Mira Radová

“There was one lady from Košice – being a bit snobby back home – who was in charge of our barrack. She took care of me – gave me some compresses which she changed. And I guess that saved my life. I also got some pills, but threw them up right away. They were of no use anyway. But one day, the head of the camp appeared, an SS member – and he found out somebody was there. He came closer to me and asked me: ‘How old are you?’ I said: ‘Eighteen.’ I had to be that old. ‘Having such hands? You are not even thirteen!’ And he left. But on the next day I got a cup of milk, what repeated then every day. That horrible SS guy used to send me a cup of milk every day. Moreover, on the next day, some German official came and ordered to send me an extra blanket. I don’t know why they took such mercy on me.”

“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.”