WHO

How do you feel knowing that your family, or most of your family survived. That your blood, like in your bloodline there are a strong chain of people who were able to survive this horrific.

Well you know in the very beginning, that was a wonderful question. In the very beginning there were so few people who had even a sister or a brother. And here I had, I found out, that there was one member missing from my immediate family. It was an incredibly high survival rate and obviously I was delighted. At the same time I also knew that we went through all this horrendous experiences and it changed all of us. But when I met with survivors, we never talked about family. And that wasn't only with me. It just seemed as though, that was a word that triggered a lot of pain and we just went through so much we just didn't want to face the pain.

How were you treated by Americans, and how much did they know about what you had been through and how did they react?

That's a wonderful question. This was the big difference between us. I was like a walking time bomb. I needed to talk to someone who had been through this. There was nobody to talk to. My girlfriends, I made friends very quickly, they wanted to talk about ice cream and boys. I was 17 when I came here. Sure I wanted talk about boys but you know, I had much more serious things on my mind. My uncle knew some families who had sons and they had taken me out on dates and one took me to a baseball not baseball- a basketball game. It was rather fun but I knew nothing about the game. Another one, an engineer, took me to a baseball game and to date I don't know anything about baseball. I found that totally boring and I think it was because I was too serious, for my age I already was an old woman. I wasn't a young girl except in appearance.

It took me a while to calm down and actually enjoy a date. I knew, after, these boys really liked me. I had seven marriage proposals while in the United States. I couldn't possibly marry anyone who didn't know anything about the Holocaust. I just couldn't, I felt I had more in common with men that went through the war. To me they were men, they were in their twenties. I was only 17. I had more in common with them than any boy suitable to my age.

Eventually I me Karl, who was just finishing first year law in San Francisco and went home to Kansas City to visit his parents - to be with his parents for the summer. And he got himself a summer job. He already had a degree in accounting, graduated from UC Berkeley. At that time he already finished first year law school at Hastings College of Law in San Francisco.

And I felt, ah, here is a big gap in our education. How could I ever be serious about anybody like that. But, gee, I was actually very serious about Karl, right after the very first day I met him. And when he told me his father was incarcerated in Dachau, the year before he came, I knew that this was the right man for me. And, of course, it had to be felt on both ends, right? And I hadn't even finished high school, just two years of high school, my education was way behind. I just began to speak English!

That summer was a beautiful romance between us. He promised to write, and he did. The following January I was in Los Angeles with my aunt, who went there, just to visit, and decided to stay, and later on went back and sold her belongings. And she said she's going to stay in Los Angeles and her son, daughter-in-law, and I should come live there. I was elated because Los Angeles was much closer to San Francisco where Karl was. January, 1949, he came down to LA and we got engaged. But we couldn't get married, we didn't have any money until August, 1949.

Almost everybody at my wedding was a stranger to me. Just friends from work, this work that I had, little jobs while I went to school. Relative's friends. Except for one person, a little 10-year old boy - who is going to come and visit us this next Monday - who went into the line twice to kiss the bride. It was so lovely. We have it on record, on film, little home movies that we made.

While I was engaged to Karl I received a letter that my mother had died. She lived three years after liberation. And then she died of hardships suffered in the camps. There were no medications for her and her lungs just collapsed. There was no antibiotics to be had. But mother wrote in her last letter that she was very happy that I am happy in the U.S. So at least she died happy.

And in 1991, I went back home where I was born, where she is buried. And that's the first time that I was reunited with my mother since our separation in Auschwitz. I talked to that tombstone as if she was alive. That cemetery was in such disgrace - horrible shape! And her beautiful marble stone that my dad put up was broken in half because, our neighbor told me - we have it right on film - that the people brought their goats into the cemetery and they knocked their stone down. They were very, very strong. And they had them tied to my mother's stone. In act, when I visited, I had to undo the cords that they were tied to. And a kindly neighbor repaired it crudely with a metal frame that caused it to rust right onto the beautiful marble stone.

And my grandma's stone, I could hardly find it. It was totally overgrown with these thorny branches. My husband found it, he uncovered it and there it lay and we cleaned it up. I found my brother's, Joseph, who was an engineer and was in an industrial accident and died shortly before the Holocaust. And grandpa's stone, where I have a picture sitting on that stone when I was just barely a year and a half old. And here I am, back in that cemetery as an adult, after the Holocaust. At least I know where they are, resting in peace.

Did you have any negative experiences after you were liberated, being a Holocaust survivor?

I had all sorts. I know I remember in Sweden, the very first experience I had was when we arrived in Sweden, and we all had to remove our lousy clothes. Of course they were going to burn it, in Malmo, Sweden. And they sprayed us with DDT and then we were, a group of us were to go into a shower. And this was a big shower room, for a big high school with a big Olympic sized swimming pool. I guess big and an Olympic size is redundant, so let's just say an Olympic sized swimming pool. So there were many, many students although I don't know how many. And then we were to go into the showers, where the students usually shower, and nobody wanted to go in, nobody. We all had the same fear: that shower may be gas even though we knew we were liberated. But you see, we didn't trust yet. So, they understood. So somebody, a Swedish person, a woman, removed her clothes and went in, turned the shower on, and said "I am here".

And then ooh, we rushed in, it just felt so incredible. But I'll never forget how hesitant we were. But there were all sorts of mirrors. I'll never forget when I looked into that mirror. It was really the first time that I saw a mirror since I left home. The barracks had windows that were so filthy you couldn't see anything. Sometimes, in water, you know Auschwitz, the clay in Auschwitz, the soil in Auschwitz was really clay, it wasn't soil. So when it rained, all these puddles were there. So we would get down there actually to have some water, because there were no spigots in the barracks. We had nothing to drink so we would hold our hands to you know, have some water or wash our faces. And, that was against the concentration camp rules, but we did it. But, I would see sometimes my face in it, you know, but here, was a full length mirror in Malmo Sweden.

I looked in there, and the very first thing I did was [crosses arms across her chest]. You know, all these girls with me were budding young women, even though they were very skinny. And there I was, totally flat, you know totally flat. And I could count all the ribs and my hip bones. I was absolutely, I didn't recognize myself, my hair, my eyes looked so huge, relative to my face. And my hair stood up, like as if I had a crew cut, it was so filthy, and probably as I scratched it. I'll never forget that mirror. I was ashamed of my body.

Do you have any pictures of yourself at the point?

I have a picture when I was in there for four weeks, and you can still see that I'm about 94, or 95 pounds by then.

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