"Our thoughts changed totally when we realized that our lives are not safe here. And we came to the realization that they are not only systemically eliminating the inmates who are sick or who are weak or who cannot work, put in the heavy load for long hours, twelve hours every day, while our stomachs were hungry and while we were exhausted. But in this, that it could be our turn any time, any time, any minute any hour any day any night and we didn't know just when it would come. But eventually when we were so emaciated it was a question of time. Who will? What will happen first? Are we going to collapse before we even be picked out in a selection? It was very, that's how it was. Nobody knew.

"I remember that all I could think of was my mother, that this is going to kill her. Now it hardly makes sense; I was the one who was going to be murdered. But I was afraid that if my mother is going to take this too hard, that she is going to weaken and then Annuska will be left alone. I worried about that."
The testimony of Gloria Hollander Lyon - Czechoslovakian survivor of 7 camps including Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Beendorf and Ravensbrück. Used with kind permission of The Oral History Archives Project