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4-Auschwitz Experiences

Also you said your sister was on a horse-drawn carriage. Where was that going?

The horse drawn wagon was going to the Kanada War detail where I worked while I was in Auschwitz. There they deposited all the goods, and everything that people had brought along from home, and of which they were stripped before being sent off to the gas chambers.

There were mountains of clothing, piles of shoes, masses of hair which they used, which they recycled. They used them to make mattresses, small mattresses for submarines. There were toothbrushes, teeth, luggage from the many countries of the victims, origins, and they were everywhere. Also, there were thirty huge warehouse barracks filled with these goods. And when I was assigned to work there with my mother and sister, we had to separate these items. And once in a while we would run into some food, we would find some food in the packages.

And mother did something that I'll never forget here; it almost cost her life. She took some things, I don't even remember what kind of food it was anymore-but she took some food-I think it was smoked meat-and she wrapped it up in a light dress or some kind of garment that we worked with, and she anchored it with some pebbles that the road in front of Kanada was lined with, and she threw it across the electric wire fence to the next camp-and you know, just next to us-only separated by these electric wire fences. That was the Zwillingslager, which means the twin camp. And they were used for experiments in Auschwitz, whereby they tried to find out the secret for having twins and triplets, so that twenty years hence Hitler could have a new army, to conquer the world with.

But there were these zwilling - which means twins, next to where we worked, they looked so emaciated mother just wanted them to eat something. And she was caught and she was brought to the Lagerkommandant, and my sister and I were just beyond ourselves; we thought that we'll never see her again. But the Kapo who saved my sister so many times at selections spoke up for her. Says, "Yes, she did wrong, but her daughter is the youngest member of this camp, and she is my best worker, and that if you kill her, you'll kill her daughter too." And he wasn't talking about me, she was talking about my sister, because she kept wanting to make it good for her so that she will survive. And the Lagerkommandant told her that, "I'll let you go this time, but if you do this again, you will never see daylight again." This is the common theme of threatening the inmates with death.

The inmates – it's amazing; I have to mention this because under the circumstances one just would never expect any kind of goodness from any of the inmates. But, I can tell you that your best friend would steal your bread, and yet that best friend didn't want you to die, but she wanted to live. So mother would tell me in the very beginning, "Eat your bread all at once, at least you'll have something in your stomach." These people who would do this would also help out and save your life at a time when you least expected her to.

Mother would faint from the summer sun, it was so hot and there was nothing on her head; it was shaven bald-by the way, she had very long hair when she entered the camp, and she would wear it at home in a little-in a bun. On the holidays she would wear a wig to go to the synagogue, or when she went shopping in Beregszäsz on top of her head.

So, but now she had nothing on her head, and once in awhile she would faint, and well she couldn't keep up marching to work. So when she would faint, we would wait till the countdown is very close, we'd raise her and say "Open your eyes, mother, open your eyes!" Somebody from behind would hold her up while we were counted down, and she may even collapse after that, which she did sometimes, sometimes she made it. And she was so close so many times to being taken away.

And another time, she would fall behind because she couldn't march as far, and the inmates would change places with her so that she could fall behind-the column was very long-so that she could make it to work. Now, if anybody had been found doing this, it would cost the life of the person who did it. And I was saved also, in the very end, by inmates; they half dragged and half carried me back to the car at one time toward the end when I was beaten up very badly, and I lost consciousness. But that's how I survived. And I didn't come to for days later, but that is another story.

When everyone was being taken to the gas chambers, why weren't you taken?

There's no rhyme or reason why I wasn't taken because I was only fourteen, and Annuska was only twelve. Now, I understand Annuska may have been-she was a very thin little girl. But I do think that along with your question, why did my family survive in such large numbers relative to other Holocaust families? I really think is because everybody in my family had blue eyes. And I had green eyes. But...it made such a big difference to them. A girl from my-from Beregszäsz where I was interned with my family and where I went to school-she was with us, and she was on the women's side with her little brother and mother. She had blue eyes; she was close to my age, just a little older. And her brother and her mother had brown eyes. And doctor Mengele said, "Who is she? Your mother?" And she said, "Yes, she's my mother" in German. And he said, "Are you sure she is your mother?" She says, "Yes, she's my mother and that's my little brother." And then Doctor Mengele called somebody over and said, "You make sure that this young woman gets an extra bowl of soup a day."

