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5-Interview Continues

Date: May 31, 2002 (2nd of 2 original interviews in 2002)
Interviewers: Katie Rose ('03), Whitney ('04), Jonny ('04)
Location: San Francisco, California

Note: The original student interviewers from May 6, 2002 returned to continue their interview with Gloria 2 weeks later.

Hello, my name is Whitney Larson, I'm Jonny Meinke, and I'm Katie Rose Breslin, and we are continuing our interview with Gloria Lyon on May 31st, 2002 in San Francisco, California.

So we're going to go back a little bit and start with some really basic information that we forgot last time. So if you could please state and spell your name.

My name is Gloria - G-L-O-R-I-A - Hollander - H-O-L-L-A-N-D-E-R - Lyon - L-Y-O-N.

Please state and spell your name at the time of your birth?

I was really born with a name that was never used; nevertheless, it was Zora - Z-O-R-A - Hollander.

And what were you called?

I was called Hanci, that was my nickname, H-A-N-C-I.

What is your birth date and how old are you now?

I was born on January 20th, 1930, and I am seventy two years old.

And, what was the city and country of your birth?

The name of the town is near a city, near the city of Beregszäsz. The name of my town when I was born it was called Velki - V-E-L-K-I - Berehy - B-E-R-E-H-Y. However, when I was eight years old it was changed to Nagy Bereg when it became a part of Hungary. All the names of the cities and towns changed - were Hungarianized; consequently it's N-A-G-Y - next word, B-E-R-E-G, Nagy Bereg (Nadge Bereg).

And how do you spell the other one, the city?

Beregszäsz, eight kilometers away, was the provincial capital. It's spelled B-E-R-E-G-S-Z-A (with an umlaut)-S-Z. Beregszäsz.

Beendorf Ammunitions Factory

So you left off talking about how you were selected for the V1 and V2 missiles; could you just continue what happened in Beendorf?

At the previous camp to Beendorf, we all had to raise our hands, and we thought that we were being punished - we were given no explanation. Then SS and industrialists in their civil clothes - only the industrialists were in civil clothes - came into the camp, and they looked over our hands (raises her hands above her head). And they just said, "Du, Du Du," selectively they pointed to us to step forward when we're called and I was told "Du." I had to step forward, and to me it seemed like a selection. But why would these people in civilian clothes, these men in civilian clothes do it? So it was really guesswork. It turned out that those of us who were selected were taken to the railroad platform - actually, that was a little station - and we ended up at a place called Beendorf, B-E-E-N-D-O-R-F. That was a very small town, population some eight hundred and it hasn't changed much over the years.

Under the town there is this huge salt mine; it goes beyond the town limits. Hitler moved his underground factories - I'm sorry - Hitler moved his armaments industry, that is the major armaments industry, into the salt mine to protect it from allied bombardments. We slave laborers were called in to work in them. It turned out to be a very significant place, for this is where they worked on the V1 and V2 rocket parts.

I was assigned to a German non-Jewish civilian man who spoke only German, and I just spoke very little, two years of high school German that I had, and I wasn't familiar with technical words. But he showed me what to do. And I learned how to - well, they were precision instruments for the V1 and V2 rockets, and that's what I worked on at Beendorf. This trainer was - I can only think of good things about him; amidst of all this cruelty there is somebody who is gentle and understanding and good. I even felt that he had compassion for the way I looked and for the way I managed and tried to do my work. Sometime he left part of his lunch to me; he just left it there, and there was eye contact between us, which told me that I may eat that which he leaves over there for me, and of course very carefully. So I had a little more to eat, periodically, in Beendorf.

The Allies knew that this was a top secret place. By the way, this trainer that I had - this was a tremendously courageous act on his part to take a risk like that, to feed me. Because the slightest infraction was punishable by a bullet through the head (points her finger to her temple). People were not - nothing was tolerated at that place, whether it was with us or the civilians.

Did you ever witness somebody being shot there?

I witnessed somebody being carried out - this was a huge place - with blood dripping, yes I have. But not the actual shooting itself.

I remember I worked in the night shift. This was a factory that never stopped. They had two shifts working around the clock, and we had to walk all the way from the town to the elevators, which was inside of this building which had the entrance from the outside. The elevator mechanism was situated on the top of the roof, exposed. If a bomb had hit it, there was no other way out from down below; we would all have suffocated. Because the only way that you could go up and down there was through that elevator. And the Allies bombed this place so much, we could only hear the thuds, but nothing ever happened to the operation of this factory, the V1 and V2 factory. There were also other factories nearby; we passed them from the elevator to our workplace. And Siemens had a big factory there; they manufactured guidance for the - what are ships called that are under the water? Submarines. There were all sorts of interesting things; of course they didn't tell us what we were doing. These things were left up to our imagination.

