Yehudit Taube

Name of Interviewee: Yehudit Taube Name of Interviewer: Shoshana Ben-Avraham Date: 5.6.96 Cassette Number: VD – 1237

Place Names Matolcs Hajdu-Hadhaz Debrecen Wien Budapest Prague Amsterdam Bruxelles Westerbork Utrecht Mecklenburg Ravensbrueck Tempelhof Luebeck Danzig Malmoe VichyInterviewer: Today is the 5th of June, 1996. I am Ben-Avraham Shoshana interviewing Miss Taube Yehudit. Your original family name? Yehudit Taube: Aufrichtig. By the way, the translation means "sincere". It's a German name. Many people in my area in Hungary had German names. Interviewer: The place of birth. Yehudit Taube: Matolcs, Hungary. Interviewer: Date of birth? Yehudit Taube: 13th of December, 1924. Interviewer: Could you tell us a little bit about your family? Yehudit Taube: I am one of seven children. My mother had seven children, raised to adulthood four and three died while small ones. Interviewer: What did your parents do for a living? Yehudit Taube: My father was an agronome. We lived on a big estate. It was wasn't ours because there was a law from the time on that Nicholas Horthy took over the government in Hungary right after the First World War, the Jews were taken away their land. A house that you lived in you were permitted to own, but land no. So my father rented the estate from a very well-known landowner who lived very, very little time in Hungary. He travelled around and he went to the Riviera and that was like the whole year round, it was like our land and my father paid for it. There were about fifteen families living in little houses. Some of them worked with horses, some of them worked with... Interviewer: Okay, you don't have to go into every detail, but your father worked in the fields himself as well? Yehudit Taube: No. Interviewer: He managed the farm? Yehudit Taube: He managed the farm. Interviewer: I see. Okay. Your family was a religious family? Yehudit Taube: Religious, yes. Interviewer: Orthodox religious or...? Yehudit Taube: Orthodox, orthodox. My father went twice a week in the evening - he spun two horses into a little coach and went to a "shiur", to the little town next to us, to the rav. Interviewer: I see. Did you live by that time... Yehudit Taube: And we kept Shabbat of course and all the "hagim". Interviewer: The place that you lived, the house that you owned - was it in a Jewish neighbourhood or was it in a mixed neighbourhood with gentiles? Yehudit Taube: It wasn't in a neighbourhood. It was by itself. It was an estate. Interviewer: It was a farmhouse, I mean a house on the estate. Yehudit Taube: It was a big, beautiful house with many rooms and then there were small houses around where the workers lived. Interviewer: I understand that the workers probably were gentiles? Yehudit Taube: All. Interviewer: All of them? Yehudit Taube: Yes. Interviewer: Could you tell us a little bit about the relationships between your parents and the people that worked for them? Could you describe a little bit about it? Yehudit Taube: It was the relationship as if it was the owner to the worker and everyday, in the evening, the foreman of every group of men came in, reported to my father what they did that day and then my father told them what is to be done tomorrow. A very interesting thing you might find - we found it very funny as children - that when our workman with his "kuchma" - you know, what they wore, like the Russians wear, the Hungarians wear, particularly in the winter - he would never hang up his hat or "kuchma" when it was from fur. He put it to his feet on the floor. It was a sign of respect. I found it very, when I was little, we found it just funny. Later on I thought it was terrible. But behind our backs we were "the Jew". I know it because when I grew up and I was bigger, we went to school, we were taken by a coach to school to this town... Interviewer: To Matolcs? Yehudit Taube: No. Interviewer: To which town? Yehudit Taube: Hadhaz (Hajdu-Hadhaz) I was born in Matolcs, that is the place where my mother came from. But we lived in an area in the centre of the country. Matolcs is more towards the east. Interviewer: Could you tell me what area do you live in? Yehudit Taube: I lived in the centre of the country. My birthplace is in the county of Szatmar and this was in the county of Hajdu. And all the little towns there had the first name of Hajdu, for example, Hajdu-Hadhaz so they just said for short where we went to grade school - Hadhaz. Interviewer: Did you attend a Jewish school or was it a mixed school? Yehudit Taube: I attended an ordinary day school and we had a young man, the brother-in-law of the "shochet" from the town, who came twice a week to us and instructed us in Jewish studies and to read Hebrew and to daven, to pray. Interviewer: While in the school, the ordinary school, if you can remember, what was the attitude of the other students and the teachers towards the Jewish students? Yehudit Taube: Where we lived, for the grade school, I went first there. There was what you call the little farm school, you know, like from the different farms, the owners of farms, they sent their children to that school and we went to that school. It was a one-room school and two rows were one class and two rows were again another class. And those which were getting the lesson, they were listening, and the rest we were either reading study books or listening or not listening or talking to each other very quietly. Interviewer: Yes, but you do not have to tell me those details. What I would like to ask is what was the attitudes of the children between themselves, the Jewish children and the gentile children, and what was the attitude of the teachers in the school? Yehudit Taube: The teachers were as neutral as possible in that school. Later on, when I was older, and I went to the school in Hadhaz, there I noticed the difference of the teachers who were quite anti-Semitic. Interviewer: How did it show? How did you know they were anti-Semitic? What was the expression of it? Yehudit Taube: "You particularly should be quiet." "You know, your people are known to be very loud." Interviewer: I see. Yehudit Taube: For example. The children among themselves also have shown sometime their prejudice or dislike against Jews. I was a very good scholar and they asked me often for my help or if they can look at my notebooks and copy it out. If it was mathematics I let them copy it out, but what I wrote, for example, something, had to write up a story - that I didn't give to anybody because then they would have known that somebody copied somebody. Two identical things couldn't exist. And my mother, G-d rest her soul, was a very wise lady, great lady. Very soft-spoken. And she always said to me, "Don't schlep those shiksas into my house." I said, "Mama, they like me very much. They are so nice to me." So she said something. "They like you because they need you and little goyim are little anti-Semites and when they grow it grows with them." That's what my mother told me. And it was her experience. Interviewer: Could you tell me, by the year '39, but before September when the war broke out, what are you doing, what is your family doing? Yehudit Taube: First of all, I have to preface that, that we left that estate. Interviewer: When? Yehudit Taube: When I was about, I would say, thirteen years old, something like that. The owner decided he wants to run it himself. And then my father asked advice from the rav, if he should look for another estate to rent. And the rav said, "You come and live in our town and you are very good in agronomy and there is a great possibility to export agricultural products and Austria is a big customer. You can do that." And my father could look at a field, I don't know how many hectare - you would say in Ivrit a dunam. I don't know how it translates into.... - he could look at a field and he could say - it was uncanny - almost to the hundred kilo how many wheat or corn or potatoes or cabbage or whatever it was growing, will yield. He could buy up the produce of a field.... Interviewer: Ahead, knowing how much it would... Yehudit Taube: Yes. And he exported and it went very well. Interviewer: So did you leave there the house on the estate? Yehudit Taube: Yes. Interviewer: So where did you go? Yehudit Taube: We bought a house. We had our own house in Hadhazs and we moved to Hadhaz and there I went to school. It was what you call now, what you call in English, no, in Hebrew you would call it...I was the age about to have a...."benayim", "hativat benayim". That's the school. Interviewer: The lower high school. Yehudit Taube: Lower high school. Until the end. Up to it was finished I went there. This is where I noticed more anti-Semitism. This is where the teachers told me that "Particularly you should be quiet." Interviewer: I see. Okay. And we are talking about the time period of the year '39 and I would like to ask you if you remember any talk in the house by your parents, between themselves, or even in school, if you heard what's going on in Germany, what's happening there? Yehudit Taube: At that time I was already going everyday with the student train from Hadhaz to Debrecen. This is a university city. There are many gymnasiums, high schools, and I went to high school there and I matriculated. And to my great surprise I was accepted to university. I matriculated very well and I was accepted to the university. Interviewer: What did you want to study? Yehudit Taube: Literature, history and geography - that I was interested in. Mainly literature. I loved that. Just for the pleasure of it - if I liked a poem I memorised it. I liked it. Interviewer: Did you begin your studies at the university? Yehudit Taube: Yes. I went as far as two semesters. Interviewer: It was in '39. Yehudit Taube: No, it was in '37, '36-'37, yes. And then they started to make stricter something that existed in Hungary since the end of the First World War - the "numerus clausus" and you know what that is. And though there were only six percent of Jews living in Hungary, but the university population was up to forty or forty-five percent Jews. And then they started to build down - this is a new word they used very often around this time - to build down. It was in the universities, it was also in businesses where Jews were employed. To build it down, meaning letting Jews go. Interviewer: I understand. So you couldn't continue your studies? Yehudit Taube: No. So the university decided that those students who were a year away from their doctorates should stay and up to the end of second year, meaning the fourth semester, should go and I was among them. And there were always demonstrations. There were times very often at the university - the universities were all the hotbed of anti-Semitism. Interviewer: Why? What was going there? Yehudit Taube: A lot of politics. And the Hungarian is an anti-Semite naturally. There is an expression in Hungary that a man will say about himself, "I am a correct anti-Semite." Meaning not enough of an anti-Semite to go and beat up somebody who is going by your street, but still enough to defend yourself because the Jew is an enemy. And that was contrary to everything that officially, in the teachings of the schools, I and other Jewish students were led to believe because we learned that there are three kinds of Hungarians: Protestants, Catholics and Jews. Interviewer: What are the differences between Protestants and Catholics in that sense? Yehudit Taube: In that sense nothing except that in my area there were more Protestants than Catholics because Debrecen is called the Protestant Rome. It had, I would say, eighty-five percent of the non-Jewish population were Protestants. That area was Protestant. There were other areas that were Catholic. Interviewer: And you were living in Debrecen by that time? Yehudit Taube: Yes. Interviewer: The whole family? Yehudit Taube: No, I didn't live there. I went every morning, seven o'clock I was sitting in the train already. There were the little trains, small trains, and they were coming and stopping at every station, picking up the students and continuing and we were quarter to eight already in Debrecen and then very, very much in a hurry we were to be at eight o'clock in class. Interviewer: Yes, okay. Again I would like to ask you the same question that I asked you before. Did you hear by that time of '38, '39, did you hear what's going on in Germany? Did you hear what is happening there to Jews? Yehudit Taube: We heard only from other Jews. Hearsay that we heard that they made in Vienna (Wien). Interviewer: The "Anschluss". You are talking about the "Anschluss". Yehudit Taube: No, not yet. But in Vienna there were anti-Semitic demonstrations and they made very prominent men, doctors, lawyers, to sweep the street. And we heard that there was a Professor Neumann who was attacked in his office and was thrown out from the window. Interviewer: Where? In Vienna? Yehudit Taube: In Vienna. So people said, "That's nonsense. It couldn't be, it couldn't be." And in Hungary there was always anti-Semitism and particularly we felt the anti-Semitism on Sundays because they went to drink and when they were drunk they were more boisterous and they hit a Jewish child or when a Hasidic Jew dressed in his Hasidic garb was going to the synagogue or coming from the hall of study, you know, "beit midrash", to learn, so when passed by, so just not to pass on the opportunity, pulled his "peyot" or he pulled his beard. But we had very friendly non-Jewish neighbours, too. Interviewer: Where you lived? Yehudit Taube: Yes. Interviewer: In Hadhaz. Yehudit Taube: Yes. My father had a reputation that Aufrichtig is a decent Jew. Interviewer: Those friends you are talking about, those friends the gentiles - did you have a very close friendship with them? Did you meet at each other's houses? Did you talk? Yehudit Taube: They sometimes asked me to come to their homes, so I looked around and I sat down. Not many, just sometime. Interviewer: Did they come over to your house? Yehudit Taube: Very often, to copy my notebooks. Interviewer: Okay. What do you remember, if you heard or had any idea at that time, of the 1st of September, '39? I mean when war broke out in Poland, did you hear about it? Did your family know about it? How did they respond, if at all? Yehudit Taube: I would like to point out here that when I had to leave university - you see, I didn't go into details because you didn't ask me. My father had bought a big amount of produce from farmers and then came a very unusual and very tragic frost in May and everything froze and everything died on its feet, the produce. Interviewer: You are talking about May, '39? Yehudit Taube: No, I am talking about May, '36. And nobody expected my father to pay for it. He only gave deposit on every one and my mother begged him, "Nobody is expecting you to pay." But he said, "I must keep my name clean. These people expected me to pay." And he paid them and he ruined himself. And afterwards he was very sorry that he did it and he was very, very upset. And he was going around in the house something awful, up and down, and I heard at night, he was working and my parents were talking. And one morning, it was summer, end of summer, and my sister and I went to the fruit garden, playing and chasing each other, one of my sisters. And I heard from the house like, something very high pitched like laughing or screaming, I couldn't really be sure what it was. So we run into the house and we saw that my father was sitting on the edge of his bed and the tallit bag was on the corner of the table and he had on one shoe and while he was bending down to tie up his other shoe he just fell back on the bed and he had a stroke and that we heard. What we thought was laughing, that was my mother screaming because she went into the room to tell something to my father and she saw him lying there and not conscious and then I just put on my coat on the top of my nightgown - the way I got up and we were just running out, it was summer and playing around - and I put a coat on my nightgown and I ran barefoot, I ran to the doctor and I said, "My father is unconscious and please come right away." And I remember he was still in his houseshoes, but he was dressed and he picked up his bag and he came with me and he just took my father's hand, probably to see his pulse, and he dropped it and the hand fell and then I went to the doctor and I shook him and I said, "Please! Give him an injection." I heard - I was fifteen years old - I heard that if you get an injection it makes you better. So he said, "There is nothing to inject anymore." And this is how my father died. And everything changed. And we are sure that it happened because of the upset that he did to himself. Interviewer: How did your life change by that? Yehudit Taube: Very much. Just very, very much. Up till then, when we lived on the estate, it was a charmed life, it was beautiful. We had horses, we had horse carriages, carriages with four horses, carriages with two horses. Interviewer: Okay, please do not go into the very detailed story about it because it is irrelevant. Yehudit Taube: Yes, so it was nice and it was comfortable and it was beautiful and I just want you to know that at the end of the harvest, my father packed up a coach full of produce, everything that grew - a big sack of flour and beans and corn and what-have-you - and brought it to the rav. That was his appreciation for the "shiurim". And he said - I'll never forget - "This is also being taken care." That what he said. He considered it his duty. And now we were very insecure. My mother had made a little store where she sold dry goods and she wasn't, I don't think she was a very experienced businesswoman because she lived a life of comfort till then. And it was very, very hard for us and I applied for a scholarship, for a "bursa", and I have gotten it so I could continue my studies. Interviewer: Where exactly? Yehudit Taube: In the gymnasium yet. At that time. And I started to tutor younger pupils and particularly in the summer, all those who failed the class, in order to be able to go back to school, they had to learn all the summer and I gave lessons. And also there were children I was teaching regularly. And I also did my own homework. So I worked very hard to be able to have the money to buy my ticket for the train to go to school everyday. That cost money and my mother couldn't spare it. Or if I needed a pair of stockings for myself. Interviewer: Yes, I understand, okay. Again I'm returning back to 1939 when the war broke out. Yehudit Taube: First of all, in 1937, I went to Budapest. I got a position in an office, an office worker. I speak fluent German and I speak French and I did correspondence in German and I was employed there until they started to let go the Jewish employees, one after the other. Interviewer: When was that? Yehudit Taube: That was in 1938 and I was discharged. Interviewer: And you came back to your house, your family? Yehudit Taube: No, no. I just wrote that I lost my job and there is no hiring new Jews, they didn't hire Jews. They replaced the Jews with non-Jews. Somebody said, "Go to the Jewish community centre. There is a room, there is a place where they advertise all kinds of possibilities to work, to emigrate." And I saw there all kinds of addresses and all kinds of possibilities written out, requested this and this in Holland, requested this and that in Belgium, in Australia, etc. I knew of a man who, for example, he was the father of one of my girlfriends, who was a lawyer and he learned how to make umbrellas. And when he finished, he had a brother in Australia and he was able to emigrate to Australia as an umbrella maker. And then I saw a notice that a mother's helper, children's nurse requested in Holland, so I applied in German - it was said, "Please write in German." And I wrote in German and I got a reply. Interviewer: It was a Jewish family I understand. Yehudit Taube: It was a Jewish family. They were from Prague. They lived in Amsterdam. And they got into correspondence with me and I said I am working in an office, I am a correspondent, but I will do my best to adjust to a new situation and I will do my best to be able to be worth to be employed by you. And these people, of course, were somehow in a reverse way the same situation as I was because before me they had a non-Jewish girl and a Jew couldn't employ a non-Jew. Interviewer: As a servant. Yehudit Taube: As a servant. So I corresponded with them. They paid my fares and they said that for that, at least I have to stay in that job for six months and I will get so and so much payments, plus I have a room and I will have my food. Interviewer: Did you decide to go there because you couldn't be employed in Hungary or did you decide to go there in order to help your parents basically, I mean your family? Yehudit Taube: My mother, my family. I went there because I had no other way to earn my livelihood. And if I would have gone to Hadhaz, to my mother, there was no possibility that I could have earned there any kind of living so I would have a burden to my mother and I didn't want to be a burden to my mother. As a matter of fact, I would like to add that when I was in Budapest in the office, every month I have sent help, money to my mother, though I didn't live at home, but I knew that my mother can use the help. And my youngest brother lived at home, my older brother lived somewhere else and was working and then, even when I decided to go to Holland, I went home to take leave, to say farewell to my mother and I remember when they took me to the train. And I remember that my mother was hoarse from crying and she could hardly talk to me because she lost her voice from constant crying that "what will a religious Jewish girl do alone in a strange country?" And I went to Holland. Interviewer: When was it? Do you remember? Yehudit Taube: It was in 1939, March 13th. This I remember exactly. 