Eva Ackermann - December 6, 1982
Life in the Concentration Camps
Roll call.
Roll call where every morning as many people as there were, you st...stood outside, minus clothing, I mean whatever clothing you had, in a very Bavarian bitter cold and you were counted. And if there was one missing, you just stood there for hours as uh, as they found the one who was on the latrine or uh, fell asleep somewhere and they found them and uh, where was I?
Your mother was...
Getting herded?
Your mother was in the Appell.
Well yes, she said that she saw my mother. Of course Bergen-Belsen was much bigger than uh, where I was.
Landsberg?
Yeah. So they were not able, well maybe she didn't want to tell me, I don't know. But she said that she saw my mother uh, every morning for a few days and then suddenly she didn't see here anymore. And uh, it was a number of things uh, people died of a exposure, of hunger, of uh, typhus, so that's what she said. Whether she was, she didn't want--she wanted to spare me details, I don't know. I don't know where we were...
Let's go back to the uh, to Landsberg, um.
It was uh, it was, I was, I stayed there with 150 other women and uh, you know uh, actually it was uh, uh, it was um, I even feel bad if someone asks me, because it was just a matter of months. I think it was about uh, we started uh, that was in November, from November to the end of April. Maybe the first of May when we evacuated from there. So it's, it's a matter--it was a matter of months as opposed to those people that we had there, who were there for years...
Polish Jews.
Yeah, the Polish Jews. So, but never the less the damage was such that uh, it was, it was enough because a lot of people didn't survive the, these people I came with. The women, yes. The women survived. There were only a few, maybe two or three who actually died after liberation because of uh, eating after not having food or typhus. So these 150 women really survived by uh, the grace of God.
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