, Eastern and Western European Jewish communities, the origins and development of antisemitism, the establishment of labor and extermination camps, resistance movements, and the Holocaust as a problem for world history. There is more than one way to take this course: You can complete all of the activities (and earn a Verified Certificate) or only the activities that are most interesting to you. Whatever you choose to do, we encourage you to find a havruta (a study partner) in your community or in the Coursera community so that you can experience the course in a more interactive and meaningful way.
5.3.6 Dora Sorell, part 6
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來自 University of California, Santa Cruz 的課程
大屠杀：欧洲犹太人的灭顶之灾
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Witness to trauma
In this module Profs. Baumgarten and Kenez discuss the invasion of the Soviet Union, Thomas Kenneally’s Schindler’s List, and questions of witnessing. Guest speaker Dora Sorell shares her own experience of the Holocaust.
與講師見面
Murray BaumgartenDistinguished Professor of English & Comparative Literature
Literature
Peter KenezProfessor Emeritus
History
So after yes, I told you that as more and
more girls have arrived, they put more girls,
10 girls, 12 girls on each level.
And they said take your shoes from the cement, put it under your head.
And put girls there too.
So we slept about 12 girls, maybe there was a blanket, I don't remember,
but for sure there was no mattress and no pillows and no nothing.
Now imagine 12 girls sleeping in a space like that, right?
You see when I go back, that is my bunk bed.
I found it when I went back 50 years later for pilgrimage.
So here now we are all right, my friends and my acquaintances from my hometown,
sure, the following morning, the new girls come from other cities of Hungary.
In cities from Czechoslovakia.
And we stayed in that place for about six weeks in quarantine, that
means we didn't work yet because we were new-comers to see if we had some diseases.
And all the Hungarians have come about six weeks.
Six weeks later we are march every morning.
We had to march out in front of the barracks, stay in line for the roll call.
The roll call started at four o'clock in the morning.
It was very cold, not to mention that we didn't have hair, right.
It was so cold in the morning, and you know we had to stay five in a row, and
at least I had all my friends.
I might have been the oldest among them, and I was 20 or 21.
And, you know, I remember how we really had to, the older girls stayed in front or
in the back and the younger one in the middle to keep them warm in the morning.
We stayed hours on the roll call, and sometimes they fainted.
When the roll call was announced you couldn't go to the bathroom, so
you might not hold it, and after the roll call was over, let's say after one or
two hours, and if you didn't faint, we're running all to the toilets.
This was a toilet you see.
This one.
Okay.
It is a right >> Latrine.
Yeah it is a latrine, where there was a cesspool in the middle and
two rows of wooden seats with holes.
Hundreds of holes.
And you had to stand in line to get to a hole.
I mean you couldn't hold it anymore,
because they didn't let you in the morning go to the bathroom.
And obviously, when you relieved yourself, there was never, never toilet paper.
There was never water to wash up.
Nothing, nothing.
And then back to our room.
So, for six weeks we stayed in that place, waiting for
others to come from Hungary, [INAUDIBLE].
Six weeks later, there is a new selection, and we don't know what it is.
And as we march, they probably took the older or the strongest,
we were too only from our group of the Hungarians separated,
and somehow the other one did something to be able to run back to her sister.
I didn't have sisters.
And they took all the girls who were separated, took them to the best house,
where we were initially seen, and they tattooed us.
I want to show you my tattoo.
My tattoo is A7603.
And being tattooed meant that from now on,
we are checked, we are being called to work,
if we go to work, every morning they would call out numbers.
If something happens to us, even if we die, right?
It would be registered.
We didn't know that, but we knew that the few days later,
all the others we were taken to a new camp.
Camp B and the following morning a couple of days, and then they all disappeared.
All my friends.
All the people [NOISE] I didn't know until the end of the war what happened to them.
So here I was in another camp.
Camp B.
And now I started to go to work.
Everyday I had to go to work.
Every morning they called my number.
I have to tell you this quite interesting.
My son had discovered one day two arms in the internet.
Two arms with tattoo.
One here and one here.
One was mine.
A7603 and the other was A7630.
And just imagine like the world which would go on to find out who the other one,
because I thought maybe she's from my home town, but she's not.
So, I live with this number for 70 years.
Some people ask me, why don't you remove it?
I say, are you kidding?
This is my identity.
How could I live without it?
It will be even on my tombstone, because this is who I am.
It's 70 years I have this number on me.
So from now on, I am in Auschwitz.
And I am in Auschwitz.
Those who were tattooed stayed and stayed and worked and worked.
And I was in Auschwitz seven months.
Not many people stayed in Auschwitz seven months.
Because Auschwitz was also a transit camp.
They arrived here, and they were sent to working.
