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Roll Call in Birkenau
The testimony of Ruth
Brand, born in Hungary and deported to Auschwitz in 1944, at the age
of 16.
Early in the morning we
were thrown out of these barracks and stood in line. In front of each
barrack there was a line of … 5 in a row, and each had to be counted,
even those who had died during the night; we had to bring them outside
and put them 5 in a row also. They had to be counted, the number had
to be exact. If the number was not exact, then we were standing in
this line, it was whether rain or wind or sun or whatever, morning and
evening – we had to be counted for. And if just one was missing, the
count had to go all over again, they had to count over. This was
30,000 had to be counted in the Birkenau camp.
Ruth Brand, testimony
given at a seminar held at Yad Vashem, 1996.
This Testimony appears in “Eclipse of Humanity” Yad Vashem’s
multimedia program on the Holocaust. For more information,
click here. |
