Bella was the oldest of four children born to a Jewish family in Sosnowiec. Her father owned a knitting factory. After the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, they took over the factory. The family's furniture was given to a German woman. Bella was forced to work in a factory in the Sosnowiec ghetto in 1941. At the end of 1942 the family was deported to the Bedzin ghetto. Bella was deported to the Graeben subcamp of Gross-Rosen in 1943 and to Bergen-Belsen in 1944. She was liberated in April 1945.
I want you to know that when the war ended, I...I weighed the equivalent of probably what is 70 pounds, and I was skin and bone. And I do remember that when that British soldier came, and asked me...he said he's...can he do something for me? And I said to him, "I'd like two things." I'd like him to give me...bring me warm socks. We're talking, this was already May. It was warm. I was cold. I wanted warm socks, knee-length socks. And I wanted sugar. So he brought me...I was craving sugar, I suppose. He brought me socks and I do remember two things. I remember when he...that I put on the socks and I started to cry because I didn't have any calf. I was all bones and this...the knee-length socks wouldn't stay on. But I also remember that when he gave me the sugar, and it may not have been more than maybe a quarter of a pound maybe, a little bag of sugar, but it was maybe, as I said, sugar, just plain sugar. I took that bag and I just poured it into my mouth. I just ate it like that. And I remember...I remember it because he got scared, and he ran out looking for the nurses because he thought God knows what I did to myself by eating all this sugar. And I remember the nurse said to him in German that it's okay. I was probably just craving sugar.
Why are survivor testimonies important in studying the Holocaust?
How can personal testimonies and oral histories provide insights into the challenges Allied forces faced when encountering and documenting the evidence of Nazi atrocities?
How do oral histories differ from other primary sources such as artifacts, documents, and photographs? What can we learn from different types of primary sources?
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