Sally Pitluk was born to Jewish parents in Płońsk, Poland in 1922. A few days after the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Płońsk was occupied. Sally and her family lived in a ghetto from 1940-1942. In October of 1942, Sally was transported to Auschwitz, where she was tattooed and moved into the subcamp Budy for forced labor. She stayed in the Auschwitz camp complex until the beginning of 1945 when she and other prisoners were death marched to several different camps. She was liberated in 1945 and eventually moved to the United States.
In this interview, Sally describes being accused of sabotage while working in Budy and fearing for her life.
So I took–they gave us a piece of rag to cover ourselves. I took the piece of rag, and I tore it. And I put it around my feet. And as I went out... And they always counted us. We had to go out at 5 o’clock in the morning and we were counted and counted and stayed for 3 hours before we went to work. And all of a sudden, they looked down, and they see that I have those rags. And she says that I committed sabotage. That I tore a piece of the dredge up. And they tell me that this day, I’m not going to go to work. ‘You go back.’ Which meant that they are going to kill me, probably.
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