1939...it was March the 13th, but it '38 or '39...I think it was '38. Interviewer: So what is happening with you in Holland? Yehudit Taube: In Holland I was prepared to take care of the children, to take the children to school, to pick them up from school which I did, but then, they had a maid and they had a cook. And both of them were non-Jews. One was German, the other one was Dutch. And they had to send away first the one and then the other and then more and more, the lady started to pick up the children and she gave me the housework and I did housework that I didn't even know how to start, how to do it. I was able to help my mother at home. I could cook at home to help my mother for a Shabbat or so, but that was an entirely different kind of household. It was big, it was very luxurious and they had parquet floors and she told me that I should polish the parquet floors. I said, "Madam, I have never polished a floor." So she told me to go on my knee and put over the wax and then wait a little while and then clean it. Interviewer: Okay, but do not go into such small details because it's irrelevant to the Holocaust story. Yehudit Taube: But I just want to tell you that one day while I was on my knee, the lady of the house came to me and told me that my work isn't good enough and she will have to let me go. And I said - that was after about three or four months - so I said, "And where shall I go? And what will happen to me?" And then she went into the house and I heard very loud that she was saying to her husband what tremendous nerve that I ask her as if she was responsible for me, what will happen to me. Interviewer: And what did happen? Yehudit Taube: A few weeks beforehand I came to Holland and I had a hat and I was caught in a rain - very often it rains in Holland, very, very often, summer, winter. Suddenly a downpour and then five minutes later the sun is shining. Anyway, that hat was ruined and somebody recommended me a hatmaker to have it blocked. They were very, very kind and very friendly and I was just supposed to go to them. That afternoon was my day off and she told me she will give me one more day than the usual afternoon off to look for another position. So I went first of all to pick up my hat and she saw that - the wife who let me in. The husband was working in the house - that my eyes were swollen and red. What happened to me? So I told them that I lost my position, I lost my job. I said, "I know I wasn't very efficient, but I promised that I will do my best." So they looked at each other and they said, "Ay, ja, die Frau Weinberg". And I didn't know what they were talking about. So the man said, "Listen, I have a client and she said that they are looking for household help." Interviewer: Yes, and she sent you there. Yehudit Taube: And he gave me the address, the couple, and I went there. I got there. It was like a palace, a big house. Interviewer: Also Jewish? Yehudit Taube: Jewish. The name was Family Weinberg and he was a banker. And I was told to wait in the lobby. Interviewer: Yes, but please do not go into such some details because we will never get into... Yehudit Taube: Yes. I was told to wait and then a man came out, not a lady, a man, little fellow. Didn't look at me much. "Ja, what is your name? Ja. We look for somebody and you will start working next week. And we pay..." - he didn't ask me how much I want - "We pay forty guilder a month." It was tremendous....I got twenty-five guilder there from which a part of it she took off for my fares, so forty guilders was a lot of money. Interviewer: You got employed there. Yehudit Taube: I got employed there. They had two German employees, a cook and a maid, and also there was a cleaning woman came in three times a week. Interviewer: And what did she do? Yehudit Taube: She made... Interviewer: No, what did you do? Yehudit Taube: I dusted the rooms. I had a much easier work here than I where I was first. Interviewer: I understand. How long did you stay there? Yehudit Taube: I stayed there I think almost a year. Interviewer: Now, you are there during the year '39, '40 maybe, yes? Yehudit Taube: No, '39. Interviewer: '39. Yehudit Taube: And one day I go to the balcony to shake out the duster, the dusting cloth and I see airplanes and they were dropping bombs and it smoked and I run and I said, "Something terrible is on." So the lady of the house was very, very sweet. She lived awhile with her parents in Hungary - her father was also a banker. And she was very beautiful and very sweet. And she spoke Hungarian and she talked to me. She was very kind. But that was a very peculiar family - I don't want to go into details. Interviewer: Please do not because it's irrelevant. Yehudit Taube: It has absolutely no bearing on the story. But you see, the husband employed me and my job was to take out his clothes in the morning - he had a bedroom and... Interviewer: Yes, but spare those details. Yehudit Taube: And take out his clothes and prepare two or three ties to which suit, then he will choose that, and I took care of his clothes and his shoes and I sent it to the cleaners when it was necessary and then when he went to the office, I took the children to school and then I helped in the house. Interviewer: So what happened when you said that airplanes are dropping bombs? Yehudit Taube: So everybody came to the balcony and they said, "The war is on. These are the Germans." Interviewer: Yes, but beforehand, before the Germans are bombarding Amsterdam, you do not know that the war started in Poland? Yehudit Taube: Yes, we knew because we read it in the paper, but we read the paper which was printed by the Dutch and we knew the truth because the Dutch were still independent. But from that day on - they were bombarding Holland for four days. That was the shortest war you can imagine. And then they just occupied Holland, marched in. And we were all very scared and we were all very frightened and we didn't know what to do and the Germans soldiers started to walk in the streets, but they were very, very correct and very polite. Interviewer: By that time, are you still corresponding, do you have connections with you mother, with your brothers? Yehudit Taube: My family? Yes, yes. And I sent money every month to my mother. Interviewer: Okay. You were talking about the Germans that were polite. Yehudit Taube: Yes, they were very correct and very polite and for example, I had a girlfriend, also a Hungarian who lived in Vienna and she was older than I was and very much more sophisticated than I was and I learned a great deal from her. Interviewer: She was living in Amsterdam at that time? You are talking about a girl in Amsterdam? Yehudit Taube: In Amsterdam, who left Vienna and she had a school there in Vienna of gymnastics and she was also working in a household. And our day off, our afternoon off - every second Sunday we had off and one day during the week, every other week - and sometimes she said, "Let's come and look at the newspapers." There was a "Café American", there was a reading table, a big, long table with all the newspapers there and you could read all the papers what you can imagine in Europe. And we were sitting there. If a German came in, they just saluted and they asked if they can take the chair next to us, very politely. Until slowly the laws started to change. Number one, an announcement came. Everybody should come to the police headquarters and report who has four Jewish grandparents. So my friend Mimi and I, we went together. Interviewer: The family that you were working? Yehudit Taube: No, no. That was my friend from Vienna. Interviewer: Yes, but I am asking about the family that you worked for - did they also go? Yehudit Taube: They also went, but they didn't tell me when they went. Only one day, Mrs. Weinberg told me that her husband went to America - he was on a trip to Portugal and he heard that the last - till today I don't know what it is - it was called the "Yankee Clipper". Interviewer: Probably an American ship. Yehudit Taube: Or a ship or a plane, but he took that "Yankee Clipper", he was the last passenger to enter the "Yankee Clipper" - I don't know that that was - and he went to America and left the whole family alone. Later on I found out that it wasn't a very happy marriage, but there were three children and it was kept as family together. And they had a very, very active social life and constantly parties and card evenings and so on. Interviewer: Yes, yes, okay. It doesn't matter. But what is happening with you? Yehudit Taube: They lived so proud like there was no trouble in the world. Interviewer: Yes, okay. Did you go to report to the police headquarters? Yehudit Taube: Of course. And my friend Mimi says to me, "Maybe we shouldn't go." So I said, "But it is in my passport that I am Jewish because the Hungarian passports are like no other passports, or were - not anymore. Besides your height and your name and the colour of your eyes and what there were all personal data, there was also your religion in it, which I have never seen in any other passport. And there was written "Israelita". I said, "Mimi, you can't do it. You'll be found out." And everybody was afraid of doing an illegal thing because we thought it we would behave, nothing will happen to us. So there we were standing. Now I know, with twenty-twenty hindsight, if I wouldn't have reported nobody would have been the wiser. They wouldn't have come to "Oranian Ausoland 51", my address, and looked for me and nobody cared about anybody and I don't think that they would ever have found out that I am Jewish. But I knew that that was the rule that I had to report and I reported myself. Interviewer: And what happened after that? Yehudit Taube: After that lots of things happened. Mrs. Weinberg had to leave her beautiful palatial home because Jews were not permitted to live in that area. She had a cook who was Yugoslav and she kept on working for the family. She was really an Austrian, but a part of Austria which was occupied by Yugoslavia. She didn't speak any Slavic language. She spoke only German, but she could stay to work by the Weinbergs for a long time - I don't know for how long - because they let me go, they couldn't afford me anymore. Interviewer: When did they let you go? When was it? Yehudit Taube: In 1940. Interviewer: Summer, winter, spring? Yehudit Taube: It was autumn time. And then I looked for another job, but I always went to visit the Family Weinberg because I liked the children and Mrs. Weinberg liked me and she knew that I was not an uneducated peasant and we liked each other. (end of side). When we went to the headquarters to register, everybody had to have an identity card. Until then nobody had an identity card. And then when we went in and we said we had four Jewish grandparents, so they asked for our identity card and with a big stamp they put in a black big "J" for Jew. And everybody was given one or two, I don't remember, yellow stars in the shape of a Magen David written in it with the letters I am sure you have seen, looking like Jewish letter types, you know, like the "J" is bent, it looks almost like a "bet". Anyway, "Jude" for Jew. And that we are supposed to wear it on a very prominent part of our clothes when we go out into the street. So my friend says to me, she says, "You see? What did we need this for?" I said, "Look. You better do the correct thing so nothing can happen to you." That was the beginning of our trouble. When I left Mrs. Weinberg, the Family Weinberg, I started to look for another job. I went to work to a family. They come from Belgium, so Dutch family - the man was in steel and had business connections and he had a big business in Brussels and came to Holland and looked for help. And I started to work there. Interviewer: What was the name of the family? Yehudit Taube: Neukirk. Interviewer: They were Jewish? Yehudit Taube: Yes. There is a town called "Neukirk", so the family probably originated from that place. The translation of it means "New Church". And there were three children. It was a big, big house. And they had a non-Jewish Dutch cook and I did the housework and they also had a cleaning woman coming in I think once a week or twice, first twice and then once. Interviewer: That doesn't matter. How is your life affected by the fact that the Germans are already there? Yehudit Taube: Before I do this, answer your question, I would like to tell you that this lady, this Mrs. Neukirk, was the first person who ever told me, "Tell me." I spoke very fluent Dutch by then. It's very similar to German. And she says, "You have a cultured voice to speak. What did you do in Hungary?" So I told her, so she says," So why did you have to leave Hungary?" This is very, very important. How isolated one country was from the other because there was no television and the radios were all state-controlled, as well in Hungary and anywhere where Germans were the bosses. And she said to me, "What did you do that you had to leave Hungary?" I said, "I didn't do anything. I am a half-orphan. My mother can't support me. On the contrary, I help my mother even now. I had to do something just to live, just to eat." She says, "Look, I promise you I wouldn't tell to the police about it. What did you really do?" I felt so hurt. I was so insulted. And now I would like to come, because it's very important, to my friend Mimi who owned a gymnastic school in Vienna and her former teacher, also a gymnast, had a school like she had in Amsterdam - actually, through her help she came to Amsterdam, they were good friends. And she had the school and her husband was a newspaperman. They had two little girls and they lived like that. The sister of this Mrs. Neukirk went, I don't know how many times a week, it's not important, to do exercises there and Mimi took me to this family - the family's name is Rowna - and we went there sometime Sunday afternoons - she invited us for a cup of tea. And then she said to me, "Yehudit, you are not going to believe. One of my students spoke about you" - clients or students or whatever she called. In Hungarian it comes out different. - "talked about you." I said, "Who?" She says, "Mrs. Van den Birch." The wife of the dentist. I said, "I don't know the lady." She says, "No, you don't know her, but when I will tell you who she is, then you will know her because you have seen her already. She's the sister of Mrs. Neukirk." "Oh yes, I saw her sometime. Yes, I know. What did she want about me?" She asked me, on behalf of her sister, if she can tell any particulars about me, about my past, what did I do? Everybody at that time tried to save their money and send it out abroad - maybe I did some "valuta" - do you know that word? Maybe I did some "valuta schieberei". Sort of like, maybe I did something like that. What was it that I did something crooked that I had to leave Hungary. You see, this is very important. You said I should tell you something that is significant and characteristic of the times. Jews asked Jews "What did you do that you had to leave Hungary?" "You didn't do anything crooked?" And she didn't like me. You see, "like" is very important. The chemistry is very important. Mrs. Weinberg and I had good chemistry and this woman resented that I didn't behave like a maid. When I went on my day off I dressed in the things that I took from Budapest and I had good clothes yet from Budapest and by the Weinberg's I earned excellent wages. Besides which, I mentioned to you that they gave these tremendous parties and then by eleven o'clock I was entitled to say "Gute nacht die Herrschaften" and I went to sleep. But in the morning when I came downstairs in the big lobby on the table were lots of guilders for me. Interviewer: Like tips? Yehudit Taube: Tips. And it was a lot of money and I saved money and I sent more money home. And in this family, by the Neukirks, they invited sometimes people occasionally for a meal, but there was nothing at all. But I would like to point out to you - there was a cook, a Dutch girl. She said to me, "On your life I tell you, but don't you mention to anybody. My father is from Jewish descent." She didn't say how far. I said, "Is your father a Jew?" "Don't ask too many questions. I just told you that. I am already sorry I told you that." She was afraid of me. I said, "Don't worry, Lenji, I will not tell it to anybody." She said, "If you were real Dutch girl, you would have know that my family name is "Kopeling" and there are many Jews by that name." And before she became a cook in that family she said she was a student nurse. Why she stopped being a student nurse I do not know. She did not tell me. But one day she said something to me. She said, "Mrs. Neukirk knows I was a nurse, a student nurse and the girl they have invited today for dinner is a nurse. They wouldn't let me sit by their table." I said, "Why not?" And then I learned a new word. She said, "I am not their class." Until then I thought that I was good enough to be anybody's class. I am me and everybody's equal. And I had very much personal hurt in that house. Interviewer: How long did you work there? Yehudit Taube: Almost a year. Interviewer: And what happened later on? Yehudit Taube: I will tell you. One Sunday afternoon, it was my day off and I went to a concert in the famous Amsterdamische Concertgebuow - you heard the name, I am sure. It was a piano concert and the husband of a friend of mine was the artist. His name is Imre Ungar who was blind. And he won the Tschaikovsky competition - I don't know how many years beforehand. And she always took him to the stage and it made a tremendous impression. It pulled at people's heartstrings, taking him there and holding his hand while he took a bow and then led him to the piano and then he played. Interviewer: Yes. Please do not go into such details because it's not relevant to the story of the Holocaust. Yehudit Taube: You will hear how relevant it is. At that time it wasn't yet forbidden for Jews to go to a concert in the Concertgebuow. And a year later, Imre Ungar would not have played as a soloist a concert. So in the intermission I went into the artists' room and I said hello to them and then I came out and everybody was circulating. And suddenly, who do I come across than "Mevrau" (?) Neukirk - "Mevrau" is "Mrs." in Dutch. And I nodded and she was quite shocked and I don't even know if she answered me anything, but I remember how she stiffened. The concert continued and I went in back and when it was over I went home to my place where I lived in their house. I didn't see her that day. The next day she was very silent. Then she said to me, "Go into the sewing room." There was a big room, tremendous place, where there were only cupboards and clothes for ironing and putting away and mending, etc. and she wants to talk to me because there nobody would come in who has no business. And she said, "I don't know how I will get another maid, but you will have to go." I was absolutely stunned and I didn't answer. She says, "Did you hear me?" I said, "Yes." And then when I collected myself I said, "Mevrau, Madam" - in Dutch - "May I ask you?" That was maybe two or three days after the concert. "May I ask you why? Is my work not satisfactory?" "This is not the point. 'You irritate me'." (Dutch) which is in Dutch - "You irritate me." I said, "I am very sorry. I am sorry. I wasn't aware. If you will tell what was wrong, I might change my ways or..." I was very upset. I was so alone. I had nobody. Where do I go? Start again getting at the newspaper ads to find a new job? She says, "You embarrassed me the other day." Interviewer: By being in a concert. Yehudit Taube: "Because when you greeted me, the people asked who I was that you greeted me. They wanted to know if there is somebody new in town and I was very embarrassed. I am not used to meet my maids." Interviewer: Yes, I understand the point. Could you continue please. Yehudit Taube: So I started to look for a new job. Interviewer: Yes, and where did you go? Yehudit Taube: I think...it was always according to how you got your wages. I think I got my wages monthly so I had a month. Like if you have a weekly wage, you have a week's notice. Interviewer: Yes, yes, yes. I understand. Yehudit Taube: So that month I was looking, I was looking all over. And I don't want to bring you into details how many places I went to. Interviewer: No, no, please do not because it's irrelevant to the story of the Holocaust. Yehudit Taube: I'd like to tell you. I answered one advertisement and a lady alone received me and she needed a household help. And she had a nurse in the house. I don't know why she needed the nurse, but I think that she had some kind of a nerve complaint and that's why the nurse was there. Interviewer: Yes, did she accept you to work with her? Yehudit Taube: No. She invited me to come again, she wants to talk to me more. And I came again and then she said, "I can't make up my mind. Come again." And we talked. And I still don't know how we came to talk about that - somebody had received something or gotten something - I don't remember, but I said to her, "You know, Mrs. Krammers, I never had anything that I didn't work very hard for." I don't know why she used the expression about somebody we knew, both of us, and I don't want to go into details, that that fell into her lap. I said, "Nothing ever has fallen into my lap." And she looks at me and she says, "What is it you really would like?" Because she asked all my whole story and I told her everything that happened to me, how a university student became a housemaid. I said, "I would like to get out of that kind of work I am doing." She says, "You speak languages, but in Holland everybody speaks languages. You have no idea what linguists the Dutch are." And I found out that all small nations are good linguists and the big nations, the French and the English, are not because they don't have to learn anybody's language. The milkman speaks three or four languages in Holland. German, it's the cousin of Dutch and French, etc. Interviewer: Yes, so what happened? Yehudit Taube: So she says, "You are gifted in languages, but there is nothing you can do with that. What is it you like do to?" I said, "I would very much like to save up money that I don't have to work at least for six months, to take a course in cosmetics." And she looks at me and she says, "Yehudit, a cosmetic course has just fallen into your lap." She was the daughter of a Protestant clergyman and she was the widow of a Protestant clergyman. I said, "I didn't get it." She says, "I have two friends and they went to learn cosmetics and now they have their cosmetics school and you are going to learn from them and there is an address, I give it to you, and you're going to this 'pensionat'." It was a little, small, inexpensive place - the widow gave three, four people a 'pensionat' - and "You will learn." And I learned... Interviewer: And you worked at her place, at her house? Yehudit Taube: No. Not at all. Never. But she always invited me. Interviewer: Did she pay for your studies? Yehudit Taube: She did pay for my studies. Interviewer: What was her name? Yehudit Taube: Mevrau Ali Krammers. And I would like to really remember her name in gratitude. Interviewer: And she was a Protestant. Yehudit Taube: Yes. Interviewer: Did she know that you are