I was told that in two hours they could kill two thousand people.

Each day, I learned more about the horrors that surrounded me. How could it be that in the twentieth century, mothers and children were burned almost alive? My mother, my wondehrful mother, was killed in a crematorium right after she arrived at the camp. People who knew me told me about it. In the camp, you saw the black, black smoke. The people who worked near the crematoria would tell you in a cold and calculating way, “If you have a mother, a father, a brother, a sister, they are here. This is the smoke and the blood of our people.” These were things that I learned on my first day. Jewish prisoners who worked in the crematoria were called Sonderkommando (special detail). Every four months the workers were changed and the previous ones were killed. They did this work even though they knew they would die, but in the meantime, they were given better clothing and food, and might even be able to help someone run away. At least, that was the fantasy — that they might be responsible for helping to save one life or perhaps they themselves would miraculously survive. This is what I learned when I asked about the thick, black smoke.

It smelled like burning human flesh. It still makes my skin crawl to think about it. That smell was everywhere, all the time, day and night. You couldn’t get rid of that smell. It was all over my body, it seeped into my eyes, my nose, my ears. The smell was always there.

In two hours, they could kill two thousand people.

It was on my second day that I learned about the “special” treatment reserved for women and children. That they were given towels and told to go into the showers to wash. But instead of water, the shower heads contained gas, which suffocated them — suffocated children in the arms of their mothers. Once dead, they were burned in the nearby crematoria. The children, the mothers, the others… in the real sense of the word, they were suffocated, strangled, not able to breathe. Since it was already near the end of the war, it was even worse. The camp was running out of gas, so they had to be stingy and ration the amount used in the showers. The process of dying lasted longer. So the babies died first. Then the mothers who cradled them in their arms. Then the burning of dead people started.

In two hours they could kill two thousand people.

I was assigned to Lager C, Barracks 10, in Auschwitz-Birkenau, along with about eight hundred or a thousand other women. It was an ugly place. In the barracks, there was nothing but a mud floor, a roof and wooden pallets that served as our beds. The roof leaked, so when it rained the barracks floor became muddy. Fifteen women slept on each slab of wood that had nothing but a bit of straw on top. No pillows. No blankets. We could only lie on one side because if you turned over, all fifteen women had to turn at the same time. We turned anyways.There were no toilets, only holes in the ground. There were no showers or sinks, so most people were unable to wash. There were bugs everywhere — all over the barracks and all the places where we worked. There were bedbugs where we slept. And rats. People died of disease from the unsanitary conditions all the time.

In two hours….

This is an excerpt from We Sang In Hushed Voices by Helena Jockel, from the Azrieli Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program