In 1941, Ludmilla and her new husband Leopold were imprisoned in the Kraków ghetto in German-occupied Poland. In 1943, the couple was transferred to the Plaszow labor camp. There they were subjected to grueling conditions and arbitrary violence. In fall 1944, businessman Oskar Schindler helped save some Jewish forced laborers by relocating them and his munitions factory from Kraków to Brünnlitz in the Sudetenland. Because of Leopold's previous relationship with Schindler, the couple was included in this group. En route to Schindler's factory in Brünnlitz, Ludmilla and about 300 other women were imprisoned briefly in Auschwitz. Thanks in part to help from Schindler, Ludmilla survived the Holocaust and was liberated in early May 1945. After the war, Ludmilla and Leopold remained friends with Schindler and shared the story of their rescue.
So, finally, after about three weeks, I think we lost the count of time, over there, they told us, they, someone came, probably a Blockaelteste [block elder], you know, or some German, I don't remember exactly, and started to call our names. Well, that was already good because we knew we are the 300 womans and, women, and she called us by name. We didn't know what she wants us for, but they led us to a side, a train station, like on the sideline, and they put us in the trains again, packed like sardines. Of course, no toilets. There was a, a pail in the middle. No food, we didn't get any food. I don't know if some of us had a little piece of bread from, from, from Birkenau, we had, and after a while, the train started to go. We were only guessing, we didn't know where we going because first of all, there are no windows in the, in, in the cattle cars. We stopped, I think, on the way. The German soldiers let us go out for a while, you know, to, and we had some snow that we took from the ground and kind of, in...instead of a drink. And finally we arrived in some very desolate station, and it said Bruennlitz. It said Bruennlitz, so of course we were terribly excited that finally we arrived at our destination, but in the background, we saw some very tall chimneys. And as we marched to Schindler's camp, which we assumed will be Schindler's camp, we marched by fives, and I was walking, among other friends, with a girl who come originally from Germany, but she was deported from Germany to Poland, and in Poland to camp in Plaszow, and with us to Birkenau, and to Schindler's camp. Her name was Margot, and she said to me, "Oh my God, now we're going to die. Do you see these chimneys?" And I said, I always get upset...and I said to her, "Margot, you know, we cannot die, because if we would be destined to die, we would die in Birkenau."
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