Jewish? Yehudit Taube: Of course. Of course, she knew. She knew why I did the kind of work I had to do. Ali Krammers. And I would like to just inject that after the war, when I was arranging for my reparation from the Germans, I had to go for witnesses who were together with me in Ravensbrueck and I went to Amsterdam and the first address I went to was her address. And I brought her my little girl to show her. So I learned cosmetics very thoroughly and all my studies that I did in Latin came in very handy because they told me, "Now comes a very difficult part and it will take a long time to learn. For example, this here muscle is called 'musculus orbicularis oris'." I said, "I know."Orbicularis" means "round" and "oris" means "around the mouth"." She says, "How do you know?" I said, "I learned Latin in gymnasium." And this is called "musculus orbicularis" around your eyes, etc., etc. And it went really and I have good hands and tried first on my one teacher and then the other one and they said to each other in Dutch, and I said, "Ladies, please. You embarrass me with your...." They said, "Doesn't she have wonderful touch in her hands?" And I made my exam, first in practice and then in writing. I went to a commission of the Cosmeticians' Association where you had to pass an exam and I treated someone from the beginning and then there were questions in writing which I answered in Dutch and I passed. And then I became a cosmetician. First I worked for a cosmetics shop and then I started something on my own, a very little one. I had a room, I had a little apartment and there I received clients. By that time, everybody, all the Jews, wore yellow stars. In Hungary, the Jews did not wear yellow stars yet in 1941. One of my clients was the wife of the Hungarian consul, Frau Jäeger. This is a German name. Mr. Jäeger was a career diplomat, but he must have come from German or "schwabe" stock because part of Buda - you know, Budapest is two towns.... Interviewer: Yes, yes, yes. Please do no go into those details. Yehudit Taube: But you know that, and I think that he must have been from a "schwabe" descent. Mrs. Jäeger was a Belgian aristocrat and I told her, "You cannot come to me anymore because I am a Jew, but I have..." what you call an overnight case in English. It is called in Europe, it's a French word, but it's used in Hungarian and I think even in German. It's called "necessaire", means "necessary". A size of a case and I filled it up with cosmetic products. I said, "If you will permit me, I can treat you in the comfort of your home." She says, "That will be fine." And then I went to my customers whom I knew regularly and well and could trust, I went to their homes with my little "necessaire" and I gave treatments and I didn't wear a star. Interviewer: You didn't wear a star. Yehudit Taube: No, because this Mr. Jäeger went to the Gestapo headquarters and said, "Hungarian citizens who live in Hungary do not wear yellow stars today, so I will request the German authorities to allow the same courtesy to Hungarian citizens who are my responsibility here, to have the same privilege." So I could go around without a star on my suit. But in my identity card there was a big, big black "J", so if anybody would say, "Can I have your papers?" which later on, when it became very, very strict and they were chasing us like really, wild animals they were chasing the Jews, then at any time there was a street control and any German whose job it was could ask me for my identity card and this is where my trouble began. Interviewer: She gave you a permission, was it written or something, did she tell you to take off your yellow star? Yehudit Taube: I didn't take off my yellow star. I didn't put it on. No Hungarians put it on. All the Hungarian Jews living in Holland did not wear a yellow star thanks to Mr. Jäeger, the Amsterdam consul. The ambassador lived in Den Haag, that is the capital. But that was valid for whole Holland. Interviewer: So you continued to work as a cosmetician till when? Yehudit Taube: Till when. Just a moment. One day I had an appointment with Mrs. Jäeger and she says to me something very interesting happened...no, sorry, it was the other way around. I said that something very unpleasant happened to me in the street. I was walking and a policeman which we called in Holland the "Blackpolice" according to their uniform. The ordinary police uniform is navy blue, but there was a police special group - they have offered their services for the Germans and they got black uniforms so they were called the "Schwartze Politzei", the "Black Police". So they helped the Gestapo in their work. I am walking on the pavement with my little "necessaire" and there comes toward me one single policeman, very young, and puts his foot down on the pavement and slowly stops exactly in front of me and he says, "Can I have your identity card please?" You know, I was so surprised. By that time, I would like to tell you, I was already in contact with the Dutch underground. Interviewer: Now this is very important. How did you manage to get in contact with the Dutch underground? Yehudit Taube: I will tell you I had some friends. Interviewer: Dutch? Yehudit Taube: Dutch. Interviewer: Christians? Yehudit Taube: Two sisters, Christians, Catholic, and I told them, I met them, I befriended them. Their name was Dittenbrock. They were the daughters of Alfonse Dittenbrock who is no internationally great name, but in Holland he was the national composer. In every town there is a Dittenbrock Place or a Dittenbrock Street or a Dittenbrock Square and they were the daughters of this great man who wasn't alive anymore, neither was their mother, and they were up to their neck in the underground work. And I met them at that place of someone they knew well and I knew well and they knew that I am Jewish. So they said, "How come you don't wear a star?" I said, "For the time being, I am still not wearing a star. For how long I don't know." They said, "Do you have an identity card with a "J" in it?" I said, "Yes." She says, "You will have to get rid of it very, very soon." I said, "I don't know how." So the older one, Johanna, told me, "When you will need it, come to us." So on that particular day that I was going to Mrs. Jäeger for a treatment, this policeman stops in front of me and says to me, "Can I have your papers please?" And Hashem in Heaven gave me just a moment of, I don't know, help. I said - first of all I was a young girl and I was told by Johanna, "If you have any trouble, first of all play it up so that as if he is accosting you like a girl or wants to.." what is it called? Interviewer: Make a pass at you? Yehudit Taube: Make a pass at you. "Always play it that way." So it came to me. I said, "How dare you are accosting me and what identity card?" I said, "I am a foreign citizen and I am carrying my passport." I still have to smile when I remember how that moment of - how shall I put it? - lucidity came to me. He says, "But it says here you are 'Israelita'." I said, "What? Can't you read?" It was written in a very sloppy handwriting. I said, "I am a subject of His Majesty the Aga Khan. I am an 'Ismailita'." Where I took it from, G-d only knows. Hashem gave me, that moment, that idea. I said, "I am an 'Ismailita'. I am a subject of His Majesty the Aga Khan." He must have been very, very new to the job. He must have been very, very inexperienced yet because he wasn't he would have known that everybody, foreign or not, had to have an identity card and I said, "I have none," and it was in my handbag. And I couldn't have fobbed him off with that "Ismailita". What do they say in Yiddish, a "schtick". He apologised and saluted me and went on his way, and then I went to Mrs. Jäeger and I told her about it. I said, "Give me a glass of water because I am still shaking." "What happened?" So I told her. She says, "Oh, that's terrible. It can't go on like this. By the way, will you come and take tea with me tomorrow? My husband will be at home, but just for a short while." I said, "Thank you very much. I will be delighted to." And next day I come and tall Mr. Jäeger is there and he is sitting there and having a cup of tea with milk - they love to imitate the Dutch, they love the English. Everything is just like in England. And we drink tea and he says to me, "You know, Miss, something very interesting happened." And then he said something sarcastic which he really shouldn't have said as a good diplomat, but he knew that he was talking to a Jew. He says, "It seems that my country" - this is Hungary - "began to join the western democracies." I said, "How is that, sir?" He says, "We have just gotten a new badge, big boxes full of new passports, Hungarian passports and I didn't believe my eyes. The rubric religion is missing. It's not in it because it's not in a British passport and it's not in a French passport. That seems that my country wants to join the western democracies. So you see, Miss," he says to me. "If somebody, anybody will lose his or her passport and put that in the Amsterdam....(Dutch) that a passport has been lost and a reward is promised for the return of it, three subsequent days it has to be published in the newspaper, and if you come with the newspaper copies to the Hungarian Consulate and you have waited another day or two and nobody turned up with your passport, we have just no other way. We have to give you a new passport." I said, "Very, very interesting." And I did exactly that. I put in the announcement in the paper and I came with those three papers, three copies with the dates - the whole paper, not just cut out - and went to the consulate. Interviewer: And you received a new... Yehudit Taube: Passport. Mr. Jäeger was nowhere to be seen that particular day. And I, of course, I wouldn't have said for the life of me at the consulate that "I know the Jäegers personally". So he had to go sometime, to The Hague or whatever - it was none of my business - but he wasn't there, that's the main thing. And I told them my story and I said, "Look, I lost my passport and I am absolutely desperate and hopeless. I don't know what to do without my passport. After all," I said, "eventually I want to go back to Hungary." Nothing was further from my mind than going back to Hungary because I got letters. I still corresponded with my family, with my mother and we devised a language, we devised a special language... Interviewer: Excuse me, did you still manage to help them with money? Yehudit Taube: While I was a cosmetician yes. No. I remember, there is a Hungarian song which it says that "the street of those who are hiding", something like that. So I said, "Oh, by the way, I heard that the daughter of Tante Frieda," - that was my mother's name, Frieda, so they understood right away that I mean my mother - "that the younger daughter of Tante Frieda lives in the street of the 'Hidden Ones'," which meant that I am already not on my real address because after this case, I did have my Hungarian passport, but I was already afraid and I went to Johanna.... Interviewer: And your Hungarian new passport was on your real name? Yehudit Taube: In my real name, yes. Interviewer: But it was not written that you are Jewish? Yehudit Taube: No. And then I went to the Dittenbrocks and I told them that I am in trouble. So she said, "I'll get you in touch with somebody." They belonged to a cell, they knew only three people, no more, because they were always ready, if anybody is caught, they shouldn't be able to give away, you know, and if your cell is put in a screw, you don't know what you are going to do. Nobody knew the whole organization. Only the very, very, very few ones maybe on the top. And they got me in touch with someone who took me to a certain place. It looked like a printer's and they asked me for my own identity card and there was the identity card. It was about the size of, like a "teudat zehut" here, but there was a picture in it. And in the picture there was a stamp in it, you know. Half of the stamp was on the identity card and half was on my picture. So they took my picture and put it into a completely plain identity card and took the part from the stamp that wasn't there and they imitated it. Interviewer: So they copied, they made you a new identity card? Yehudit Taube: Yes, but it was just with ink, you know. And of course, at that time we didn't know that there are a lot of people who partly worked for the underground and partly worked for the Germans - there were a lot of double agents. So for awhile, maybe two months, three months I was very happy with my new passport. Interviewer: Did you still continue to work? Yehudit Taube: Continue to work, yes. Interviewer: As a cosmetician? Yehudit Taube: As a cosmetician. Interviewer: Did you take any part in the underground activities by that time? Yehudit Taube: Yes. Interviewer: What were they? Yehudit Taube: I don't look what they call "Jewish". There were many Jews, particularly the Jews from Holland, the majority, I think, of the Dutch Jews originate from Spain. They came there from the Inquisition and they look very dark and what they call "Jewish". And they had to hide and they went out to the peasants, to the farms and they lived there in hiding, in cellars, or in the attics, or the walls were very, very thick. You opened a cupboard and you didn't see anything and there was side - they made a thick cupboard with thick walls and there a person could stand for several hours, say, if the house was checked or raided. Interviewer: What were your activities? Yehudit Taube: My duties were to take false ration cards. Interviewer: False ration cards? Yehudit Taube: Real ration cards to the farms and give it to the Jews, not to the farmer. Because the farmers were not all that ideal. It was kind enough or good enough to take them initially. Everybody thought, "Why not? In a month the war is over." All the time, we thought that in a month the war will be over. Only this way one could stick it out. Because if you would have known from the beginning that it will hold on for how long did the war take? Six years? Nobody would have been able to keep normal. Interviewer: So when you came to distribute those ration cards, how did you tell the family, supposedly the people, the Jewish people are hiding there, so they are not know. So how did you represent yourself, how did you identify yourself when you came with the rations to the family that the Jewish family was hiding at? What did you say? Yehudit Taube: I came in. I went to the owner or his wife and I said, "I am bringing greetings" and I had to say a word, "from Dick", or "from..." Interviewer: In other words, a password. Yehudit Taube: Yes. "I bring a greeting from Rose." "Oh yes." "And I have regards for Hattie." They said, "I'll call her." And I gave them the cards and I made myself very, very quickly scarce. Interviewer: How often you did that? Yehudit Taube: I would say...I was arrested in '44. This happened in....I would say for two years I did it. Interviewer: And how frequently? Once a month? Yehudit Taube: Once a month, but I always went to, not to one place and not always to the same place. They didn't send always the same person, because Holland is a small country and if they see the same person coming very often... Interviewer: They would ask you questions? Yehudit Taube: Of course. As a matter of fact, for the same reason, there was one time that I didn't know where to go because where I was staying it became dangerous. That was always word of mouth in which area there will be what they called a raid. They called it in Dutch a "ratzia". The name is familiar to you? Interviewer: Yes, of course. Yehudit Taube: And if there will be a "ratzia" in that and that street, then for example, I would ask somebody in a different area of the town, "Can I sleep over one night?" By a friend you could always sleep over one night because they knew it was a question of life and death. At one time, I ran out of places and I went again to Johanna - Joanne you would say in English - Johanna. Thea was at home. Thea said, "Johanna will be able to help you. She has a rehearsal in Concertgebuow" - she was an alto, she was a concert singer, and Thea was a pianist. So she said, "Johanna will help you. I can't help you. I have an idea, but I can't talk to you about it." She sort of deferred to her, she was much older than she was. And when Johanna came home, she said, "Look, there is no other way. You have to stay here for awhile." I said, "Look...", I was staying in a 'pensionat' and I went out in the evening and when I came home about ten-thirty, eleven, something like that, the light was on in front of the door and I saw that I can't put my key in the keyhole because there was a round label stuck to the keyhole and on that was written, "Amsterdamse Statspolizei". You see, they were waiting if there was anybody else which was absolutely raided and everybody taken away. Then maybe somebody's not at home, so they would know if somebody by coincidence, not thinking, just automatically....Or say it would have been a dark night, you have no idea how many little, lucky coincidences you needed to be able to stay afloat and alive. If it was a dark night and I wouldn't have seen that paper.... Interviewer: Yes, yes, I understood. Yehudit Taube: They would have known right away that there is somebody and they would have been there waiting to catch someone else. And I saw that and my heart just dropped to my knee, I got so scared. And then I went to the Dittenbrocks. I said, "I have nothing with me, not even a toothbrush. I don't know what to do." So when Thea said, "Wait for Johanna, she's coming home soon, she has a concert." So when she came home, she told her I am there, so I told her what happened. She says, "First of all, you stay here tonight. And then we will see later on what we can do." They had an old maid in the house who served their parents yet. She was absolutely, implicitly trusted. I slept there the night and then next day Johanna said to me, "Do you have some way to get to your things in the house?" I said, "At night, yes." Because that was one house which that Jewish couple rented out as a "pensionat", rooms, and they gave meals, but in the back there was a garden and the garden had a fence, wood, and it was overrun, grown with ivys. There was one little door, but it had no door handle. It was just like you pushed it and it opened and it was a spring...(not clear) and it shut itself right away. And there was a little pathway, you know, like a "simta" what you call in Ivrit, and I could go in. So there was the house and there was the dining room and the dining room had a bay window to the garden. Interviewer: You could actually enter the house. Yehudit Taube: From the back. So she got me in touch with a young man who had a bicycle. (end of side). So I was told that his name is Dick and he will meet there and he will help me. I met a young man and he said, "What is your name?" and I told him my name. He says, "My name is Dick van Stockholm. Yes, where are we going?" So I told him and we went in. There was a little "simta". We pushed in that little door which had no door handle and we went into the garden and from the garden we pushed in that what they call in America the "French window", you know, like a bay window, we went into the house. And my room was on the second floor and it was dark because the first thing the Germans do, they cut off the electricity, so he had a light, "panass" - I get excited so I don't remember - a torch, of course. Interviewer: Fire torch? Yehudit Taube: No, a torch, torchlight, an electric torchlight, and we went in and I did just like this. There was, outside my room was a big cupboard, big cupboard, it was my cupboard, and there were hanging my clothes and on the bottom were my shoes. So there was not much time so I just did like this and I found, I went into the room and I got my big trunk, the big trunk which is outside. It was metal, it came with me from Hungary, and I just did like this - I took my clothes together, I threw it into the trunk and I took all my shoes - some came with pairs, some came without - in there and then I went into the room and I went into the cupboard and into the drawers and I took out whatever I could and all of a sudden we hear somebody coming up the steps whistling and the blood curdled in me - I think in him, too, but you couldn't tell. It was one of the other people. Interviewer: That lived there. Yehudit Taube: And we put everything into this big trunk, whatever I could. Interviewer: Who came in? Who was the man or woman that came in? Yehudit Taube: That man? He was one of the guests of the "pensionat". And he said, "Oh, they didn't catch you. Lucky. They didn't catch me either. I was invited out," etc. And he went to his room and I didn't bother about him anymore. I filled up my trunk and I took all the...what there were, underwear and things from the cupboards inside from the room and put it in and then we carried it down the stairs and put it on the back of the bicycle - he had a bicycle with a place for a package - and we put it there and he had some leather straps and tied it one and then we walked with the bicycle - he didn't sit on the bicycle, but just walked it and I held my hand on the trunk and he says, "Don't do that. Just come here next to me." I said, "What about the trunk?" He says, "It's safe. It's tied up well. I know how to do it." And I'll never forget - we are walking. We had to walk towards the Dittenbrocks. She said, "Pack whatever you can and come back here." A policeman came toward us, slowly, sort of walking, like a policeman doing his rounds. So he says, "Hang onto me." And then he says, "I hope our new apartment will be nicer than this one was." Sort of like the policeman should overhear like we are moving. And he just smiled and continued. He wasn't suspicious of us. And then we arrived at the Dittenbrocks and then we did the following: We distributed my clothes in the rooms of Johanna and Thea. My shoes, everything, went into their cupboards, Thea's and Johanna's. My toothbrush went into my handbag and whatever things I need everyday. And I slept in the bathtub - there were rooms, plenty of rooms in that house, but they didn't want that there should be a trace of me. And the maid, just quietly like a little mouse, "Yes, Miss" and helped me and so on, just like it was the most natural thing in the world. And I stayed there, I would say, a good six months. And there was no absolutely no trace of me because my mattress was put into the bathtub for the night and in the morning we took it out and we