“Some Catholics, including Father Amyot, invited me to join them in prayer. Seven or eight of us gathered, secretly of course, in the shed used as a lavatory.”

“In prayer we laid before God our suffering, our rags, our filth, our fatigue, our exposure, our hunger and our misery.”

Aime Bonifas

French resistance fighter, later became Pastor of the Reformed Church of France

Auschwitz-Birkenau

“Transports arrived every day, mainly from Poland, but also from other European countries—Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and others. In one transport there was a Ukrainian woman. She possessed documents that proved that she was a genuine Aryan, and yet she went to the gas chamber.”

“Once you crossed the gate to the camp, there was no chance to get out of there alive.”

Chaim Hirszman

Metalworker imprisoned in the camps

Belzec

“I was assigned to work outside digging ditches. We dug in the freezing cold and rain, wearing only the thin, striped dresses issued to us. The ditches weren’t to be used for any particular purpose.”

“The Nazis were merely trying to work us to death. And many did die of sickness, cold, exhaustion, and starvation.”

Sally Sander

Dressmaker forced to make uniforms for German flyers

Belzec

“In one transport, people refused to be taken to the gas chambers. A tragic struggle developed. They destroyed everything in sight and broke the crates filled with gold taken from the prisoners. They grabbed sticks and anything they could get their hands on to fight.”

“But the guards’ bullets cut them down. When morning came, the yard was still full of the dead.”

Jacob Wiernik

Construction worker forced to build gas chambers

Treblinka

“From our barracks we could see the gas chambers. A heart-rending cry of women and children reached us there. We were overcome by a feeling of helplessness. There we were, watching and unable to do anything.”

“We had already worked out a plan of escape. But at that moment I decided—we must not simply escape. We must destroy the fascists and the camp.”

Alexander Pechersky

Captured Russian soldier who led the camp prisoner revolt

Sobibor

“Ilse, a childhood friend of mine, once found a raspberry in the camp and carried it in her pocket all day to present to me that night on a leaf.”

“Imagine a world in which your entire possession is one raspberry and you give it to your friend.”

Gerta Weissman Klein

Deported from Germany as a teenager, she later married the U.S. Army soldier who led the troops that rescued her

Sobibor

“At first the bodies weren’t burned, they were buried. In January 1944, we were forced to dig up the bodies so they could be burned.”

“When the last mass grave was opened, I recognized my whole family—my mother, my sisters and their kids. They were all in there.”

Motke Zaidel

Deported from Lithuania and forced to work the death detail

Chelmo

“When my parents were sent off to the camp, I gave my good shoes to my father because I thought he’d need them if he did physical labor. When I saw my mother for the last time, I hugged her and said I hoped she didn’t have to work too hard.”

“I never dreamed they’d be dead within such a short time of their departure.”

Jack Polack

Captured by the Nazis in Amsterdam

Majdanek