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"'David, you must survive and let the world know what happened.'" | |||
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David (Dudi) Bergman Born 1931 Velikiye-Bychkov, Czechoslovakia 
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When we arrived, I had already passed out, virtually, I was...three out of the 150 there survived. They were all...the rest of them just lay dead. And what they did is, they picked me up from the...with the hands and somebody else with the legs and then they threw me in a stretcher...carr...getting ready to take me to the crematorium. That's where they took...that's where their objective was. And somehow, they...somebody who was carrying me noticed a hand moving, that I was still alive. So at a risk to his life, he took me into a barrack. It was actually like a shower room. And I was dazed at that time, virtually, I had no idea. I thought... And when I came to in the bathroom there, it was...I woke up, and I...I thought I was dead. It was like I was in another world. "What are these people doing here? Where am I?" And I thought, I...I...I was totally dazed. I couldn't figure out even where I am. And then somebody came over and told me what happened, explained to me that "You were just a few seconds away from being thrust into the crematorium, and they saw that you were still alive." They said, "You're the first youth that age who actually made it alive." And then they took me and they hid me, you know, secretly in their barracks. So I was not even supposed to have been there. And I became like, to them, like a hero. That here are these fathers who said, well, if I made it then maybe their children would have made it through. And they...since I didn't get any rations, because I was...The ration was there like a piece of bread--enough to keep them alive until they were actually being...were going to be taken to the crematorium. And each one would take a piece of bread they would got, break off a piece and make up a slice for me, so that I could survive. And they said, "David, you must survive and let the world know what happened." | ||
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Ruth Webber Born 1935 Ostrowiec, Poland 
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I don't know, as a child I kind of accepted things as they were happening, because there was nothing I could do about it but try to stay ahead, to survive. For some reason or other that was the most important thing, is to survive. That's all you heard everybody say: "Oh, we've got to survive and tell the world what is going on." I mean, this is, that was it. I mean, if only for that reason, just, because it was just unbelievable. And this idea that, that you go up in smoke became a rea...a reality, because people would come, a transport would come in with a lot of people, and they would move into a certain direction, and then they would disappear. They would never come out. So you realized that something is happening to them, and seeing the, the chimneys smoking continuously, especially after a transport--even at my age you kind of put two and two together and realize that yes, this is where you go, behind those, that fence that has the, uh, the blankets on it and the trees covering something that goes on behind there, that you go in and you don't come out anymore. Exactly what was happening I don't know, all I knew is that you come out the chimney. And as the, uh, crematoriums were working, it, it left such a sweet taste in your mouth that you didn't even feel like eating. During these times I can honestly say I, at times I wasn't even hungry because it was so sickening. | ||
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Tomasz (Toivi) Blatt Born 1927 Izbica, Poland 
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We heard a shot and the plan was disregard to march out to the front gate because probably the, the guard would know what's happened and we could go too close, very close to them ourselves. But I heard a shot, Sasha [Aleksandr Pechersky] jumping on the table, and he start to talk. "Listen," something in this sense, "Listen to me." I remember only one sentence from the whole talk--it was very short. "The time did come that we will take revenge. We killed practical all the Germans. Now, let's stood up and fight our way out." In this sense. But the sentence I remember exactly what he said, was, "If somebody of you will survive, you should remember to told...to tell the world the story of Sobibor." And that what I did never forget, and that what I am doing. | ||
| Copyright © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. | ||||