put it underneath the mattress of "Koja" - that was the name of the old maid. And I took the clothes that I wanted to wear to this cupboard or that cupboard. She did my wash. Her name was "Jakoba", so they called her, in Dutch, for short, "Koja". That's how I lived there for six months. Interviewer: And you still worked? Yehudit Taube: And I still worked. I worked until the very last day I was arrested. After awhile, Koja, the maid, is come and said that the neighbour lady...yes, they told the neighbours that I am a friend from Limberg. Limberg is the county next to the German border and there people speak without accent, because I speak Dutch fluently, but I have my accent in every language I speak. So they said I am from Limberg and I am a student and I failed my exams and now I have to redo them in Amsterdam and I am staying by them. That was the story and this neighbour took care of it, they told it to everybody in the street because they saw a new person. It was a very, very residential area and why I am there, there is a new person in the street. And the most people who were caught, who were hidden, many of them were, of course, viciously given away by those who were either double-agents or were simply pro-Nazis or anti-Jewish or whatever, but many, many people were caught just through idle gossip, "Did you see this woman or this man? He never lived here before. What is he doing here?" And then one said to the other and to the other and until it came to someone and in that way a lot of people unfortunately got deported. So I was a student. Fine. After awhile, Johanna came home and said, "It started." I said, "What started?" The neighbour said, another neighbour, "You know, I said hello to your friend from Limberg. She doesn't have a Limberg accent. But anyway, she doesn't look very dumb and how come that she can't make the exams?" So Johanna said, "She is soon going to make her exams." And she told me, "Let's go out and find a new place." So I knew a lady who was also my customer, Mevrau Weismuller, Mevrau Gertrude Weismuller, who was a Dutch lady, a wife of a banker and she was very, very active in the underground. And she was in and out of the Gestapo because she played a role like she would have deserved ten Oscars. And do you know that she saved hundreds and hundreds of Dutch children via Portugal to England, saved them. She saved many grounded airmen who fell from their parachutes. Interviewer: What was her name? Yehudit Taube: Mevrau, Mrs. Gertrude Weismuller. I really feel that her name should be mentioned, yes, with gratitude. I saw her also after the war. And she had a housekeeper. That housekeeper was more or less like a, sort of a "factotum" in the house - she knew everything. Whatever Mrs. Weismuller did she knew and she was up in everything. She was a working-class girl and she knew people in her own area, working-class people. She says, "You know, the only thing is to get you a room in a house somewhere where they don't expect to find Jews. I said, "I don't care where. I have to go because," I said, "I don't want to put the Dittenbrocks in trouble, they don't deserve it. They do important work and they are lovely people. And they are really running a risk by me being there." So she went to this woman. She also rented out rooms. She was the widow of a seaman. A simple Dutch woman, working-class woman, and I rented a room by her. Interviewer: Did this woman know that you are Jewish? Yehudit Taube: No, ma'am. And this housekeeper told me... Interviewer: Not to tell her. Yehudit Taube: "Don't you tell her anything. Nothing. You are a Hungarian lady and the trains are full of soldiers and military transports" - and it was true - "and you can't go back home, so it is for a temporary thing. The war will be over next month." We always kept on saying that. "And as soon as you can, you will go home. In the meantime you have to stay here." I didn't eat by her. I bought vegetables and I cooked it for myself. I also want you to know that by that time, the Jews were forbidden in Amsterdam and everywhere in Holland to go shopping before four o'clock in the afternoon and by that time the stores were almost empty. There were a few dried, wilted potatoes and such like. So I really shopped without my star and with my false identity cards, I shopped for, I would say, for a good eight to ten families. I shopped for them. Interviewer: For Jewish families? Yehudit Taube: Yes. That they should have some green vegetables and some fruits. Interviewer: So you went to different stores in order to buy for different people? Yehudit Taube: I had to split it up and then, around the corner, for whomever I bought, she'd wait for me. Interviewer: And who delivered the vegetables? Yehudit Taube: For whomever I bought, she was waiting for me around the corner and I gave it to her. Interviewer: I see. Yehudit Taube: And how they blessed me, "Oh, G-d bless you. I haven't eaten an apple, I haven't eaten a green..." - whatever it was, vegetable - "for I don't know how long." I really felt it was a "mitzva", a great "mitzva". Interviewer: How did you come to do it? Also by the underground? They knew who the people were and they allocated you to this job? Yehudit Taube: No, no. This was very private. This was like I did it first for my doctor, Dr. Alexander Muller and his wife Clari, who was a friend of mine, Clara. And then her sister, Clara's sister, Dr. Margaret Noyer - she was a widow, she was a doctor. Then Clari said to her sister, to Margaret and then I did it for her, and then Margaret said it to somebody, "Oh, I had such a wonderful...'kishuim'," or whatever, things that Jews couldn't get to, but it was really by word of mouth. But the underground had to know about it because the underground said to me, "We give you a false identity card, this is a favour. And you have to do a favour back for us." And now I want to tell you something very important. How did the underground get all those empty identity cards? The whole office where you can get your identity cards and ration cards was up to the last man all, hundred percent, anti-German and worked in the underground actively. And when they left the office in the evening, they left the window just ever so little bit not closed. So from the outside, in the middle of the night, late, rather in the small hours than in the early night, they just pushed in the window and they walked into the office and grabbed everything, all the identity cards plus the ration cards which were worth their weight in gold, more than that. And then for a favour to the personnel, before they left, they sort of like pulled the window shut and for good measure, so that the personnel should be covered, broke a few windows. Interviewer: Like robbers. Yehudit Taube: Like robbers. That's how we got our false identity cards - not false, but the identity cards and the ration cards. So the way to falsify with that stamp, you know, half on the picture and half on the identity card, it was soon enough in about three months, not more, four months maybe, given away. Somebody talked to the Germans and the Germans knew already. Say I take this, say this is the identity card, and they just licked their finger and they did like this and it came, the ink, on their finger and they knew right away it was a false identity card. So they had to think of something else. Then I got a new name. I became Miss De Jong. Interviewer: What kind of a name is that? Yehudit Taube: It's a very ordinary Dutch name. Two words. De Jong. And that Miss De Jong, she belonged to the underground, and many others. They very conveniently lost their identity cards. They could get a new one. And then I was Miss De Jong. But to change the picture. It went for awhile again until that was given away. And then came the most genius, the most wonderful solution and we thought that we had it, we thought that we licked the Germans. The identity card was very, rather thick. It was a cardboard kind of thing. And it was a kind of print on it, you know, like a pattern. And we had in the underground - I don't know him personally. G-d bless him if he is alive. - had wonderful hands and took your own Jewish identity card and here was the "J", that part. You see, in that corner. So he could cut the paper very carefully with an extremely sharp knife - it was more like a scalpel - and peeled away the upper layer of the identity card until the cutting line, and put there the same part from an unused, stolen identity card from the office, what we had many of, and glued it there. And he managed to match the pattern on the print and it was beautiful. It was absolutely fantastic for again, for three, four months, I don't exactly remember and I don't want to mention any particular time because I don't remember. Interviewer: Who was the man that did it? Do you know his name? Yehudit Taube: No, no. You only knew your contact. I knew the Dittenbrocks on the one end and I knew this Dick van Stockholm. I also knew one more man - I forgot his name. Interviewer: Okay, maybe later. So what happened next? Yehudit Taube: His wife was a very dear friend of mine. Anyway, so you knew very few people. Interviewer: You were telling about distributing the vegetables, buying and distributing the vegetables. Okay. So what happened later on? Yehudit Taube: So I just want to tell you how this identity card was given away. The double agent who gave us away, who knew about it, later on gave me also away. Interviewer: You know him personally? You know his name? Yehudit Taube: Her name. Interviewer: Ah, that's her name. Yehudit Taube: Yes. Her name was Antonia Avers. Interviewer: And she used to work with the underground. And did you know her as a person? Yehudit Taube: I knew her. I knew her. And the Germans, she told them about that cut and it was absolutely invisible unless you held it up against a light and then you could see the line where it was joined together. This Antonia Avers befriended me. She lived in a house and on the door it was written "Tsucker". She pronounced it "Zucker". And she had many Jewish friends and she had a very good system. I didn't find out about it until it was too late. Interviewer: What was the system? Yehudit Taube: She befriended Jewish families with big properties and at the time....I didn't particularly mention it, but it was every second, third day we always went and grabbed the paper because there were always new rules. It was called in German "Verordnung" and there was always some kind of a new "Verordnung" for Jews - "verboten", forbidden to a sit on a bench in the park or to go to the movie house or to go to a theatre or to go to a cafe, etc., etc. It was slowly, slowly, as ever I mentioned to you how very politely they started, then it got always nastier and worse and worse. Interviewer: What was her system, Antonia's system? Yehudit Taube: So Jews cannot own property, so she was very, very sympathetic and very commiserating and she was very friendly with these Jewish families and she helped them to find a hiding place and she helped with all kinds of things you can think of. She said, "But if you would by sort of, "proforma" sell it to me, then it's not yours, then they can't take it from you." "Ah, what a wonderful idea." And they did that. Either they made it like a sale or she was given a present or maybe that couldn't be done always, it wasn't always possible, a present, so there was always some kind of money, a sum involved, which wasn't paid at all. And then the people were sort of pacified and relaxed that their property is in good hands. And then a week, two, three after it was all completed and they were hidden somewhere, I don't know where, very peculiarly the Germans found these people and deported them. And the house she lived in... Interviewer: Was a Jewish family's house. Yehudit Taube: One lady, a Mrs. Tsucker. I am not sure, I can't tell you if there was a Mr. Tsucker, too. I think so. And once I went into her house and I see a beautiful chair with a light, with all kinds of cosmetic products and cosmetic machinery and the hair remover, electric and ordinary and wax, so I said to her, "Tony, I didn't know that we were colleagues. You never told me that you are a cosmetician." She says, "Not me. Poor Mrs. Tsucker was a cosmetician." A beautiful home. And she also let her house be sold to Tony Avers and then she was deported. And I found out about that in Ravensbrueck. Interviewer: Yes, but this Tony Avers, she didn't know that you are Jewish, did she? Yehudit Taube: Yes she did. So one day she said to me would I come to her for tea, she has fresh butter. I said, "Tony, I don't even know how butter looks anymore." She says, "Come. I know you don't eat everything by me, but I will give you bread and butter and tea." And I came and I was there quite a while and she said she will give me a new passport with this slant thing cut away. I said, "Tony, I have it. It's not good anymore." She says, "You're right. I should have known." She was the one who gave it away. When I was about to leave she says, "Just a minute, I want to tell you something. Just a moment. But I have to make a telephone call for my help not to come tomorrow." So she picked up the receiver....no, that to come tomorrow because she picked up the receiver, she dialed the number and she said, "Ja." In Dutch is "yes", almost like in German. "Ja" and hung up. And then she told me something, chatty thing, not important and then I was leaving. And we were instructed in the underground time and again and again and again how to walk in the street. If you see on a corner - Holland is very flat. Amsterdam is very, very flat. She lived in a street that was maybe just flattest street I've ever seen - Schubertstraat. And it was a very, very long and a very flat street and on the corner there was a pharmacy. I'm coming out from Tony who lives quite, quite on the other end of Schubert Street, far away from that corner, from that pharmacy, and we were told strictly "You walk slowly. You never run. And when you see something suspicious - for example, a street control, like when you see a man standing on a street or two men standing on a street, maybe there is a truck not far from them where they put the people they arrest - you slow down. And you go into the very first house as soon as you caught sight of that man asking..... Interviewer: Yes, yes, okay. Yehudit Taube: The identity cards. "And go into the very, very first house and ask for..." I just give you a name, Mrs. Smith. "Mevrau Young is living here? Or Mevrau Foss is living here?" "No." "Oh, I'm sorry. Excuse me." And I come down the steps and I walk back where I came from because there was no street control and I go my way on another way and don't pass that point where it is dangerous. So I come out from Tony Avers' house and then I see a man in a beige raincoat standing there. I slow down, even more down and I see black (?) people pass. There was Schubertstraat and there was, perpendicular, Beethovenstraat. It's a very busy street and a lot of people are passing by. And I saw that he didn't stop anybody. So I'll never forget, I said to myself, "Yehudissel...completely meshugge. You think the whole world is after you to catch you. You think the whole world is chasing you. Who are you? You are just a simple little Jewish girl. They don't want anything from you. The man is probably waiting for somebody or has a date or waiting for somebody." And I pass. He says, "Excuse me. Can I have your identity card?" And I play my usual game. "How dare you to accost me? Who are you?" He says, "Just give me your identity card." I said, "Who are you?" He says, "My name is Van den Berg." "Van den Berg" can be Jewish or not Jewish in Holland. There are certain names that are very Jewish....not important. Interviewer: Doesn't matter right now. Yes, and what happened? Yehudit Taube: And then He says, "Show me your identity card." I said, "Show me your identity card. Who are you? Who are you to dare to talk to me like that?" And then he turned over the lapel of his raincoat and there was the SS insignia. But he wore it underneath his lapel. I said, "What do you want from me? Where are you taking me?" He says, "I'm going to take you to the Gestapo headquarters. (Dutch). I said, "But I have a very important appointment." And I had my "necessaire" with me. I said, "There is a vacant shop. I know there is a telephone. They let people use their telephone. Please let me make a telephone call." I wanted to call somebody to let them know that I'd been caught. He says, "Very interesting. That bakery shop has a back exit and you would so very nicely disappear." He says, "I will give you one..." and he told me in German and he was a Dutch man, "that your teeth will fall out." And he just grabbed me and just very strongly grabbed my shoulder and my arm here and took me, not very far away was....(Dutch). It was formerly a high school and they converted it into their headquarters and he took me there. He took me there. Tony Avers did her monthly delivery. I enter. What is the date today? Interviewer: 5th of June. Yehudit Taube: The 5th of June. It was exactly the day when the Allied Forces landed in France. Today is an anniversary for me. It is very interesting, a coincidence that I am giving testimony today. How many years ago it was? It was in 1944. This is fifty-two years ago. Interviewer: And this is the day that you were arrested? Yehudit Taube: I was arrested then, yes. June the 5th. And as I enter the room I hear a radio, a big radio, as tall as about the third or fourth of that shelf here - you know, those big radios used to be about that tall and it was blaring out (German). "Allied troops have landed in north France this morning." Very early in the morning. So I said to myself, "Oh, my G-d." I didn't know that the war will hold on for another year. It was in 1944, June the 5th. And I find it very remarkable that today is June the 5th. And I said, "Oh, here. The whole world is going to freed tomorrow or the day after and here I'm going to die." And they sat me down to a desk and they trained on me lights much stronger than that, into my face and "Where do you live?" And started to hit me. And I wore a blue suit with a yellow angora sweater, I remember, and there was a Dutch, one of the Dutch counties emblem was there because it was very nice. Made of ceramics, a brooch. So he says then, "How dare you wearing that Dutch emblem" and he tore it out with a piece of my sweater. He says, "Where do you live?" I said, "At the moment I don't live anywhere." I was living by that old seaman's widow who once said to me, "I hate the Germans, but the Jews aren't my friends either." But she said it in such a slang that if you would understand Dutch you would just hold your sides. And I didn't bat an eyelid. She said, "What do you say to that?" She wanted to hear me. I said, "Well, you know, everybody has their tastes." What shall I say? There was another guest living in that house and she was what they call in Dutch a "helderzinder", a "hellseer". You know what that means? Interviewer: No. Yehudit Taube: A seer. Somebody who had a sixth sense. And they are called a "seer". And "hell" is clear, right? Interviewer: Clairvoyant? Yehudit Taube: Clairvoyant, that's the word. So she was a "helderzinder". I don't know how much was true of it or how much she bluffed. I never dared, I never wanted her to see my hands or tell me, but she said to the woman, whose name again escapes me, she said there is something very peculiar about me. She feels something not regular. Interviewer: About yourself? Yehudit Taube: About myself. Interviewer: Let's go back. You are in the Gestapo and then...? Yehudit Taube: I just want you to know. One day she sat in the evening - you were supposed to sit, when it was cold, you would sit by the fireplace. Just like the English have a fireplace, the Dutch must have a fireplace and they have one. And there we were sitting because it was cold in my room and she was sitting not far from me and she grabs my hand. She says, "I have to see your hand." I said, "What do you want from me?" I said, "I'm not interested. I don't believe in these things." She says, "A lot of people pay me money to look into their hands." And then she looks into my hand and she says, "Interesting. You know, it's very interesting. You are in a fog." I said, "What do you mean?" She says, "Nobody sees you. Nobody can see you." I said, "What do you mean? You can see me." She says, "Yes, but those who want to see you can't see you." And she gave me to understand that she knew that I was illegal, but she never said a word to this woman. And when I was arrested all my things were in the house of that woman, except my siddur I gave to Mrs. Weismuller, whose housekeeper got me that place to rent, and my family pictures - my mother's picture and my sisters' and my brothers' pictures. Interviewer: They were also at...? Yehudit Taube: No, they were still in Hungary. Because after awhile, you see, we planned that maybe they would be able to follow me. But the war came and nobody could go anywhere and all transport was taken up with the German troop movements so we were separated. And just very rarely they got a letter from me and I never wrote a sender because except for the Dittenbrocks, came sometime a letter because they knew that address and my family knew that through them I might be able to be found. And I wrote them a letter in a certain way that.... Interviewer: Yes, you mentioned that already. Yehudit Taube: That they are righteous gentiles. So I was arrested. I was taken to a prison in the street called "Waiterungshans" and once a day they took us for a walk around and I saw this one and that one I knew from sight, so we nodded at each other, "You, too?" And when there were enough Jews, then we were taken to Westerbork - the name I am sure you have heard. The last letter is a "k", Westerbork. Interviewer: Yes, yes. I know. Yehudit Taube: And I was taken to Westerbork. That was sort of like a collection lager. There I was a month. And they didn't know what to do with me, the Germans, because that time all the Hungarians were put on a transport. Mr. Jäeger's protests didn't help anymore because Eichmann arrived in Hungary and the Jews started wearing the yellow star and they were deported wholesale and I would like to inject here that in no country, Eichmann said, did he get so much voluntary help from the civilian population than in Hungary. So I tell you that with no pride at all in the country of my birth, which is anyway an accident, an accident of birth. So I by that time was supposed to wear my