Winter Stadium

Transcription

Before the Velodrome d'Hiver a friend of ours had thrown herself out of the window when the policeman came to take her so there was already terrible drama terrible things and there was already Drancy, people disappeared in Drancy one of my aunties was taken in Drancy so we are already in a state of everything is uneasy and terrifying and comes the 16th of July 1942 at 7:30 a French policeman, I'm starting to shake now, the French policeman came at 7:30 and usually, when the policemen came they just took you straight away and you had to go with them but that policeman was a good policeman and he said to my parents I will come at 11:30, so he was really telling my parents: Run for your life! One morning in July nineteen forty two at six o'clock in the morning they knocked on our door and there was a uniformed French policeman and a plainclothes person which i don't know if he was French or German I'm not sure and they told us to get a few things together and to get some food for maybe 2 - 3 days if we could and to come with them at that point we were being arrested in effect Beatrice my girlfriend, my schoolfriend and her mother and me we arrived at the famous or infamous Velodrome d'Hiver and when we came in there and they showed us a corner where we were supposed to stuff some bag with straw to make our mattress and then we could go down where ever we wanted and inbetween this big Velodrome d'Hiver they had these big stands where soldiers were standing to look down on us and we can got in there and already there were thousands of people in that arena and it was horrible, it was really a horrible sight people laying down, sitting crying, screaming it was like a constant screaming throughout the three days I remember. and I remember walking over to the area where the stadium, where they have the uh... the race and and every now and then there will be something flying out over the balconies and landing and I didn't realize at the time but there were people killing each other themselves they were committing suicide they were jumping to their deaths After the first day or so we didn't have any food didn't have uh... any milk for their children the bathrooms weren't working I remember waiting online to go to the bathroom and I never got to that bathroom I don't remember what I did I think I've blocked out a lot of what I saw there they put us in cattle cars we went to the cattle cars uh... they shoved a lot of people in those cattle cars I remember that the denomination on the cattle car was uh... eight-man eight horses or forty men this is the way it was written on each cattle car and they loaded up and then they closed the door, they put seals on the doors and uh... I remember the train ride was pretty awful it took maybe four hours and uh... the train it seemed like forever because they were elderly people that have to go to the bathroom there were people that totally disoriented they really, the panic was there, they didn't know uh... they gonna kill us in the cars are they don't know what are they going to do with us? What is happening? Where are they taking us? Why? From the Velodrome d'Hiver we were put in autobus big autobus busses and you could not run away from it because there was a policeman every half a meter, they were standing all around us. You could not run away, they were there. And I saw some policemen crying and I saw some policemen laughing even now when I sit on the bus I'm still very nervous and I look outside. It was a terrible thing not to be able to escape, that we were surrounded by all these policemen we never saw a German soldier we only saw French policemen