Auschwitz were lots of selections and death camp.
So, what is it?
Okay, you're right, I should tell about the food.
[LAUGH] So, indeed.
When we got our first right food in the morning that we arrived,
it was a coffee, which was brought from the kitchen, and
there was some dry bread, which was cut in slices.
And something always put on top, marmalade or what.
At noon they, at noon they had a soup.
It was a greenish soup made of green vegetables right.
Cabbage and turnips and all kinds of, with no meat, nothing,
you know, no protein, no nutritious things.
And this was sort of the whole day and the evening, there was another.
So two soups a day, all with vegetables only.
And obviously, after two, three weeks, they're gonna start to lose weight.
And then no time, two, three weeks later, they declared,
there was a selection today in the best house.
And if it is in the best house, you have to walk naked in front of the selecting
committee, and when they saw some girls very, very skinny,
maybe with lesions, because in two weeks we all started to be infested with lice.
Right, sleeping 10 together or 12.
We were infested, we were dirty, right.
And we were sometimes, you know, bitten in [INAUDIBLE].
So when they saw someone very, very skinny they selected them.
And if they happened to be two friends or
two sisters it was, you know, painful to see how they're
screaming they want to be together no matter what the outcome is, right.
And they were beaten.
So there were very often this type of selections.
But by the fifth time I didnt ever bring any more of my friends with me or
my acquaintances.
I was moved from one barrack to another, to one work to another.
It is so much to write about
being Auschwitz that
I have to tell you this.
It was about 30 years ago my daughter had a baby,
her name was Miriam, Letters to Miriam.
And when Miriam was born, I was a doctor,
I was very busy doing my job, and I was really working hard.
But now I had a granddaughter, and I say I have grandchildren, how will they ever
know what happens to me and to my parents and to my brothers, right, in the camp.
And I started to think, and everybody came with suggestions.
Oh you know you should be taped.
I say a tape like this wouldn't do justice.
And finally I came up with the idea to write letters to Miriam.
Every day when I come home if I have the time, sit down, I write a little letter.
If something inspired me.
It happened sometimes I saw something.
It happened sometimes I saw a factory.
Saw factory, dear Miriam.
I'm going to write you about what I saw.
A factory just like the crematoriums in Auschwitz, and
I wrote something about Auschwitz.
And other times, so I had hundreds of letters.
And after a year or two, someone help me to organize these letters on chapters.
Things what happened at home, things what happened on the trip to Auschwitz.
Things what happened in Auschwitz, and things what happened after Auschwitz.
Now, in order to see what kind of letters I'm writing,
I will just tell you three letters, okay, the story of three letters.
And one is called, one letter is called The Shoe Story.
You know, the shoes were the most important, you know,
clothing that you needed.
Because if you lost one or if it broke down you couldn't walk any more.
You had to march so much to go to work.
So, one day my shoe got completely destroyed, and
I was working at that time in the factory.
There were factories in Auschwitz.
Many of those barracks were factories.
And so my shoes was destroyed, so
I went to the supervisor of the barrack, and I said I cannot go tomorrow.
I cannot march because I don't have shoes.
He said okay, tomorrow morning wait for me,
I will have other girls who need shoes, wait for me and then dress in the barrack.
And that day she took five, six girls and where did she take us for shoes.
She took us to the railroad station, and after the people who arrived
were already sent to the camp, hundreds of workers, Jewish,
were working with the leftovers, to empty this stuff, to open the packages, right?
So, and then when they opened them, they started to sort them.
They made a pile of dresses, a pile of shirts,
a pile of shoes, everything went into piles.
So, the supervisor says, okay, go to the pile of shoes and choose a pair of shoes.
Now those shoes were not paired.
If they found, those working there,
if they found the right shoe, they cared to have a left same size.
No color, no heel, it didn't matter.
And put them together as a pair to be used.
Very rarely was it a match.
So we went to the pile of shoes and I looked for something my size,
to be soft enough because I didn't have socks, and I choose a pair.
But they weren't, one was black and one was brown.
It's okay, many, many people had the mismatched shoes.
The following morning we marched to work, we march, march and
suddenly I see in front of me the pair of my brown shoe.
I got very excited, suppose I would get a matching pair, right?
So when we arrived to work, I tried to find the shoe, and I found a brown shoe.
And I say, why don't you give me the brown shoe, I gave you the black shoe.
If it's as good.
Oh no, you gave me the brown shoe, but you see my black shoe is much better.
Just take it.
No, she didn't want to give it to me, and I didn't want to give it to her.
And every day, we talk and talk, and the others started laughing.
And then, one day, I didn't see the girl anymore.
I didn't know what happened to her.
And two days later, her friend brought me the brown shoe.