star, but I didn't and the Hungarians were all put on a transport. Interviewer: From Westerbork you are talking? Yehudit Taube: When I arrived in Westerbork I heard they are getting the Hungarians before. Interviewer: Yes, a minute ago you were talking about the Jews who were taken from Hungary, but you are in Westerbork, right? Yehudit Taube: Yes, but when Mr. Jäeger was not able to say that the Jews in Hungary are free from wearing the star, because they did wear the star as soon as Eichmann arrived in Hungary, the Jews in Holland, the Hungarian Jews in Holland had to start wearing the star. Interviewer: Yes, yes, I got that. Yehudit Taube: You follow me now? They took me to Westerbork, but by that time all the Hungarians were put on a transport and went to Auschwitz and sent to... Interviewer: Okay, we know that part of history. Yehudit Taube: And there were in Westerbork two Hungarians. Interviewer: Besides yourself? Yehudit Taube: No. With me. A girl called Gerde Schwartz and myself. What are they going to do with me? And the leadership, the SS leaders of the Westerbork camp were very embarrassed, how come they slipped up on these two girls, that they didn't catch them in time. The office work and administration was done in Westerbork by Jews, but the watchmen were SS or Black Police, the Dutch Black Police. But it wasn't at all, at all bad there. It was sort of like very easy-going. It was in the middle of Holland. They couldn't beat anybody because if they would be screaming, the Dutch would be coming and probably protest or something. Because slowly, slowly, first there were only the very honoured Dutchmen who were very much up against the Germans who were in the underground and the rest were just visitors, minding their own business, until it reached their own doorstep when their bicycles were taken away first from the Jews and then from the non-Jews. You can't part the Dutchman from his bicycle. They go everywhere. Even Queen Wilhelmina in those days used to go everyday with one of her ladies-in-waiting for a little bicycle ride. Everybody rides the bicycle in Holland. You had to deliver your bicycles because the Germans needed it and then the rations got smaller and the Germans who were occupying, those soldiers and all those office personnel who were all "Bunde Deutsche Maidel" - you know, these German girls who were trained in the Hitler Youth and they belonged to a "bunde", an association of German girls. They serviced the German soldiers, the German SS men and it was a great honour for them, and they worked in the offices. Interviewer: Yes, but why are you telling this because those details we do know. It's probably written in every book about Holland. Why are you telling this part of the story? I want your stories. What happened with you in Westerbork. Yehudit Taube: In Westerbork. I am telling you. I was called into the office - of course I digressed. I am sorry, I apologise. I was called into the office and I was told that Gerde Schwartz and I are going to be on a transport, but they couldn't get a whole train for us because we were only two girls, so this is why I am coming to my story. They found out, the Germans, that there are about six, eight, I don't know how many, these German girls from "Bunde Deustche Maidel". Female and male personnel who are going on a vacation home to Germany. You understand. These people, but the way, when they went on a home leave, they went into the department stores with their paper marks which was worth nothing, and they bought up anything in sight and they came out on every finger a big package. Those big trees of bananas and everything, and they took to Germany, so they robbed Holland. They also bombed Rotterdam - that I don't have to tell you because that you know. So tea, coffee, sugar was very scarce and these Germans bought up whatever they could before they went on home leave. And they gave us, Gerde Schwartze and me, to a group of girls, "Bunde Deutsche Maidel", and three men were there among them, that they should take us to Germany. Interviewer: Where to? Yehudit Taube: To Ravensbrueck and hand us over to the Gestapo in Ravensbrueck. But how do we get there. These officials who went on vacation, they went from Den Haag, from Hague, so we had to meet them in Hague. Then one Black Policeman came for the two of us, picked us up and we had to pack a bag and everybody who was there, who wasn't put on a transport, they had all bad consciences that they were staying there and we are going on a transport and anybody who went on a transport was given anything, warm sweaters and a lot of medication and clothing, whatever you might need, to take with. And this Black Policeman took us on a train and we were going to Hague and we had to go through Utrecht. Utrecht is the biggest "tsomet" - how do you say it in...? Interviewer: Junction. Yehudit Taube: Junction, railway junction in whole Holland. At least it was at that time. I don't know, probably still is. Gerde Schwartz didn't speak one word of Hungarian. She was born from Hungarian parents in Frankfurt am Main and she carried a Hungarian passport so we were together. She spoke to me Dutch and German, both and we were sitting next to each other and the policeman sat opposite from us, but we were not put into a chain or handcuffs or anything because it wouldn't have looked right, in an ordinary train amongst civilians. And the train was approaching Utrecht and Gerde lived in Utrecht. And I noticed that Gerde started to nod to people and people started to nod to her and greet her. These were all people she knew. We went in a Pullman car and these people went there and they were standing up in a line and then all of a sudden Gerde felt faint and she said to the policeman, "Oh, I feel so sick." And our luggage was in the net above the head of the policeman. She says, " I have some....(not clear). It would make me feel much better. I am so faint. Could you please get it for me?" So the man stands up - "I don't want to stand up" - turns his back to us and looks in Gerde's luggage. She says, "Not there, not there, not there. The other one, other one and not on the top. On the bottom, on the very, very bottom. Go deeper and deeper, and as she says, "Deeper and deeper," I look what the policeman is doing and then I look how Gerde is feeling - there is no Gerde. The train started to slow down, like that. The people were standing up in a line and Gerde ducked through and right away they closed. And she went to the train door and as the train was slowing down, she jumped off - she was a tiny, little nothing, light little girl - and she jumped down and she probably ran through the station and nobody was the wiser and once she was in Utrecht she knew where to go, that was her home town. She grew up there. Her parents came there when she was very little, she told me. And the policeman turns back and he says, "Where is she?" I say, "Oh, where is she? I don't know." And the police ran after her, but by that time Gerde was off the train because the train went for a very, very long time, slowing down. Couldn't right away stop because another train was in front of it, I found out. But the people who were standing there said to me, in Dutch, "Smere, smere." Like you would say in Ivrit, "Tistacli". "Go." Interviewer: "Tistalci". Yehudit Taube: "Tistalci". Interviewer: That you disappear as well? Yehudit Taube: Yes. And I got so upset... (end of side). Interviewer: You were on the way to Den Haag and what is happening now? Yehudit Taube: First of all, I did myself a tremendous favour. I feel G-d watched over me and he did me a great favour because they said, "Go, go! Run, run!" and I stand up from my seat, the strength went out of me knew and I sat down and I was completely, completely numb. I was absolutely without any strength or any ability to do anything. And the policeman disappeared because he ran after Gerde. Interviewer: So you were left alone by yourself on the train? Yehudit Taube: I was alone, yes, and the people who helped her, because they were all her hometown people and let her out and then closed up the line, the row so that nobody should know where she left out and they told me to do the same thing. In the meantime, the policeman was already at the stationmaster, in his office, the stationmaster's office, and told him to control everybody because somebody escaped, a prisoner escaped. So I, if I would have not been so weak and would have run after her, I would have been arrested. And then I definitely would have been shot because that was something, it's called punishment case. If you try to escape after being arrested, you are, as they said in German, "eine straf-fall", punishment case. First of all, I would have come on in handcuffs into Ravensbrueck, not just like normally, and right away I would have been put into the bunker and I wouldn't have lived, I know it. Interviewer: Okay, but let's not speculate about it. What actually happened later on? Yehudit Taube: So I was sitting there. The policeman came back and everybody asked, "Nu, what happened? What happened?" "Nobody knows. She ran away." And he said to me, "You take care. I am glad you didn't do what she did." I didn't answer him anything. So we arrived in Den Haag and there we met the group of German men and mainly women who were working in German Gestapo offices and they were going on home leave and they were supposed to take both of us, but this way it was only me alone. They took me to Ravensbrueck, so they made a detour and they took me to Ravensbrueck. And I was sitting in a private train and travelling with them. We got out from the train, we walked a long way, a straight way. It was very beautiful, well-tended grass fields and beautiful villas on both sides. These were the villas where the SS personnel and their families lived. And in the centre, just facing me, was a big gate, an iron gate with electric wire on top of it and written above, "Arbeit Macht Frei", as usual. And they opened up and they took into the office which was right on the gate and she handed, two of the women, and they handed me over to an SS woman, woman in SS uniform, and that was it. Interviewer: Under which identity are you there, are you accepted there? You are Jewish..? Yehudit Taube: I am Jewish... Interviewer: Or you are supposedly Dutch? Yehudit Taube: No. I was a Jewess. I just would like to point out that when I arrived in Den Haag and these people met me, the first thing was one of the men, a big, fat fellow said to me, with a red face, in German, "Wenn sie wollen ein Stich machen Ich werde Ihnen in Arsch schiessen", that means I want to try something like the other girl did, (German), that means I will shoot you in your behind. I said, "I have no intention to run away." And I didn't speak to him anymore. We travelled all the way to Ravensbrueck, they handed me over, and the SS woman said, "Name, date and place of birth, etc.?" Interviewer: Did you give your real data? Yehudit Taube: I gave my data. I had no papers on me. I got rid of everything that I had that could have incriminated me or anybody else who gave it to me. I arrived with nothing. Except I had a little ring on my left ring finger which belonged to my grandmother and they said, "Take it off." I said, "But this is a memory. This is something from my grandmother." "I'll give you a receipt for it." A great big deal it helped. And they said, "Ja, name, etc., etc." and then she said a word, "Ja," somebody's asking her, "Which rubrick am I going to be put?" So she said, "Juedisch-Politisch", and when I heard the "politisch", I got absolutely frozen, I got frightened, because I did very, very much illegal work in Holland, but for the life of me I didn't want them to know that because then I am a punishment case. I said, "Please, Madam Supervisor. I have nothing to do with politics. I am a young girl. I was born Jewish. That's all." She says, (German) "That's enough. It's official." And I got two triangles, a yellow one and a red one and put over each other it made the Magen David, and a strip of white cloth with a number on it. And I look at the number and it says 43420 and I added it up quickly in my mind and four and three is seven and four is eleven and two is thirteen. Zero is zero. I was born on the 13th. I left Hungary on March the 13th. I matriculated with distinction on June the 13th. Everything that I could remember that was good happened to me on the 13th. Interviewer: So it became an omen, a good omen for you. Yehudit Taube: So it became a good omen for me. I said, "Maybe I'll get out of here alive." And they put me into a barrack. As we were walking towards the barrack I saw a big number of women marching in. Some of them had hair, some of them didn't, with a grey and blue striped prison uniform and they looked so hopeless in their faces and so, without, like they had no soul left. They looked like mummies, terrible, and I said, "Am I going to look like that? It couldn't be. It couldn't be that I am will be looking like that." And then they took me to my barrack and then the SS woman stayed with me and she said, "Zum der kleidungskammer". "To the clothing room." And they took away my beautiful navy suit and my lovely yellow angora pullover and my whole big, huge luggage full of good clothes and they gave me that grey and blue striped, like a long shirt it was. Interviewer: Gown. Yehudit Taube: Yes. And a jacket from the same material, with no lining, but two huge pockets in which we were never permitted to put our hands, even if it was very, very cold. I couldn't understand why, but they said if you are found in the lager, that is camp, with your hands in your pocket, you are going to be shot. And I never for a long time could understand the reason for that. Later on I was told by a lady who was a professor at a university in Prague and she said, "Don't put your hand in your pocket because they are afraid that we are carrying a gun. They are crazy. Where would we get hold of a gun?" But they were so.... Interviewer: Strict? Yehudit Taube: Not strict. They were, what is it called? Imagine that everybody is trying to attack them. You know, it was like a... Interviewer: Paranoia. Yehudit Taube: Paranoia. Yes. Interviewer: So what's happening with you in Ravensbrueck after you were put in the barrack? Do you remember which barrack was it? Yehudit Taube: Yes. Barrack No. 23. Interviewer: Do you remember who was the kapo or the "Stubenaelteste" there? Yehudit Taube: I don't remember her full name. I know her first name was Lily and she was a blonde, Polish Christian woman who was a great anti-Semite. She was in the concentration camp because she was in the Polish underground. She was a great patriot and she said, "I hate the Germans and I hate Hitler, but I also hate the Jews." Interviewer: And most of the women who were in the barracks were Jewish women or political prisoners like yourself? Yehudit Taube: Mostly political prisoners. There I found many non-Jewish Dutch women, many, many, many non-Jewish French resistance women. There was one young woman who was sort of a secretary to General DeGaulle. Interviewer: Do you remember her name? Yehudit Taube: Yes. Interviewer: Could you mention that? Yehudit Taube: Only I remember the name that she told us, not the real name. Interviewer: Yes, what was it? Yehudit Taube: It's on my triangle scarf. Interviewer: Okay, so you will show us later on. Yehudit Taube: Her name was Minoush or Moosh or something like that. That was her code name and that's how she signed herself. Her real name she didn't sign because she wouldn't dare, because her whole family would have been persecuted in France. And everybody had a story and everybody held their own tongue and their own peace and we didn't say more than we had to. And those who arrived freshly were told by people of good intention, "Watch your tongue. Watch what you say" because the place is full of "agents provacateurs", double agents, even if originally they might not have been that, they did it because they got extra rations. And if you say something, it will be enlarged and... Interviewer: Used against you. Yehudit Taube: And reported. There were people there, many, from parents of mixed marriages, like a Jew married a non-Jewess or vice versa. They were the most dangerous and the most pitiful, I would say, pitiful of all people because they didn't know where they belonged. When they talked to us, to the Jewish girls they said "us", meaning Jews, but when they talked to the German girls, the shiksas there and said "us", they meant the Germans and each time they meant it, you see. And there is no liar better than the one who is able to lie to himself or to herself. And they really believed at that very moment when they were saying it, whatever they were saying, they believed in it. And they thought that....(not clear) and you had to beware for that. Interviewer: You said also that they were the most dangerous of all? Yehudit Taube: They were, yes. Interviewer: Why? Yehudit Taube: Because they could somehow get into the confidences of Jews, Jewish women and get things out of them. Let them talk and then they reported on them. So one day this one disappeared and another day another one disappeared and they went into the bunker and the bunker consisted of rooms of the size of a person, not bigger. There a person could only stand. Her face was up to the grill - there was a grill on the door - that's where the air came in and that's where she could hold her nose to breathe. And very rarely people came out alive or normal. If we have seen someone who has been in the bunker, you could see the signs of it, you could see it. There were some people whom they kept in larger bunkers and they came out alive because they were kept alive on purpose for maybe eventual chance of exchanging them for German valuable prisoners. There was, for example, a lady called Mrs. Glueck who was married to a Mr. Glueck, a Jew, and she was the sister of the mayor of New York....an Italian name. Fiora or Forelli or something was the name. Interviewer: So she was a Christian. Yehudit Taube: She was an Italian Christian... Interviewer: And she was married to a Jew and how did she get there because she was living in... Yehudit Taube: Because her husband held a position somewhere in Europe and he was deported and she was deported. He was a very famous mayor of New York. Maybe later on the name will come to me. Something like a flower. Interviewer: Tell me something please. To your best knowledge, did she or prisoners like herself receive any better condition while staying in this camp? Food rations or whatever? Yehudit Taube: I think so. Because they were kept in good condition with a purpose. Interviewer: You think so or you know so for sure? Yehudit Taube: I know for sure. Interviewer: What did they receive? What kind of a....? Yehudit Taube: We didn't speak to them, we couldn't speak to them. When we marched by they waved to us and so we did like this, but we didn't dare to wave back. Interviewer: Do you know somebody else of that importance that was in there? Yehudit Taube: I was told that Odette was there. Interviewer: Who? Yehudit Taube: Odette Churchill. Interviewer: Odette Churchill. Yehudit Taube: Odette Churchill, she was in Ravensbrueck. You know who she was. She was there. I have never seen her, but I was told that she's there. Interviewer: At the very same time you were there or after that? You were told that she is there at the very same time you were there? Yehudit Taube: Yes. But I have never spoken to her because nobody could speak to anybody in the bunker. You cannot even go close by. Interviewer: Sure. Okay. So what is happening to you? What is your everyday life? Yehudit Taube: I was waiting that I should be given some kind of a work to do because if you are...first of all, you get up in the morning and the order of the day was, you had "zaehlappell", counting "appell". That was around fourish in the morning. And then afterwards, we disbanded and then the women stood up according to the work. Who worked in the "Schneiderei" - they repaired and made the uniforms for the soldiers - "Schneiderei", and then some of them went to the "Wascherei"... Interviewer: Which is laundry. Yehudit Taube: And wherever they were working and into the kitchen and so on. I personally have never stood near anybody close by who worked in the kitchen. I don't know when they were counted. They were counted, but I have not seen them that they would be standing "appell". And after that, there was the biggest group was "Siemens" group, those who worked for "Siemens", and then came the "Arbeit Kapos", the work kapos, who were chasing, catching people for work, like for example, stuffing the big mattresses with straw. That was very dangerous work because the straw made scratches on your arms, on your skin and if there was a scratch, after awhile - we were completely without vitamins because nothing of what we ate contained vitamins and if you scratched yourself, right away it was full of pus. Interviewer: Got contaminated. Yehudit Taube: Contaminated and we had no resistance to fight infection so we got infected. And by the next selection, if your skin wasn't absolutely clean, it was full of pus or scratches or wounds, you were sent to gas chambers, you were dead. As good as, at that very moment. And anybody who had a swollen ankle which was the sign of a heart disease - they put their fingers into your ankle and if it remained a hole, it meant there is water. You also were sent away. And there were people who were selected for cleaning the latrines, so that was called....that was a black humour, that was the only humour that existed there. That was called the "eau de cologne 4711" group. And so I didn't know what will happen with me. And about after two days or three days, I really, I'm not sure, maybe a week. Time had an entirely different concept there than normally. A girl came. I was lying on my bunk. It was a Sunday afternoon when it was an official break. In the morning of course we were working even on a Sunday, but in the afternoon we had an hour or two rest, and I was lying on my straw sack in my bunker and the wretch had a flaming red-headed young woman came there and I recognized her right away. She was an actress, a Jewish actress from Amsterdam. Her name was Sylvia Gross, but she didn't write her name like the Gross's, but with Grohs, and I've seen her many times because she could only play for Jews and I could only go to a theatre which was permitted to Jews. And she was what you call in German, a cabaret, you know, that was called in German "Kleine