How did you leave Beendorf and where did you go next?

Could I tell you about some situations in Beendorf? From our walk from the elevator into the galleries that they called our workplace - the galleries were just big holes inside the mountain and the salt was all crystal like, and when the light touched it, it was like diamonds shining. The ground we walked on was also salt, and I had these tremendous open wounds on my right leg because I already suffered from malnutrition. These wounds would start out as a pimple, and then five and ten and they would become one large sore that simply refused to heal. And as we walked in this, on the salt, we would kick up the salt dust, and I was in terrible pain as a result of it. Later I learned from my son who is a doctor that he's been thinking about that and he thought that the salt may have acted as a disinfectant, and actually prevented an infection to occur. But they were all over my right leg. I could even see the bone, my tibia here. Even today I could just touch it and there's just a very sheer skin over it. But I'm fine with it; I'm not hurting and it's not interfering with my life in any way.

Do you have any other stories?

The civilians worked there too and we would always have to stand aside and let the civilians take the elevators first. Then we would be - we would enter the elevator and we would descend twelve hundred feet into the belly of the earth, into the salt mine. There we would wait for the rest of the group to be brought down by elevator with a guard standing by, with a gun of course. This sort of gave me a chance to also see what was happening around me, and I would observe. Also as we walked from that point once everyone descended into the salt mine; we marched and we could see that on the left side there was a track, one set of tracks. These steel boxes with wheels under it were pushed - carts I think is a better word - in steel carts men in striped clothing were placing things from the other galleries into these steel carts, and pushed them toward the elevator. I guess from there it was taken up and outside.

Just one more thing, and that is upon my return to Germany, I learned that while these instruments that we made underground were safe while we were underground. Once they were brought up, and exposed to the elements, about fifty per cent of them turned out to be bad because they rusted as soon as air came in contact with it. And moisture.

Did you or anyone hear of anybody attempting to do any sabotage or anything?

Sabotage was only in our minds at this place because the slightest infraction was punishable by a bullet through the head. Besides, our work was inspected right after we finished with it, before it was even passed onto the next person. So sabotage was not likely, not in our position, where we were, perhaps at some other point. But I think God did the sabotaging for us.

How were you treated by the civilians who were working there with you how aware were they of your situation and how did they treat you?

There was a group of civilians working in the back and they were mostly women. There were a few men but I remember mostly women. These were Germans who worked there, this was their job. After work they just went home, unlike us. I had to walk to the town of Beendorf and that was quite far from the factory. Most of the inmates worked just in the neighborhood, right there, within a block from the factory itself. So they had not far to walk. But then again, when I returned there, I learned how dangerous their quarters were, because right next to where they were housed was a double-walled ammunition building. In fact it was hit but only one of the walls was penetrated, and we saw that, it was not repaired in all those years while it was East Germany. Luckily the other walls stayed intact and they were not blown up. Some of them even were housed in that very barrack where the ammunition was. Imagine if that was exploded it would have wiped out the building that held the structure of the elevator. If that elevator had been struck, that would have been our end.

Where I stayed, it was inside the town of Beendorf across the street from a school and it helped me to find where I lived because that school is still there. I went back when it was still East Germany. The mayor, whose offices were almost across the street from where I stayed, said "There is nothing here, there is just a little town." I said, "but I stayed nearby there," only the building where I stayed was no longer there. I remember it was an L-shaped building. There was a lot of glass, very unusual for those days, it was very modern. With me were a lot of prisoners who sabotaged the German installations in their countries, particularly from Denmark and Norway, there were some from France and Belgium. This was very interesting I that respect when I recalled it.

But we worked very hard and we were protected from the elements and I think that was probably the best thing for me under the circumstances. If I had to choose which camp I'd want to be in, I think, looking back, that was probably it, even with all the dangers all around us. I did not know that was the ammunition building, after all some people stayed there, some of us, not I. But some of the victims whom I met later - when we had a reunion - they were horrified. They didn't realize that this was an ammunition building either. They were told "you are very lucky, you were in a strong building with two walls, but they didn't tell them what there was.

Whenever there were civilians working close to us it helped our situation because we were not beaten anymore quite so openly as if they weren't there. But instead, of course, they would take our numbers down and then when we returned to our barracks. And in my case I wasn't in a barrack but it was really a regular building, and that's where they housed us there. The others were in barracks, but I haven't found anybody who was with me at that place because so few survived and by the time I returned most of them were old and couldn't make the trip either from various countries.

Transport to Ravensbrück

How did you leave Beendorf and where did you go after.

Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Braunschweig, Hannover, Hamburg, Beendorf, Ravensbrück was my last camp, my seventh camp, and from Beendorf we were taken to Ravensbrück in cattle cars. By the time I was on that train I was in pretty bad shape. In addition to the malnutrition problems, there were all sorts of diseases all around me and deaths were more frequent. We were all weak and sick and frail, very, very frail. None of us were really well anymore. And we were deposited in this camp from cattle cars, and again without any provisions. I don't even remember how long we traveled from Beendorf to Ravensbrück. That is why I have very little recall about Ravensbrück , I don't remember what I did in Ravensbrück because by that time I was ill. I did not have any of these diseases that many of the survivors or the inmates of the time suffered from. But I had other problems because I was so young.

It was Ravensbrück, but I do remember how we left Ravensbrück. We walked to the railroad station. There was a little station, which I saw again, now it has another floor attached to it. Remember this was East Germany at the time. They moved a person in there who was able to fix radios and televisions, and that was quite new in East Germany at that time. The mayor very proudly announced that we are starting to have private industry and this is the way he proved it to me, that a man lives there who repairs - he has his own shop - and he repairs radios and televisions. So I thought, wow, this is 50 years back for the United States.

Was that your last stop?

My last camp. From there we were taken - just not straight away - but we were taken somewhere and the train kept stopping and moving just quite aimlessly. It seemed that nobody knew where we were going. But in retrospect I realize the war was still on, it is the tail end of the war and the railroad tracks were interfered with. And they had to repair it here and there in order for the train to be able to go another few kilometers or whatever. But that's just my imagination, I must tell you that so you know the difference between an experience. To us it seemed as though they don't know what they want to do with us. But actually, perhaps we are both right, both my imagination and my experience, because we ended up outside by the fields somewhere. I remember we were locked into these cattle cars and the Germans decided between themselves as to what they were going do do with us. They are going to shoot us right here in these open fields. As long as we were in the cattle car we didn't mind. But once we learned that this is what they had in mind of course, this made a difference. Again, the same kind of mentality I encountered that I did when I was on that truck in Auschwitz that was taking me to my death. And here again, there were all kinds of reactions. By this time most of us felt that this will really be our end. It's just a question of time, how long can we survive on the little that we eat.

How did you learn what their intention was?

We heard them, they talked about it quite openly and we were locked into the cattle cars. They talked in German. And many women among us spoke German quite fluently. And there were also Germans and of course they shared. We talked about this inside the train. And here we were sitting on all these who died, about 50% if not more of the women died. And we finally sat on top of them to make ourselves more comfortable. When I hear people say the dead are stiff, to me, it was so soft after having sat on the floor of the cattle car with my bony body. It felt good to sit on somebody whose function no longer helped anybody other than becoming a cushion for our comfort. And of course, once they opened the doors of the cattle cars, they shouted to us, "Raus, Raus!" And we should push out the dead and the sick. And those of us who could walk, just walk in a certain direction and in an orderly fashion. The words were always the same. The commands were so similar from camp to camp. After awhile, we just knew what they were saying, even if you couldn't understand every word.

What were some of the other commands that you recall.

Oh, the commands? The name calls I remember even more, verfluchte Juden. We were called all sorts of names. And untermenschen was not an unusual way of referring to anybody by the SS and the guards, mostly we heard the SS.

Gloria continues to recount her experiences in the cattle car.

There were so many dead among us that it was appalling. When we were given the command to throw out the dead and the sick we decided in our cattle car that as long as we are going to be murdered, we are going to leave the there. We pushed out the dead just so that we wouldn't get beaten up right then and there. We left the sick stay behind in our cattle cars. And we continued to walk as we were directed and saw a long line. And this beautiful open field, it had just gentle rolling hills in the background, all luscious green. One could hardly imagine that at such a place such horrors could take place - gun us all down. And yet, something did happen to reverse that but I wouldn't learn for many, many years what it was. But at that point I reached the end of the line before turning off and I could see that two women were doling out something from burlap sacks. So my eyes were glued on those burlap sacks. They scooped out a handful from one and a handful from the other. They were indeed raw macaroni and sugar - just crystallized sugar - and they plopped it into the prisoners dresses. So I just held up my dress to receive my ration when, I wasn't looking at my dress, and to my horror, it went right through my dress because there were holes in it and I wasn't aware of the holes. They just spilled on the tall, mushy grass. I just stared at it and finally decided the sugar is a total loss, I'm going to pick up the raw macaroni. Just as I reached for it somebody beat me and again and that's all I remember, I lost consciousness.

I really would have died there had not my fellow prisoners still been capable of human feeling and compassion. They told me later that they half dragged and half carried me back to the box car. When we had a reunion many, many years later, one of them said, "We were asked by the guard why we are dragging a dead prisoner?" She said, "She just fainted, she's not dead." And so they didn't say anything. That was so incredible to meet with these women who could hardly walk themselves and who still would do this for me.

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