Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall
Nació: 1929, en Klucarky, Checoslovaquia
Describe el proceso de la selección en Auschwitz [Entrevista: 1990]
We needed to show that we still had strength left, to, whether it was to work or to live another day. I recall some women, um, were beginning as their hair grows back, they were beginning to get gray hair, and they would go and take a little piece of coal from one of the pot-bellied stoves that was in a barrack. And they would use this coal to color their hair with so that they would look a, a little younger. I mean one grayed at the age of maybe eighteen or nineteen under those conditions. And they would run...we would run in front of whoever it was that was doing the selections to show that we could survive one other day. If one had a scar, a pimple, if one didn't run fast enough, if one didn't look right for whatever reason to the particular person that was doing the selection--they would stand there with a stick, to the right or to the left, as you ran by them. One never knew if they were in the good line or the bad line. One line would go to the gas chambers, the other line would go back to the camp and to the barracks to live another day.
We needed to show that we still had strength left, to, whether it was to work or to live another day. I recall some women, um, were beginning as their hair grows back, they were beginning to get gray hair, and they would go and take a little piece of coal from one of the pot-bellied stoves that was in a barrack. And they would use this coal to color their hair with so that they would look a, a little younger. I mean one grayed at the age of maybe eighteen or nineteen under those conditions. And they would run...we would run in front of whoever it was that was doing the selections to show that we could survive one other day. If one had a scar, a pimple, if one didn't run fast enough, if one didn't look right for whatever reason to the particular person that was doing the selection--they would stand there with a stick, to the right or to the left, as you ran by them. One never knew if they were in the good line or the bad line. One line would go to the gas chambers, the other line would go back to the camp and to the barracks to live another day.
El padre de Fritzie emigró a los Estados Unidos, pero cuando pudo traer a su familia, la guerra ya había empezado y la madre de Fritzie tenía miedo a los ataques a los barcos transatlánticos. Fritzie, su madre, y sus dos hermanos eran eventualmente mandados a Auschwitz. Su madre y hermanos murieron. Fritzie sobrevivió fingiendo ser mayor de su edad y así una trabajadora más fuerte. Durante una marcha de la muerte, Fritzie corrió hacia un bosque donde fue liberada.
— US Holocaust Memorial Museum - Collections
