Chapter 4

The inmate would say that Buna was a good camp because it was a work camp while Birkenau was a extermination camp. The conditions at the work camp were not as harsh as those in Birkenau. For the most part, Buna wasn't a bad place to be, compared to the other camps. They had a place and opportunity to sleep, had some food and were alive. We think that Buna was about 4 miles from Birkenau. It would take so long to get from camp to camp because there were thousands of people and they were all traveling at a slow pace because they probably were all very weak. Also, the weather conditions were not ideal either. It was freezing cold and snowing outside.

A possible reason that the woman would want to leave her home and come to Poland because she had already been passed as an Aryan and may have wanted to be able to be at Buna where she could fly under the radar by working for the Germans. Buna was a camp where the people were not listed to be exterminated. This would mean that as long as the woman didn't draw attention to herself that she could get away with just working at the camp as a Frenchwoman. Also, France had been taken over by Germany and the woman may have been afraid of staying in France and getting found out.