Survivor testimony-Katie Pittman

I watched the survivor testimony of Malka Baran She was born in Warsaw and was a young teenager when the Germans invaded. She was from a normal middle class family, and she lived with her mother, father and brother. She said she had a normal, happy childhood. Her family was not terribly religious and they did not keep a kosher home. The first change that Malka recalls was when the Germans order that they wear stars on their arms and they took away her fathers machinery so he couldn't work, he then had to go work for the Germans and so did the rest of the family. Malka mostly cleaned in the ghettos and worked for food coupons. She said she was hopeful but the Germans were "sly and sneaky and promised us things would get better."

One evening, Malka's parents woke her up and told her to get dressed because there were "ss" men outside. Her and her family put on their warm coats and men came into their home yelling at the to get out. All of the Jewish families were kicked out of their homes and never allowed to go back. All of the Jewish people had to line up in fives outside for "selection". Malka and her father and brother were all selected to work in a metal factory, but she never saw her mom again. Malka lived in a ghetto after this and had to clean up to twelve hours a day. Her father and brother were shot in the back while working on the railroad. She was sent to a concentration camp and that is where she stayed until liberation.

Malka describes herself as being passive and doing everything she was told. She had to sleep in bunk beds without any bedding. It was dirty and there was a lot of bugs. She used her coat as her blanket. She was able to keep one item from her old life, a gold heart necklace her parents had given her. She traded the chain for a chunk of bread but held on to the heart for the remainder of her life. One day in 1945, all of the German supervisors left the Jews alone in the camp, but they were too raid to act upon it. Until a young German supervisor came in shouting "you are all free!" Malka says this was the first time she cried, because she realized that she actually was free and finally expressed emotion towards her dead family. Malka met a Russian solider and fell in love and moved to America and started a family of her own.