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.
In, sometime in the beginning of November, my husband and I found out that we were on the list. The men, they, we were very happy, we didn't know what will await us, but we knew that we're going to go to something better than, than anything that we could conceive at the time. The men left a week before the woman did, and, later we found out that they did not go directly to, Bruen...Bruennlitz, they went to Gross-Rosen, which, they stayed there, I think, a few days, and, this was a very, very difficult camp, but they finally arrived in Bruennlitz. The woman, on the other hand, we left a week later, and we were on, in the cattle trains, of course, packed like sardines. And we were going, we didn't know where we going, we assumed we going to go, to Bruennlitz, directly. All of a sudden we landed at this very famous now platform, famed platform at, station in Auschwitz with SS running like mad people, with dogs barking all over. And they started to push us out of trains, and, run us to, to a selection, through a selection process, which was by itself terrible. We had to undress completely. I clutched, in those days I already wore glasses, and I clutched them in my hand because I knew if I don't have glasses, I wouldn't be able to do any work. I wouldn't be able to, to see very well. So I clutch, and thank God no one ever, discovered. Some woman had their heads shaven. I didn't, just cut short, so I don't know how they did it, probably, you know, just picked certain, certain people. Then, and of course the Germans were making, laughing and making, you know, dirty jokes, and it was just terrible. We were completely not prepared for this because we thought we going to Mr. Schindler, you know, to his camp.
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