And she received an extra bowl of soup throughout her time in Auschwitz. And she thinks it's because she had blue eyes. Now, you probably know that they experimented on blue eyes. I've never been inside Doctor Mengele's office, but I do know from books that his office was lined with eyes on the wall. So, it's such an incredible thought that one could be saved because of the color of your eyes, that it's totally possible.

Did you make any friends in the camps?

There were no opportunities to make friends in the camps other than those who are very close to your bunk-bed. Because, we couldn't just meander around, and go and introduce ourselves. We were constantly under watch, whether it was at the work place or inside the barrack. However, I know that I found it easier to talk to someone who spoke the languages that I spoke than to try my two years of high school German with someone-it took at lot of energy to do that. Besides, we couldn't just go around and visit people even in our bunk-our barracks, let alone to other barracks.

However, I do know that Anna Frank was where I was in Auschwitz. And that she was transferred out just about three or four months-I think it was three months-before I was transferred out to Bergen-Belsen. And she was exactly six months older than I was. Now, her fate was totally different from mine, and when she lost her sister, she succumbed, and died as well. I was luckier.

I transferred to Bergen-Belsen from Auschwitz. And in researching, I was able to find the dates of all the trains that were transferred from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Bergen-Belsen. And it was from process of elimination that I was able to find out when I was transferred. I knew always that it was somewhere at the end of December or the beginning of January, approximately. But from the Bergen-Belsen education center I learned that I was on my way on New Year's Eve; actually, I arrived in Bergen-Belsen on New Year's Eve.It was already the new year, 1945. So every time there's a new year since that I think back of what it must have been like.

Our cousins, who survived up to that point yet, were my closest friends. They were also closest at home, but here we were very close. Their parents, the father was taken away much earlier, and the mother was sent directly to the gas chamber with the younger siblings. My aunt had seven daughters, and only four of them were allowed to live, the other three went with my aunt Sarolta straight into the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau .

After we were-after the liberation, when we had more strength and we had more food. And remember in the camp too we had to work twelve hours a day not including the time that it took us to go to work, march to work and back at night-and this on three hundred and fifty to four hundred and fifty calories a day, was a starvation diet. Long after I was in the camps, one day when I learned about calories, I decided to count the calories, approximately, of all-the best day that I can remember during my incarceration period, and I came up with these figures: three hundred and fifty to four hundred and fifty calories. And I think if I say four hundred and fifty that I am exaggerating somewhat. So this, I think, gives you an idea of how weak one is on such a small starvation diet. And nothing nutritious either.

Consequently, it affected my health. I had, to date, thirteen operations, and they were basically malnutrition related operations. My spine didn't go properly, and my shoulders didn't go properly from malnutrition. I reached a point where I could not raise my arm beyond this level (lifts her hands to about the height of her shoulders), I could not comb my hair or wash my face unless I did it this way (leans forward and cups her face in her hands), and I had to be relieved from the tremendous pain that I suffered. First this shoulder, and then three years later my right shoulder.

Six More Camps After Auschwitz

Can you talk about some of the time between January 1st, 1945 and liberation. What are some of the key moments?

I went through six additional camps since Auschwitz. And, one was Bergen-Belsen, where I turned fifteen years old, without any celebration whatsoever. And, from there I was taken to Hanover, Germany where I worked on an assembly line making gas masks. Hitler feared, Hitler wanted each of his subjects to have a gas mask, fearing biological warfare-poison gas attacks is what they called it at the time-from the allies, which, however, never materialized. You must know that. But, he feared that this would happen, and instead of murdering us all, they ordered us into their factories to work, because there was a tremendous manpower shortage in Germany, and we were to help with the German war effort. I didn't know how to do anything; I was only a student in my life. I was very young. But some of the older inmates caught on very quickly and were able to do much more, I think, than I was.

