Arriving in Auschwitz

[Text: Peter was twelve years old when he was arrested by the Gestapo in Brussels after stopping to tie his shoelace on the street, and was ultimately sent to Auschwitz. He describes his experience walking through the gates of Auschwitz I concentration camp.] 

Peter Parker: As I got into the camp, I saw right away something’s not right here. The people inside the camp, they were looking around and they walked like zombies. They were undernourished and shoveling and not looking up. And the guy next to me said to one of the inmates, what was it, some official or something, he says, “My family came on the tracks, are they here yet?” He looked at him, and he pointed out three chimneys belching out black smoke, he said, “That’s your family going up in smoke.” And I thought, What a sick joke to make. Didn’t take me long to find out, he wasn’t kidding. So, from the 4,000 that came to Auschwitz in September of 1943, 3,700 were gassed and cremated. Three hundred of us, we came in the camp, after two years, all over the place. We didn’t stay all together. From all records, there were four who survived. Four people out of four thousand, a chance of one in one thousand.