Full transcript:
At that time you still could have a burial if you paid to the, to the, uh, Judenrat, to the Jewish council, about 15 zlotys, they would bring a hearse and, and carry away the dead person. But we didn't have the money. So, what people, poor people, used to do is to put the cadaver out in front of the house, and then there were special wagons who came and picked up all those dead people and brought them to the cemetery on Gesia Street. So, the next day I ran to that cemetery hoping to find my father there. And what I saw is, it was, you know, a terrible nightmare. For the first time in my life I saw a pile of dead bodies, you know, like two stories high. Because the, the, the amount of dead people was so enormous and growing from day to day that the, the gravediggers couldn't keep up with the pace of the, of the dead, you know, of the amount of people who were pouring into that cemetery. So they collected them, you know, piles, one upon the other, you know. And, and all these corpses, you know, their limbs intertwisted between, you know, with open mouths, and I was a young girl, and the stench from that pile of human, uh, corpses was so terrible. It's a sweetish smell, you know. I, I don't have the, the words to describe it, but, it was, you know, hell was, even the word hell is not a word to describe it, you know. So I couldn't find him on that pile, you know. I just couldn't make it, and I went back to the kibbutz. |