After Bergen-Belsen I was sent to Braunschweig, which is an industrial city, and during the war, it was a meat industrial city-canning meat. And during the war, all the meat was sent to the soldiers, so they had a canning industry with fish, canned fish. And every morning we would march to work and back, and there we would find a huge pile of, I mean a huge pile of fish bones. The inmates could smell it from way back. I only can tell you that they smelled it because I couldn't smell. I lost my sense of smell in Auschwitz. And so, I would relate to what they told me. And there was always some brave soul who ran out of the line, closest to the pile, and grabbed a handful, and ran back into the line, and we adjusted the line, it may not be the line where she ran out of, and she would give us some of these fish bones.

And for years, "I wondered, What kind of fish could this be?" It was soft. And it was-you know, I know herring, not herring, um-sardines from home, would be edible with the bones, but these were at least two, three times as big as a sardine bone. And many years after the Holocaust, when I did some research, I found out that because they didn't have meat and that they had to revert to fish for the civilians, they cooked it first, and filleted it. And of course the bones were all-were put outside to the garbage to-for the garbage pile to be picked up at sometime. And I can tell you, you could hardly wait to get to that pile of fish bones because they were soft and they were very good. And that's what we ate.

But, during the day we had the job of clearing the broad boulevards of Braunschweig, so that German artillery and vehicles could pass through. I did the same thing in Hamburg. The tall buildings just fell and covered the boulevards, and so from Hanover I was sent to Hamburg. And it was really strange because Hamburg was the exit point from Europe for all my relatives who came to the United States to freedom. And here, I was there as a slave laborer, clearing their streets, so that again German artillery and vehicles could pass through.

From there, I was sent to a small town called Beendorf, B-E-E-N-D-O-R-F. This is population eight hundred something; I remember seeing the plaque at the entrance of the town. But it was a very important town for Germany, for under a sizable mountain, in a salt mine, was this huge underground factory. It manufactured parts for the V1 and the V2 rockets. These were the missiles used by the Germans during World War II to bombard Europe, and some of them actually hit the parliament building in London and caused considerable damage.

I was learning to make precision instruments for the V1 and V2 rockets-and I was chosen for this in an incredible way. In the previous camp we all had to raise our hands, like that. And we thought we were being punished and I had no idea why else one would have to raise one's hand-and, industrialists in civilian clothes came in to this camp with the SS, and they were looking at our hands, and they would say "du," or "du." They would pick hands, and I was among them and we had to step forward. I learned much later that I was picked out because I had small hands.

When I learned that, it was a very interesting way that I learned it. I went back to Germany because I was called to do some work in schools, to give my eye witness account in their-in the university and high schools and so on. The first time I was asked to come back, I had a phone call from a student who was working on his PhD thesis. He wanted to meet me and interview me. I said, "Okay". So he came over with his recorder and interviewed me, and I said, "What are you writing your thesis on?" He said, "On Hitler's underground factories." I said, "Is Beendorf among them?" He said, "Yes, and that's why I want to talk to you." So I am the first one that he has ever met and he has been trying to find someone who worked there.

So I said, "I'll tell you what: You share your information with me that you have from the German books, and I'll share my eyewitness account with you of Beendorf. "Great," and that is where I learned about the nitty gritty details about the job, and the temperature, and the spacious place, and how even the temperature was, and how many civilians worked there-which I had no idea, I just knew that there was civilians-and so on. So he said, "And you had to raise your hands, right?" I said, "That's right, how'd you know that?" He said, "Because I know that's how you were selected for your work." And that is how I learned how I was selected to go to Beendorf. This was a top secret place in Germany.

The interview stopped - but same interview team returned on May 31, 2002 to continue at this point.