kunstbuehne", "buehne" is a stage, "small art stage". A cabaret singer, performer. And she looks at my foot and she says, "Oh my goodness. You wear nail polish. When did I last see nail polish on feet?" She was there a long time already. And she worked for "Siemens" and she was a fantastic personality. She was really what you call a "somebody". You could right away see she could have influence on people and she could make friends and she could make people be on her side. And she managed to be very close with a "Colonel Fuehrer", that means the leader of the whole group of several hundred, over a thousand women who worked for "Siemens". Interviewer: She was friends with him? Yehudit Taube: She was very good friends with her. She was... Interviewer: Pardon. I don't understand. She was friends with whom? Yehudit Taube: With the "Colonel Fuehrer" of "Siemens" workers. Interviewer: It's another German woman? Yehudit Taube: No, I will explain to you. She was a prisoner like us. She came originally from "Chessloikie", worked in Wien, had a very high position in a bank - I think she was assistant manager. Interviewer: Do you know her name? Yehudit Taube: Yes. Her name is also there on my little cloth. Her name was Annie Babuk and I wish I could ever have seen her or have a chance to have shaken her hand or hugged her and thanked her. She was a very matter-of-fact person and a very...like a real bank manager. And she was a woman of very high moral standards. Interviewer: She was Czech? Yehudit Taube: Czech. She was the one... Interviewer: Non-Jewish. Yehudit Taube: Non-Jewish. She decided who will work by "Siemens" and who will be refused to work by "Siemens" because the Germans left it to her. How she got to win their confidence, she impressed them very much with her ability, with her efficiency so that they knew they could rely on her judgement. So she didn't take certain kind of prisoners into "Siemens" because I didn't mention to you that when I got my two triangles, my Magen David, which was of course very highly regarded by her. She had many Jewish friends before she was arrested and she was up to her neck in underground illegal work with a lot of Jewish intellectuals in Wien. How did you identify each other, what these people were who were together with you in the concentration camp? Somebody who was a Jew, you know, they got a red and yellow two triangles. Interviewer: All the Jews got red and yellow triangles? Yehudit Taube: Yes, ma'am. Yes. Interviewer: Not complete yellow? Yehudit Taube: No, no, no. It was all "Juedische-Politische", that's how they called that. Then there were women who wore a black and yellow triangle - also it was put on the form of a Magen David. These were Aryan women, mostly writers or actresses or artists who were married to Jews. And I was, for example, my category was called "yiddische politische", they were called "juden Hore" - don't have to translate that. Then there were people who wore just a red triangle because they were non-Jews and they were political, they were working against Hitler. And in the triangle there was a letter - a "P" for a Polish, a "T" for a Czech because in German you spell it that way, and a Danish had a "D", and a Dutch had an "H", Holland and I had one Norwegian girl. She was a very, very strange case and she was under a death sentence all the time while she was there. I think she was liberated. She was in one special block where all these people who were called "Nacht und neibel", "night and fog", meaning they disappeared without a trace and they were never permitted to keep in touch with their families. Neither were the Jews, but the Jews were Jews. But any non-Jew could write once in two months a letter - a card, not a letter, a card. And could receive a card. The Czech girls and German girls could even receive packages. Nobody else could. Not until the end, just a few, couple of weeks maybe, or three weeks before the liberation did we find out that there were thousands and thousands of Red Cross packages sent to us which we never received, but the SS ate up. Only the broken biscuits which were all almost like flour, just broken to nothing - they used it sometimes to cook with milk powder which was also in the packages, but they cooked a "disa", sort of a porridge cooked for us which was delicious. There was the flavour of "vanil" in it - we didn't remember when we last ate that. Interviewer: This is what I wanted to asked you and since you're mentioning it, could you describe your daily diet there? What did you eat every meal? Yehudit Taube: Every meal, every day was the same, except maybe five times during the ten months that I was there that there was something else to eat. It was rutabaga. It was this root, you know, a big.....the cows are fed with it, you know, and it was full of, like it was as hard as wood, you could hardly chew it. It was almost uncookable and together with potatoes and, you know, they took the sacks of potatoes and shook into the big kettles that they cooked and sometimes pieces of the sand was also in the food. It was so full of sand that we didn't dare to chew our food because it was full of sand, so we learned, we taught ourselves to eat without our teeth touching each other because it was unbearable and we didn't want to spit it out because it was precious food. It was not good. Interviewer: That was during...? Yehudit Taube: That was the midday, the main meal. In the morning we had a slice of bread and every second day we had a piece of margarine just that big and once a week or sometimes, rarely, twice a week, instead of the margarine we had jam. That was in the morning. Interviewer: And coffee or tea or...? Yehudit Taube: Yes. It was "ersatz" coffee in a mug and we had a bowl like a dog is being fed from, you know, exactly the same. It's all designed there on my little triangle. And in the evening we had the same what we had for the morning. And coffee and a piece of bread and a piece of margarine. We had been devising all kinds of ways how to get something extra. There was a girl who wasn't a Hungarian, she was Russian, but she lived in Hungary and she spoke Hungarian. And she asked me to carry that big, like, basket with two handles - it looked for a basket for, you know, linen. And that contained the extra slice of bread for all the "Siemens" workers who made their daily "pensung" it was called. Interviewer: What is that? Yehudit Taube: The "quantum" that you were supposed to produce. So then I want to come back to my triangles. There were people who were professional criminals. Either they murdered or they belonged to a gang - they were professional criminals. And they did their time and they were all pure Aryan Germans. Now, if somebody is released from prison, they have to be under the supervision of a social worker, right? But they had no personnel. It was what they called a "total war". Everybody was busy with the war and they had no personnel for... Interviewer: For guarding those prisoners. Yehudit Taube: For guarding. They were just probation officers. You know? Interviewer: Yes, I understand. Yehudit Taube: To report to. People that these former prisoners once a month had to say, "I am..." There was no time for it. So they were put into the concentration camps. Absolutely they owed nothing to the German state anymore because they'd served their time. They were bigshots, they were high-ups, pure Aryan murderers and they had a green triangle. Interviewer: They worked with you and "Siemens"? They worked beside you all in "Siemens". Yehudit Taube: No. Never. This is what I want to tell you, but there is only one more triangle that I want to tell you. This is the black triangle. If you were a foreigner, your nationality was on it, a "P" or a "T" or whatever. These were prostitutes and there were also among them many, many wonderful people who refused to work in the factories where they produced ammunition. So they said...the official name of a prostitute was "antisozial", anti-social. So they were also anti-social because they didn't want to work for Germany. So imagine a woman who was noble, fine, a noble soul, a good person, a social democrat or whatever she was, and she didn't want to work in a factory, so she was sent to a concentration camp and got a black triangle. That was an extra, like a stamp on her. Interviewer: That she's a prostitute. Marking her as a prostitute. Yehudit Taube: Yes. Now, Annie Babuk wasn't a social worker, she wasn't a benefactor. She was keen on keeping her job and hurting as few people by it as possible. She was a very straightforward, wonderful, noble woman, G-d bless her if she's alive. She said, "In my corner, in my corner, there will be Jews, there will be political prisoners and maybe black and yellow triangles" - the women who are married to Jews - "and finished." Plus the political prisoners. All the red triangles with the letters in them from the different resistance groups from the different countries in Europe were accepted at "Siemans" because she said she wants to keep "Siemens" clean in more than one way. This Cilia Grohs said, "I can put in a good word for you by Annie Babuk and you can get next week they are looking for new workers. So you come and I will point you out to her. Nobody will notice because I know how to speak to Annie and she will know on which row you are and where you are and you will be chosen to work for "Siemens"." And that was a big, big luck, in the circumstances. But she said, "Watch it. "Mach keine sticklach"." Don't make any sort of sneaky business, don't steal a piece of bread or whatever because then you are out from "Siemens". "Annie Babuk will not stand for any crooked business." And we were lining up every morning after the counting "appell" for work "appell" and I was lucky enough to stand in the "Siemens" group and then we marched out. And we had a good, I would say, almost an hour's march. A beautiful landsscape in Mecklenburg, next to a beautiful lake we were passing by and we saw a little village that was Ravensbrueck, with a tower of the church - it looked like a picture postcard. And we were walking there and we ad to constantly, while marching, sing because when you sing you don't think. Interviewer: What do you think? Yehudit Taube: They were afraid of that. Interviewer: No, no. What do you sing actually? You are all from different cultures. Yehudit Taube: Oh, they were German military marches that they taught us and the German girls knew it anyway so they were teaching us and said, "Say after me," and we had to. That's what we did everyday until the Germans had a very bright thought. They altogether they are a very, very clever people, you know. The whole "Siemens" factory was built up in Ravensbrueck because it came originally from the town of Metz in Alsace-Lorraine. It is in Lorraine. And it was bombed out. So you think they gave up? Interviewer: It was bombarded? Yehudit Taube: It was bombarded, bombed out. So they picked up all the pieces, all the parts - the buildings were all fallen... Interviewer: And they moved it to... Yehudit Taube: And put it on trains and delivered it in the middle of a women's concentration camp because they knew that the Allied forces are not going to, they knew every camp where...where the concentration camps were except maybe a few not so big ones, but the Allied forces had very good intelligence and they knew where concentration camps were and they did not bombard us until about the last four month of the war, when they discovered we are working there war effort. We are working there for the war effort. Then they started to bombard us. They bombarded... Interviewer: Okay, but let's go.... Yehudit Taube: Just one sentence. When there were bombardments we had to remain at our benches working and the civil workers, the foremen, the Germans, they were white as chalk in their faces, they were scared and they went into the air raid shelter and they left us there with just the minimum of say, one or two SS, either men or women, and they kept on hitting us then. "You, because of you, we have to expose ourselves to danger." But we were in danger that didn't matter. And do you know? We have never been afraid. I have never been afraid. And I don't think anybody around me was afraid. We said, "To die from a bombardment during wartime, it is normal, it is for everybody. But being held here against our wishes, that was not for everybody." So it was for us almost like a "zechut", a special privilege to die from a bombardment like everybody else. That was our state of mind. So now tell me what you wanted to ask me. You were saying....so we marched to work everyday and then the Germans discovered that we are losing a lot of precious time. In the morning we marched out, midday we marched back, we ate... Interviewer: For the lunch? Yehudit Taube: For the lunch. And after half an hour, not more, we marched again back and in the night we marched again back to what they called "Gross Ravensbrueck", the main Ravensbrueck. And then they had a very bright idea and we blessed the idea because "Siemens" was built up on a sandhill and the whole area was yellow sand and I don't know if I have mentioned earlier that the streets of the camp, what they called in German the "lagerstrasse", was all contained coal dust, black and it was of course rolled down and so on, but when it was very, very dry weather it became dust, so when we came home we saw from far away the black clouds coming towards us like...(not clear) and we marched to it and after we marched through it and we were sweated up from work, we looked at each other and we saw Negroes, we were all black from that coal dust. If it was raining we were up to our midcalves or the whole feet and our shoes, everything was full of the coal dust mixed up with the water, a coal mud. It was a tremendous change and a tremendous... Interviewer: They decided to move you into the "Siemens" factory? Yehudit Taube: They decided they...(not clear) up little barracks, much smaller ones and because of that much more pleasant - it wasn't overcrowded - barracks in around the factory. It was a little gate with a little wire fence, but they just opened it and we walked in, marched in and marched out. Nobody went alone anywhere. We didn't go alone to the toilet. If you said you have to go, then an SS woman came with you. When we felt, for example, that we had a louse, we had lice and the lice collected on warm places on your body, under your armpits and where the belt was on that dress, and sometime we asked to go to the toilet, we said we needed to go to the toilet for natural reasons, but we didn't. We took off our dress and right away turned it inside out and shook it into the water, into the toilet. It wasn't a flushing toilet, just in case you might think so. It was a wooden little bench with a hole in it and there was underneath and it was full of worms and dirt and from time to time they poured some disinfectant there because it smelled up the whole place and the Germans themselves didn't like the smell so because of them from time to time they put in carbol or some other strong-smelling disinfectants. But we shook our dresses into there with all the lice so that we should get rid of the lice because if you have lice you scratch and if you scratch you get pus and then you are, as I told you before, by the next selection you're there. Interviewer: Tell me please, to your best estimation, how many women were there in the camp in that factory of "Siemens", more or less? Yehudit Taube: Over a thousand. Interviewer: Over a thousand. Yehudit Taube: Over a thousand. Interviewer: And you have your own kitchen or they still brought the food from Ravensbrueck, from the big camp? Yehudit Taube: This was the best of all. We had our own kitchen. How astute of you to ask. My compliments. The cooks down in Great Ravensbrueck were all Polacks, as we called them, the "Polachkes". And they stole most of the food and we got really just garbage. I told you it was sand and pieces of sack, etc. Interviewer: Yes, please do not repeat yourself. Yehudit Taube: But the cooks in the "Siemenslager" were selected by Annie Babuk and they were all Czech girls, lovely Czech girls and pleasant and smiling and not nasty like the Polish girls were. And they have cooked every single last item that they were given to cook for us and we had much better food there than the people had in Great Ravensbrueck. Interviewer: In what sense did you have it much better? Was it better quality or quantity? Yehudit Taube: It was better quality, it was cleaner, and we saw more potatoes and less rutabaga. And sometime, rarely, here and there we saw a piece of meat. Interviewer: You also mentioned before, a few minutes ago, you mentioned that there were some occasions where you got different food. Was it holidays, German holidays? Yehudit Taube: Yes. It was on Christmas Day, it was Hitler's birthday or what-have-you, and then we got like kind of a goulash or something - potatoes with some pieces of, I don't know, some canned meat of something like that. And when there was plenty of broken biscuits together... Interviewer: Yes, this you mentioned already. Yehudit Taube: They cooked it up also, that was also a meal. And as I told you, Christmas Day. Interviewer: I wanted also to ask you something else. In this camp, in this "Siemenslager", did you have any kind or any facilities like medical clinic or a medical barrack or something or any medical assistance? Yehudit Taube: None whatsoever. If anybody had a toothache, had to go down on Gross Ravensbrueck and I had the bad luck once to have cut my thumb. Please look at it. You can even see today, fifty years later - you see that here? Interviewer: Yes, yes I do. Yehudit Taube: It was completely sliced down and here the flesh was open and this finger was almost like hanging, yes, and it was bleeding and it started to fester. Interviewer: And what did you do? Yehudit Taube: And I had to go to Gross Ravensbrueck to the sickbay, what they called in German the "Kranken Revier". So I showed to the female medical officer there my finger, my thumb. Interviewer: And what did she do? Yehudit Taube: So she says, "Abnehmens." Interviewer: What is that? Yehudit Taube: To take off that finger, to take off that thumb. And we were standing there in several lines at the wall, about four deep, all girls standing there, and when I heard that and I didn't say anything because she was called away at that minute, so I went in - that row reminded me of the row of people in the train where Gerde Schwartze ran away and I said, "Girls, let me go." And I went into the first and the second and the third until the last row, to the wall, and on the wall there was a little door. And I just pushed it through and I ran out. The doctor had no time because she was called away for something at that very minute and her attention wasn't focussed on me and she didn't have time to mark down my number, who I am. If I have no number, I am nothing, I am nobody. So I disappeared. I ran out and I waited for the rest of the girls to come out and then we marched back. And then I said to one of the Czech girls who regularly received packages and there was somebody among us, worked also for "Siemens", and she was a medical student or she finished, she had her doctorate I don't remember, but she had a medical background. She said to me, "Try to get a carrot and try to get four lumps of sugar and eat it and keep it as much in water as you can when you wash yourself." And we weren't chased so terribly in the morning when we were going to work and of course I got a bandage and I changed the bandage, I washed it out myself in the evening and I put it on myself and it healed. Interviewer: Did you manage to receive a carrot? Yehudit Taube: Yes. Interviewer: How? Yehudit Taube: I gave four days' bread ration, not four subsequent days, but once a week I went without the morning bread or the evening bread and I got from her the sugar. Now I also had an extra bread because I told you that if you made your "pensum", the so-called quota, then you had one slice of extra bread which was called in German "die zulage", the extra bread. Interviewer: What did you exactly work in? Yehudit Taube: I will tell you in a minute what I worked. So this Russian girl who used to live in Hungary and spoke Hungarian, Nadia, she said to me, "Come and help me carry the bread rations in the evening" and the names were called out and we gave the bread and what was the benefit of that? The end pieces, because it was sliced and she sliced it and you had to bring out from each bread so and so many slices, but the end slices it was officially hers and she shared that with me, not even, but she gave me of it, some of it. (end of side) So I bought the four lumps of sugar from her and from somebody else who worked in the kitchen, she gave me a carrot, also for bread - there were no favours, I want you to know. The Germans wanted us to sink at the lower level of existence, everyone for himself. As they say in French - you speak French? No. They say in French "chacan pour soir et te pour tu" (sp?). "Everybody for himself. G-d will worry for us all." If the world was like that, it would be a very sad and sorry world, but they wanted us to be like that and we went out of our way to do favours. Interviewer: Yes, this is something that I wanted to ask you. Yehudit Taube: So I bought my sugar and I bought my carrot and my hand healed. Yes. So you were saying? Interviewer: I wanted to ask you really if you had any personal friends among all the other women and if you got assisted, not only physically, materially - mentally - if you could assist one another? Yehudit Taube: Very much indeed. We were about six, seven girls, eight maybe, who got up earlier than we should have. Four o'clock was counting "appell". We got up at three and we went to the washroom and we poured water over each other and with old "smartutim", rags that we found, we rubbed each other's backs that we should get the blood circulation in motion and we kept each other healthy. We washed each other, so that we shouldn't get lice, we shouldn't get...there is a name - "Krätze" because you scratch. If you have "Krätze" you went to gas, so this way we kept together. We also, one of these girls - they came from traditional homes, all of us of these seven, seven or eight girls. Interviewer: Jewish, all of them were Jewish. Yehudit Taube: All Jewish. Only Jews. Interviewer: And where from? Yehudit Taube: One came from Holland, another one came from Czechoslovakia, one came from Hungary, I came from Holland because I was arrested in Holland, and...from