“When we got to Auschwitz, which I didn’t know it was Auschwitz, I didn’t know nothing about it; I did not know about concentration camps, I did not know what was going on at all. When we got there they told us, ‘Raus, raus, raus!’ They didn’t let us take the clothes at all, they started separating women from men. Cries. It was just terrible. The husbands were from wives, the mothers from sons, it was just a nightmare. I started to get diarrhoea, I was sick and diarrhoea, suddenly. We started going through the… through the gate; the SS men were on both sides. And the girls, young people that could see what state I was in, they had a bit of sugar and they started putting sugar in my mouth to revive me. And when they were going through the gates, they were just holding me up, and was left and right, left and right. I went to the right, they told me to go to the right, the SS men. And we had to be…. we were…. they formed us like fifths, five, five, five, we had to stay in five, five girls. And it was dark; it was dark, and they are starting to march us. And can you imagine the screams, the…. the mother was going to the left, the daughter was going to the right, the babies going to the left, the mothers going to the right, or the mothers went together with the babies… Oy oy! I cannot explain to you the cries and the screams, and tearing their hair off. Can you imagine?”

Barbara Stimler Born 1927, Alexsandrow, Poland. Camp in Kutno, Lodz/Litzmannstadt ghetto, Auschwitz camp 1943, work camp at Pirshkow. Death march to Odra. Liberated by Russians. Married, two children.