Abraham Lewent (1924–2002) was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1924. The Lewent family was living in Warsaw when the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939. Later, the Lewents were confined to the Warsaw ghetto. In summer 1942, Abraham's mother and three younger sisters were rounded up during the Great Action—the mass deportation of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka killing center. They were likely killed upon arrival. Abraham was not caught in the Great Action, because during the round up he hid in a small space in the ceiling. Afterwards, Abraham found a forced labor assignment at a nearby airfield. He returned to the ghetto in December 1942, reuniting with his father. During the Warsaw ghetto uprising in April–May 1943, Abraham and his father saw the ghetto being burned to the ground. They were eventually rounded up and sent to the Lublin concentration camp (called Majdanek). Abraham's father died there. Later, Abraham was sent to the Skarżysko-Kamienna labor camp, then to Buchenwald and several other camps. US troops liberated Abraham from a train in April 1945.
I remember, I was laying down. This guy says "Oh my God, what a sight." [crying]. A sight. They start picking up the people. They picked them up one by one. Most of them were dead because they couldn't...and...the less that were alive they put them in trucks and jeeps, and they took them to hospitals or they made tents and they put them in. They gave them water. They gave them packets from the Red Cross. And this was bad too because people when they got those packages, there was powdered milk, there was chocolate, there was a can of meat, and they were so hungry, they didn't care, and they ate it. So hundreds died from eating this stuff, because their stomach was not used to food. And I had a guy next to me, I don't know if he was a doctor once or something--he was half dead too... When he got that package, and I think he was Hungarian or Romanian, he says to me, "Don't eat nothing. Don't eat nothing. If you going to eat anything, you going to die. The only thing you do, if you have sugar, take the sugar in the mouth and suck on the sugar. That's the only thing you should do," he says, "the rest of them throw away. And if you want to keep it, keep it, but don't eat anything. Don't take the milk in your mouth. Don't take the chocolate. Don't take the meat"--because they used to give you a can of meat, Spam--"Don't eat it, because if you're going to eat it, you're going to die." And that's what happened. Those people, they eat the stuff, they got diarrhea and they died.
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