all over. One came from Belgium. And we stuck together and one of them came and had hidden on herself, on her person, a little "luach", a little calendar. And we knew when Yom Kippur would be and we were looking forward to it and we said we are going to keep Yom Kippur. We marched out to work as always. At that time we didn't live in "Siemenslager" yet. We were still in Gross Ravensbrueck. So we organized - you know the expression "organized"? You steal something, you take something without asking. That's called "organized". So everybody organized a piece of brown paper from work and we put it over this bowl that we had, that doggie bowl that we ate from. We covered up - that was one day that we had beets, red "selek" soup, red beet soup, and it had, the sauce of it smelled something delicious. They put in from these broken biscuits. It was very delicious. I don't know why they made it that day. I covered it up and I put it under my mattress, under my "strohsack" - it wasn't really a real mattress - and in the evening we will eat it. And I put my bread underneath, under the bowl, and then we went back to work. And one of the girls - not the one that had the "luach", another one - she was the daughter of a "shoihet" who was also a "chazan" - and she knew all the melodies and I knew some of the melodies and we were singing "v'chol ma'amin sh'hu chai v'kayam, v'chol ma'amin sh'hu die v'emet" and we were singing very slowly and very quietly under our breath all day and working. You asked me before what I made. Now I'll tell you. I made one part of a telephone of somebody, what they used in the submarines. The name of it in German was "eine Fabelsatz" - I don't know what it is in any other language. It was an insulation, it was a part of an insulation, and several layers I put on each other and then I put through a nail and pressed it down and it held together - that was I did. I could never do any other thing because they were afraid maybe I will find out how the telephone is put together, as if I cared. As if I cared. We didn't care about things, we were much too hungry. We were too much, much too much interested in what and where we can get an extra piece of bread or an extra piece of food. Even if it was imagination like this recipe book that we wrote. It was all imagination. Interviewer: Tell me about the recipe book. When did you write it? Under what circumstances? Yehudit Taube: Sunday afternoons. Interviewer: Who came to this idea, to write a recipe book in a camp? Yehudit Taube: We spoke about it. You know, once at home I had my grandmother and she said....the girl who sat next to me was a very good friend of mine. She's on that triangle. Her name was Edith Gombos and she was Hungarian. And she said, "Oh, it was so wonderful" and we wrote it down. When the supervisor was walking - it was along row and she didn't come back right away so we were writing, we were jotting down. Interviewer: Where did you get paper and a pencil or whatever? Yehudit Taube: Oh, we had paper to wrap the ready work. Whatever we made finished, they had to wrapped into white paper. It was a very low quality white paper, the kind of paper they print the yellow journalism on today. That kind of very brittle paper. That was the paper and we took out a big sheet and we folded it up in little pieces and then - I told you I bought some thread and a needle and I sewed it together so that it shouldn't fall apart and we wrote into it. I'll never forget how a Dutch woman said to me, "I have a kugel made from pear. Write it down." I said, "I won't. I don't know...I've never eaten it, so I have no particular longing for it." She said, "But I will have such a pleasure talking about it." So I did her a favour and I wrote down. It's in that book. It's called "peare Koche" and I wrote it in Dutch because she told it to me in Dutch. The purpose was to satisfy our need for food. And you said that you don't keep kosher. May I say something? May I say something? Interviewer: Do not relate to me. Yehudit Taube: About something which has got to do with my personal "emunah". You know, not long ago, not very long ago, about a couple of years ago I thought of it first. Because I heard about that book by Hannah Arens, "Like Sheep to the Slaughter", and it insulted us all very deeply. I didn't give the honour to read that book, but I read book reviews of it and I had no desire to read it. Now, if you are very hungry, you don't care about anything else except to eat. Now, what you felt before you ate your lunch or your dinner or your breakfast or your supper, it wasn't hunger. Don't imagine. It is appetite you have. I know what hunger is. Hunger is when every atom of your body needs replenishment, needs sustenance and doesn't get it and you get obsessed. It was an obsession with food. Do you know that many of us worked very hard a year or two after the war to get back to our normal weight because we were eating day and night just for the pleasure of eating. And in the camp, for example, if they shared out the whole amount of soup and there was something left over, that ladle - it's called in German a "Kelle" - so you got a "nach Kelle", another... Interviewer: An extra. Yehudit Taube: An extra one. If anybody worked well so you got more. It was only liquid. It had no nourishment, no substance. You know, our stomach was so uncomfortable because it was overly filled with liquid, and we were hungry. We were so uncomfortable from being overfull and we had a tremendous hunger - that was the most horrible feeling you can imagine. Somebody once asked me, "Tell me, did you ever try run away?" And when that book came out, "Like Sheep to the Slaughter", "Did you ever try to resist or try to run away from the camp?" First of all, the camps were surrounded with high brick walls and on the top of the high brick wall it was wire which was full of electricity. So what is a point to go there? There were some people who wanted to commit suicide and they said to the SS man beforehand, "Do me a favour and shoot me." He says, "I can't shoot you." He says, "If I will go around to the wall and climb up, will you shoot me?" He said, "Yes." So they did that. Not many women, but I know from my husband that men very often did it when they were written down for selection. Interviewer: Okay, let's go back to your own story. Yehudit Taube: And they were waiting for two, three days until their turn came. That was the most terrible thing that I would like to put down on record, that write down someone that the hours are ticking away and you are going to die from nothing particularly, just because you were born a Jew and hours are ticking away and you are going to die at this and that and this hour on that day, or the following day. And they went to the SS and said, "I'm going on the wall. Will you shoot me?" He said, "Yes." They knew each other from before and he did him a favour and shot him. So I just want you to know. Interviewer: How long did you stay there? Yehudit Taube: Ten months. Interviewer: Ten months in the "Siemenslager" or altogether? Yehudit Taube: Altogether. Interviewer: I wanted to ask you something else because I already know that you have this piece of cloth, the triangle piece of cloth that your names and things are written down and we will take the photograph later on from it. When and how did you make it? Yehudit Taube: I don't think that I mentioned it. We were given rags, cleaned rags from the SS laundry from the clothes and from the items that came back from the east front, from Russia, for cleaning and repairing if possible, and things that were not repairable, they had given it to us because we worked with machines that had to be oiled all the time and the oil sometime overflowed and that soiled the product, so they had to keep the product clean so we got these "smartutim:, these rags, to wipe the machine. And one day, the SS woman came with a big, big bunch, a whole basketful of clothes and threw it down. She said, "Here, you can use it for cleaning the machines." And I see a big, big cloth from black and white, so I pick it up and my friend who worked next to me - on one side worked a Hungarian woman, girl, and on the other side a girl from Luxembourg who was in the underground illegally and she and her fiancé were both deported for that. I will speak about the girl from Luxembourg later on, very important. So she says, "Oh my goodness. This is an SS flag." Red and black. The black part was completely in shreds, but the red was absolutely whole and it was a big square. I saw it was washed. I saw on it also stains because it was bloody, stained from blood, so they washed it out, but the stain remained, the bloodstain. And I took that big square piece, I cut it off, I folded it up quickly and I put it under my armpit under my dress and I hid it. And then I started to buy a whole roll of sewing thread and one needle - it cost me also a certain amount of bread - and then I said, "That would be nice if we ever get out from here to have something to remember." That was in "Siemenslager". At that time we lived in "Siemenslager". I told you it was much easier. I got a thread, I got a needle and Sunday afternoon - you see, in Gross Ravensbrueck, very often they took away our Sunday afternoon rest time - what they called in German "strafe-stehen", standing for punishment. "Strafe" is punishment and stand for "strafe", for hours. But in "Siemenslager" it didn't exist. For Sunday, we had just really a very few SS women or men around and everybody was resting and that was the time when I went from one girl....and then when the girls saw what I was doing, then I first went to this friend and that friend and later on when the others saw, they came to me, "Can I sign my name?" So I said, "Sign your name." And I re-embroidered... Interviewer: Ah, you did the embroidery or...? Yehudit Taube: I. Interviewer: And everybody signed with a pencil or something. Yehudit Taube: With just an ordinary lead pencil which wouldn't have kept long, it wouldn't be visible even less than a year later, it wouldn't have lived long. It would have fallen out from the material. So I re-embroidered it. I repeated, whatever was written I sewed it, so that's how it happened. And about "strafe-stehen" I would like to tell you something. This is the most terrible, terrible thing. That was at the time when I was still in Gross Ravensbrueck and this friend of mine, Edith Gombos, was sick, but from the day the additional "zulage" so-called, additional slice of bread was always given the day after the work was done because they had to register. And she had bread coming to her from the day before, but suddenly she got very, very sick. She had the flu and she was in "Kranken Revier". "Kranken Stube". "Kranken Revier" was only like an ambulance kind of thing, you know, you were sitting there and waiting. It was a clinic, it was a "Revier". But then there was the "Kranken Stube" where there were beds just like in barracks, only the people who were sick were there. Not that anybody did much good to them. And after I came home from work, I kept the bread. I held it here under my arm and I thought I'm going to take it to Edith. She will be glad to have it. And I go to the "Kranken Revier" - you were not supposed to walk around too much anyway because the main thing was to isolate us from each other in case we are talking, in case we are exchanging news items somebody read in an old newspaper or in not such an old newspaper. When the SS left newspapers lying around they grabbed that and read it, of course. And we all knew how to read the language, like when the Germans wrote, "According to plans we have been withdrawing." When it was "according to plans, withdrawing" we knew that the Germans were losing, so everybody wanted to read. Anyway, I took that bread and put it in a piece of paper and I took it to my friend and I call, "Edith." So she came out and I took the bread and I said, "Catch," and she caught it. And at that moment, the "Ober, Ober, Oberaufseherin", the head female commandant of Ravensbrueck passed by. She was the most beautiful woman you can imagine. She had golden blonde hair to her shoulders and that SS cap on her head, and she was very beautiful until she opened her mouth. She had the most ugly, distorted voice, overly hoarse probably from commanding. She came back as a volunteer from the east front. She was a captain - the rank, I don't know, they had different names, the Germans, you know, like a captain was called "Obersturmbannführer" or something like that, I am not sure. She had a hip shot, a shot in the hip, and she couldn't serve on the front, so as a reward for her faithful services, she got that "cushie" job to be the chief, chief "Oberaufseherin" supervisor lady of the whole camp of Ravensbrueck. She was the master of life and death. There was also a man, a commandant, but she was more powerful than he was. Interviewer: Do you know her name? Yehudit Taube: Yes. Her name was Dorothea Biens. I'll never forget her name. She is rotting in the ground because she was hanged. She was caught after the war. Anyway, she said, "Haeflting!", which means "prisoner". In this terrible, ugly voice. "What did you give her?" She thought I gave some ammunition or something to her. I said, "This is my comrade and she is sick and she has 'zulage' and I brought it for her." "Drei tage Straf-Stehen!" "Three days standing for punishment." So for three days, for the next morning - first of all, she hit me over the head - and the next morning I had to be in front of the office, the so-called, in German, the "schreibstube", and I had to stand there all day and it was the month of September, August, something like that - it was very hot. And the sun was beating down on me and I had to stand at a place where it was sun, and when it was afternoon and shadows were growing longer, she told me to move to a sunny spot. And my tongue swelled and I couldn't speak and then in the evening I was told to go to my barrack and I didn't get my rations because I didn't work. And next morning, I was standing there again all day, most of the day. In the late afternoon she came out with her little, she had a little dog that she carried on her arm and she came and she stood as close to me as possible, and she said, "Oh, mein suesschen, mein leibchen!" to the dog and was feeding it smoked meat and sausages and it just was so close to me it went into my nose. I thought I'd go out of my mind and I eased a little bit closer. I think at that moment I can say very surely that I wasn't with clear sense. My senses weren't all there. I was starved, I was parched, hungry, My tongue, I couldn't shut my mouth anymore because my tongue swelled and hung out of mouth and I said I am going to have that meat that she is holding in her hand. And I said I am going to jump on her and take it away. If I would have been normal I would have know that if I would touch her at all I am going to be dead a minute later because she would have shot me. She was always walking with a revolver on her hip, belt. And I was leaning forwards towards her and as I was leaning I said I am going to get it. I'm going to have it. And at that moment I fell and I passed out. The next thing I know, they are pouring buckets of water over me and I opened my mouth and I let them pour the water into my mouth and the SS came and kicked me that I should come to because I had passed out. And then they took me to my barrack and they gave me the message from Fräu Oberaufseherin Biens that the next day I don't have to come to stand. And I was given water and I could go to sleep. But I can just tell you, I am a very ordinary person, but at that moment I was ready to murder. That's what hunger does to you. Later on we went to stay in "Siemenslager". Interviewer: But I wanted to ask you, you mentioned beforehand this girl from Luxembourg that you wanted to tell me something about her. Yehudit Taube: That is much later. I would like to just tell you. So one day towards the spring, we heard some news that the war isn't going well and Hitler may be losing and we didn't beleve it. And if you were, for example, speaking to a "agent provocateur", a stool pigeon, these kinds of things that you heard, that the war isn't going well, that was the greatest sin in the eyes of the Germans and you could be shot for spreading false rumours. But we heard different things and then we heard that Roosevelt died and then we heard that America has a new president. We didn't know the name and later on we heard the name of Truman. And then one day we were told to line up and we thought we are going to work, but we didn't. I had a little "Aufseherin" SS woman who was very, very young. Maybe she was nineteen, twenty, something like that. And she was a product of the Hitler Youth movement, properly and thoroughly brainwashed. And she liked to talk to me. I had been selected by her, she liked to talk to me. And then she said to me I have two names. I am Yehudit and Yolande. And there was a film once in Germany called "Yolande die Schwein," some kind of story from farmers who had a pig who was called "Yolande" so she called me - she thought she was funny - she called me "Schwanze" , "little pig," and she said to me, "You know, 'Schwanzchen', you are a very dangerous person." I said - I had to march and she was marching next to me and she had the rifle on her shoulder - I said, "Why, Fräu, Aufseherin?" She said, "Because my teacher told me in Hitler Youth that 'Watch out and beware for the Jew because they look like us, they look like humans, they walk like humans and they talk like humans, but they are really vermin. They are not people'." Do you know? I will always be proud of that. Nothing moved in my face. I felt like I wanted to hit her, but it didn't do anything really to me. I said this thing cannot insult me. But it is still with me, I still think about it, that she said we walk like people and we talk....and very dangerous, the teacher told her, we can even cry. So it looks very human, "but beware because they are not humans, they are vermin." And then she said to me, "You know, I really never thought that you will get out from here." I said to her, like this, "Who is getting out from here? It's a laugh, it's a very sarcastic laugh." She says, "Well, I thought we are going to work you as long as you can work and when you don't have any strength, then we are bringing" - she used a German (?). To kill somebody means "umbringer" or "bring um" and to go around the corner means "gehen um die Ecke" so that was the slang for killing somebody. She said, "We thought our plaan was that we work you as long as you are able to produce and "und donn verden wir sie bringhe um die ecke". That means "get rid of us, kill us". So I said, "So why do you tell me that now?" She said, "I heard something." I said, "What did you hear?" She says, "Ah, people are talking." So I said I am not going to be inquisitive because then she might think that I started the conversation about getting out or being freed. So we were walking and that was previously when she told me that about the vermin and also that we are going to work as long as we can. I would like to show you something. Interviewer: Maybe later. Yehudit Taube: Right here. You have to see this. One day we are all lined up, everybody, and march. And we were in "Siemenslager" and "Siemenslager" was one straight way on a road to Gross Ravensbrueck, so that was the day that we were liberated. I just want to tell you. She took us out not from the main entrance from "Siemenslager" to Gross Ravensbrueck. She took us through the back and there we passed and she took us past the youth lager, the "jugend lager", and the gas chambers and the "Wascherei" and the "Schreiberei", all around, and we thought we are going to be taken to be gassed. That was their plan. And then we went in from the back entrance to Gross Ravensbrueck, marched through whole Gross Ravensbrueck and went out through the front gate where about fifty or more white trucks were lined up. They were ordinary trucks which were painted white and the Red Cross was painted on the roof and on the sides and they were driven by Canadian prisoners-of-war who volunteered - that was a errand of mercy, to drive us to freedom. Interviewer: Who sent those trucks? Yehudit Taube: The Red Cross. The Swedish Red Cross. Interviewer: That was Bernadotte. Yehudit Taube: That was Bernadotte. And I know the whole story how they were bargaining about it. At night they went to... Interviewer: Where do you know the story from? Did you hear it personally? Yehudit Taube: From the man who took me into the truck. Interviewer: What did he tell you? Yehudit Taube: His name was Dr. Arnoldson, Dr. Hans Arnoldson, who was a very high-ranking Red Cross officer with an armband. And he wrote a book and that book I have in my house and there it is how they were flying at night, Bernadotte and a Mr. Manzer who was a Jew, very rich man, and he supplied the money, gave it to the Swedish Red Cross which Bernadotte gave to Himmler. And they arrived at night at Tempelhof airport and they brought to Himmler's villa and that's where the whole discussion and deal took place. This was told to me and everybody was told to go into the truck and the truck was very narrow and very long, like a "tzimline", and there were benches on one end, on one wall and a bench on the other wall and then in the middle, in the middle there were girls sitting, one facing this way and one facing that way and that way and that way, so that more and more people could be put in. And there was a ramp, a piece of wood and you just had to run up on it and into the truck. And I went very, very slowly because I was very, very weak and I was maybe forty kilo, not more. I was skin and bones. My face didn't show, but my body went very thin. I have very thin bones and I got very, very weak. And I went up on this ramp and I fell back, so I ran up again and I fell back, and the girls who were standing around, my personal friends said, "Come on, come on." I said, "I can't." And then somebody put his hand on my shoulder and he says, "Fraulein," - "Miss" - and I didn't react. I didn't realize somebody was talking to me. Do you know how far I have gone already away from normalcy? I didn't know that I can be addressed "Fraulein". I didn't know that it is my name. I missed so much, so much vitamins. I forget the address I lived in. I forgot my mama's maiden name. I forgot a lot of things because I had vitamin deficiency to a very high degree. So then the third or the fourth time I fell back from the ramp, I heard "Fraulein" which I didn't answer and then he patted on my shoulder and I turned around. I said, "Bitte?" He said, "Fraulein," - I didn't realize he was talking to me. I said, "Ja?" He says, (German). "You can't go in?" I said, "No, I am too weak." He says, "But you don't want to remain here." Before we could go into these trucks, I want you to know, that we were counted and we were paid for by the Red Cross officers by the piece, like animals you buy by the piece. And then he says to me, "Treten sie daherein". A big, tall, hefty Swede and held out two big hands to me. He says, (German). I said, "I can't." Interviewer: Please speak in English. Yehudit Taube: I said, "I can't." He says, "Hold my shoulders." So I stepped into his hand and I held onto his shoulders and he lifted me in and I was the very, very last in that truck and it was the last truck. And I was the last person in that last truck. And I sat down on the bench near the door and then they put over a jute cover and that was flapping in the air and as soon as I went in, right away they gave a signal and the driver started to drive. It was a long, long row of trucks. I am very upset now. And I sat there and the wind was flapping and I was breathing and all of a sudden - there was a step inside the truck and a German Wehrmacht, not SS, soldier stepped there and then two holder, there were two metal holders, and he held it on both sides and he was inside the truck and he wanted to have a conversation with us. And he said to us in German, "You know, I have always been against the whole thing" and nobody dignified him with an answer, nobody answered him. And we were driving maybe for a half an hour, maybe three-quarter, and I cannot tell you what a smell there was in that truck. We were not, most of us were not decently washed. We washed, but the majority were not. And all of a sudden, as I sit there, who do I see than the Luxembourg girl and she says to me in French - we always talked French with each other. With that one, with that comrade I spoke Hungarian, but with the other one I spoke French. And she didn't tell me much about herself because she was used to not to trust anybody and she was right and she worked in the underground long enough. Interviewer: What did she say to you? Yehudit Taube: She says, (French). "Maybe you want to change with me? I feel sick. I am carsick." So I said, "Look, I also can't stand bad air and I feel sick right away." And she knew there were no favours in that place, you know? And I am looking at this because you are not going to believe me, but I forgot her name and it's here. Interviewer: Okay, maybe later on. Please. Yehudit Taube: So I said, "I am sorry. I can't stand bad air, but I'll tell what I'll do for you. Let's change places and I go into your" - she was in the middle of the truck and I was at the end - I said, "Sit down in my place. You will refresh yourself and you will sit here as long as I get nauseous. When I get carsick, then we change back again." So she took my face into her hand and she said, "Merci, merci." "Thank you, thank you for being so kind." And I went inside the truck and she sat down in my place. I was travelling maybe fifteen minutes and all of a sudden we heard some shootings and the truck didn't stop, but the truck didn't go as fast as it did before. I didn't know why. Now I know. The driver was already dead, he was shot, and the car was going downhill so it couldn't stop so it was rolling. The Allied forces had an intelligence report that the Germans are abusing the Red Cross sign and use trucks, white with red cross on it and they deliver ammunition and deliver also soldiers to the front and from the front and they have to be attacked. That was the order they received. So they actually, they were not in airplanes. They were in helicopters, very low, flying very low, and they were shooting at the trucks. Interviewer: At your convoy. Yehudit Taube: At the whole convoy. And all of a sudden I hear everybody, "Out, out!" And that's the first time, I hope the last time ever I have seen what is a stampede. That was a real stampede. Everybody was stomping over each other. There were several who died because other people walked over them. They were not all too strong, all of us, any of us, they are not too strong to begin with, at that point, and it was not a stampede, it was a.....I am very upset. I forget a very ordinary word. So it was a....what is it called when it's a big battle and people are....? Interviewer: Panic. Yehudit Taube: Panic. You see, it's an ordinary word. I have never been in a panic, I have never been part of it and this was the first time and I hope the last time that I was in a panic. People are absolutely like animals, running out and everybody said, "Out, out!" and we didn't know why. And then in the meantime everybody is running and I am running because they pushed me from behind and everybody's running and I said, "Yvonne" - is her name, Yvonne Lefebrve, my Luxembourg friend. She sits there quietly with a very surprised half smile on her face, open eyes and sort of like "What is the matter?" kind of expression on her face. And everybody's running and Yvonne is not running, I thought. I knew she was a very, very cool girl, but that's a little bit too much, so I go and grab her sleeve. I said, "Yvonne! Qu'est-ce que tu faites ici?" "What are you doing here?" "Venez!" "Come!" And she rolled down from the seat. She died, on my seat. Interviewer: She died because of the bombardment or she...? Yehudit Taube: She died because she was very much close to the opening where they were shooting to. You see, the driver died because he was at the other end. Inside the truck nobody died from shooting, only those who were trampled over in the panic. But where open areas were, the shot hit (not clear). And then as I come to the end of the....I see that Yvonne fell down. There was no time to think about anything, just get out. And I had my little bundle in my hand, with a little bag, that was also there. And I stand at the door and they say, "Go!" and I look out and I see a big flyer from the helicopter. I saw the skin of his face, so low down he was. And he was shooting and we did like this and he saw we were women and in the meantime they got a second order, "Stop at once. That was a mistake. They are female liberated prisoners from concentration camps." But as the truck was going slowly I look and I see a shrapnel was shot on the road and all the stones were jumping up in pieces. Some of them , it was so close to me that I got some of the pieces into my mouth so I did "phht" like this, I spat it out and somebody pushed me from behind and I jumped and where I was a minute before, another shrapnel fell. On both sides of the road was a small, a little wooded area, you know, like a woods, yes. And we were told to go in between the trees and lie flat. If anybody lifted up their head, which I know one person did, I knew her. She was very curious what's happening and the next minute her brain and everything was on the twigs on the trees. And we were lying there for a long, long time until the news came to the Allied forces to stop shooting. And then we all came out from the - it was a little forest. You see, a minute ago I couldn't remember the word for it because I am under tension, terrible tension to remember these moments in my almost lost life. And then they collected the live drivers. Some of the tires of the trucks were also damaged, so they collected the live drivers and undamaged trucks and live prisoners, they collected us, and many, many wounded ones and dead ones and they said that not far away there is a field hospital, a "feld masaret" in German and they will be taken there and taken care of. What happened to them who knows? You can't send a telegram and ask "I am very worried about who." My Hungarian friend wasn't with us because she wasn't among those who were bought. They only bought Dutch, Danish, French, Norwegian and Luxembourg and these areas, so actually, eastern Europeans weren't included in the deal. So she remained, I haven't seen her. Interviewer: Eventually you got to Sweden, you came to Sweden? Yehudit Taube: They were taking us, we arrived in Luebeck. Before we arrived in Luebeck we stopped and they were giving us packages, all the, not all, but some of the undistributed packages. Some of us got so sick because the meat was - there was meat which was fat and.....then we were taken to Luebeck. We were received there by the Danish....No. Luebeck and then Danzig, further, and then to Denmark. And on the border to Denmark we were received with a whole delegation of Danish Red Cross ladies. They are called "Lotte", that is their name. Like this is called "emunah", they are called "Lotte". And the "Lottes" were there with big baskets of snow-white bread. The baskets were lined with white cloth and everybody was grabbing and then we were going on further and I saw somebody stepped on a piece of bread and there was the outline of a shoe on a piece of bread and I couldn't stand it, so I went and I bent down and I picked up that bread and I kissed it and I put it in my pocket. I said I'm going to eat it, but I don't want bread to be stepped on. We were taken to Denmark and from Denmark on a boat to Malmo. That is the southernmost town of Sweden. And there we spent about two or three nights. We were registered and then we were taken to Goeteborg. (end of side). Interviewer: No, no, because those questions are only in a sense informative. What I wanted to ask you - for how long did you stay in Sweden and what was your next place that you went? Yehudit Taube: I stayed two years in Sweden. Anybody who felt well enough to travel could go back to the land of where he or she was arrested. I wasn't born in Holland, but I was arrested, so I had the right to go back. The problem was that the trains were very scarce. It was after the war, right after the war. I was liberated on the 26th of April. You know, it is five thirty, my famous number, my lucky number. I was liberated on the 26th of April and I could have gone back to Holland, but I had nobody left in Holland. In the meantime I met my husband and we got engaged and later on we got married. Interviewer: In Sweden? Yehudit Taube: In Sweden, because my husband wanted to take me to France where he was deported from, but he could not take me because the French consul.... Interviewer: Please do not go into those details. Yehudit Taube: Very important. Would not give a visa because trains had room only for repatriation. Interviewer: Yes, yes I understand that. Yehudit Taube: So I could have gone to Holland, but I couldn't go to France, so we got married in Sweden and then on my husband's passport I could go to France. Interviewer: And you went to France? Yehudit Taube: Then yes. After two years I went to France. Interviewer: When did you make aliyah? Yehudit Taube: '76. Interviewer: From France? Yehudit Taube: No. My husband is an internationally known "chazan". And he went back to France.... Interviewer: Please do not tell all of your story. Yehudit Taube: And came back to Sweden and this is when we met. He came back to Sweden because they heard him there once - he was singing for his comrades and he was singing and - this is another story which I don't go into....(not clear) in Goeteborg, in the synagogue, and he became the chief cantor of the Goeteborg synagogue and this is when I met him. Interviewer: I see. What I wanted to ask you something else. Did you ever go back in the footsteps of the whole story you just told me.? Did you go back to Germany, to...? Yehudit Taube: I don't think I could. Interviewer: You couldn't. Yehudit Taube: I have seen a film about Ravensbrueck, somebody especially sent it to me. Ravensbrueck doesn't look at all how it looked. It has been very much manicured. It was in connection with some Polish women who had been used for experimentation. I also been experimented on, but I don't make an issue out of that. I wanted to make an issue of it when I sued the Germans for... Interviewer: What was the kind of experiment, if you can briefly tell us? Yehudit Taube: They cut something out from my left arm. You can see it. They took out something. They took out a lot of muscles from legs from Polish girls and sent that to the front to give it German soldiers. Interviewer: One more question. What is your feeling today or your attitude today towards Germany? Germans and Germany? Yehudit Taube: My attitude is that now they are in a process of mea culpa. I don't know how many generations it will last. And also that they need a lot of education. And they will need a memory, something that will be handed down from generation to generation. A collective memory. The Germans will need to be educated, to have a collective memory, that it should not happen again. Interviewer: Thank you very much. Yehudit Taube: This a part of an SS flag which is originally was black and red. We got it for the purpose of cleaning the oil from the machines we were working with. The black was all in shreds, so the red one was a nice square which I took and shared it with my best friend in the camp and she got a triangle and I got a triangle and we each wrote in the centre "Ravensbrueck". And on the square "Ravensbrueck" the first name is hers, "Gombos Edith", and on her triangle, which I never had the good luck to see, is my name. This, as you can see, comes from the Russian front and it was bloodstained. It's washed out, but the stains all remained there. I have asked several of my friends to sign their names. All we had was lead pencil which has no lasting power. So I knew I had to re-embroider it and acquired some threads and needle and everybody who wrote their names, I re-embroidered the name. I didn't have to go to anybody. It became quite, quite an attraction and somehow the mood was easier - we felt that in the end that we could think of something else than death and this was a sign of afterwards and this is why everybody wanted their name on it and they came to me and asked me. And I accepted everybody's name who wanted to sign it, though some of them were not very radical (?) and I will start with the negative. Here is Bauer Stephie. Her name was Stephanie Bauer and she was the most famous provacateur or stool pigeon in the whole camp and everybody was afraid of her and I was too afraid to refuse her, so she wrote her name there and she supervised that I re-embroidered her name. Annie Rasibova is the woman who gave me four pieces of, four lumps of sugar to heal my hand when my thumb was almost falling off. As I mentioned, Edith Gombosh was my best friend. Here is Babuk Annie. I have to thank her that I have had the good fortune not to be in the filthy and full of typhoid place which was called "Gross Ravensbrueck", but I was in a cleaner place, "Siemenslager". Schus van Stocken is the girl whom I recognized from her brother, who saved my clothing when the house I lived in was raided one day. Ada Schmallenbach was a law student whom I used to know in Amsterdam and she came to me and told me, "Do you remember me?" And I said, "Yes, I do." And her very best friend was happy about that and they were two very gifted poets and they wrote songs and cheered us up after we all got sick, the first and only Red Cross package we have ever received. Then when the names were all there whom I thought I would want, then I wanted to remember - if I hoped there will be an opportunity to live and remember - I wrote down the expressions that I only heard there and not before and not ever after. When somebody stole something from each other, they used a French word, "comme çi, comme ça", which means "so and so". So they said, "Did you steal my bread? You "comme çi, comme ça" my bread?" That's what we used for. "Strafe-stehen" means standing up without food for so and so many days or hours or whatever your luck was. There is another expression - it's all..."So weit kommstnoch". This was the expression of the Germans towards us. "It didn't come so far. Maybe it will come so far yet." It's like: "You think we are so low already?" It was their unpronounced feeling of inferiority. "You think it was already so far? It will come so far, that's what you think." "The clock is coming." (?) It means "you idiotic camel". And "pensung" is the quota you had to work everyday. "Schmuckstick" - "Schmuckstick" means a jewellery (?), but it actually in the concentration camp, it meant exactly the opposite. When somebody stopped washing and was dirty and it was unpleasant to stand nearby and was unwashed and unkempt and had a bad smell, they were called, "You Schmuckstick". That was another expression the Germans said to us which also gives away their not very well hidden sense of inferiority. "Bist du was besseres?" "Do you think you want something better?" "Nach Kelle" - this is the ladle which is called in German a "Kelle", so you worked your "pensung", your quota, you had either an extra slice of bread or you had a "nach Kelle". This is "appell ist appell", meaning "You fainted? You feel sick? You can't hold in yourself because you have to go to the toilet? You are not going because 'appell is appell'." You stand. And if you happen to be in a place that there is a hole with water in it, that's where you are going to remain because "appell ist appell". What other expressions? "Allmensch". These are German ...(?) expressions. Here is this Eva Beneshova. She was the neice of the former president of Czechslovakia. Eva Beneshova. And "blockova" means the elder of the block, the barrack where we stayed. Maria Hillfrichst was our "blockova" in "Siemenslager". Here is "Minoush". This is the picture of the bunks we slept in - three beds over each other with straw sacks on them to sleep on. This is the "rutabaga" - I made it so that it had a face. I don't know where I took my sense of humour from. This was the root cow feed which we were fed with most of the time. This is a thick slice of bread with a piece of margarine on top - that was our daily ration. This was size went for morning and evening. There was a girl from China. She was a student and she got trapped in Germany when the war broke out and she was a foreigner and she was suspicious. She didn't do anything in the world. And they took her to Ravensbruck, so she signed her name and she said, "Remember, I just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time." "Entlausung" - to be cleaned of lice when you arrived and several times during a month time. Marcelle Virot - her code name was "Lulu". She was an assistant to, she worked closely with General DeGaulle. There was then a girl who never said her other name, her real name, and she was very high up in the Marquis and her name is "Minoush" - I just saw it. Oh, here is somebody. She worked with me a very long time. This is in Russian, Valentina Kalomietz - I can't read it because I can't read Russian, but I remember her name. She was from White Russia and she was a very sweet, wonderful, warm person. I remember her with great kindness. So this flag which the Germans carried so high and proud ended up in my own country and I am so glad that I live today to talk about it. These pages are from "Siemens" property. I organized it. Big pieces of paper folded smaller and then smaller and made a little booklet because we didn't think anything, but just think and talk about food and it satisfied us to a certain degree. Later on it caused us a tremendous psychological pain and physical pain because to talk about food aroused our appetite, so we decided from this day onwards, we are not going to talk about food anymore because it scared us. So how long did we take? About a few hours and then we were talking about food again. I have written down the recipes. some women were insisting to give me the recipes and I realized that actually the person who told me the recipe enjoyed talking about those foods and I did her a favour by writing it down. Sometimes Sunday afternoons when we had time I wrote down those recipes. I really don't even remember some of the recipes, how they, which day they were given to me, but they were given to me constantly and I have given to others out other recipes. But we had not thought of anything else but food. Later on, after my liberation, I was reading it through and I thought maybe I can use some of them and the amounts were so exact that I thought they were given by people who made it constantly and remembered the recipe. And then I discovered that the majority of the recipes were mixed meat and milk together, or milk products. So since I keep kosher I didn't ever use them. And I would like to point out something very important. This was all our be all and end all, our main interest - food. And the Germans are so afraid of us that we are plotting against them, but they don't know, and I finish with this sentence, in the grace after meals there is a part and it says, הרחמן הוא יפרנסינו בכבוד®¢." All...(not clear) G-d should sustain us in our respectable way." (Hebrew). And the next "bracha" is, ¢הרחמן "הוא ישבור את עולינו מעל צוורינו. "When you have eaten and you have been satisifed, then you think about your freedom." (Hebrew). Not before, because when you are hungry, all you want is to eat and this they took away from us. This is little holder made from a material we used at work and held together with this plastic wire-like material and leads (?) to a little pocket and inside is a little note which my friend, Edith Gombos, who is the number one place on my triangle cloth, my dear friend whom I have not seen again after the war, wrote me that she saved my bread portion from that day that I worked beforehand and she brought it to me in the sickbay with this little note with a very funny and humourous description of all the things that they would have liked to eat, but she made it believe that they ate it and there was nothing left from the whole menu of the day except the slice of bread what she gave me. This picture was taken in Malmoe about two or three days after our arrival when we had been already given clothes from the Red Cross and we are dressed in those clothes, except the young lady who is standing next to me - she is from France and she refused to part with her prison clothes because this is how she wanted to go back to France and present herself to the former Vichy regime. And that was on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of our liberation in 1975 - 1945-1975 - and on that occasion the Jewish population of Sweden had given a great and considerable high sum of money, a donation, to plant a forest in gratitude of the Jews to the Swedish people.