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5-Auschwitz Witness
Can you describe your interaction with any SS officers?
No, not yet. Not yet. I have to say that those barracks supervisors, they were all old-timers, and they were either Polish or Slovak. When they mocked us, we would ask, "What are those, bakeries, factories?" They said, "Sure, you stayed home for two or three more years and we were here building these barracks." I knew really, how hard it must have been for them.
They were very rough with us. They beat us, if we went at night, if we wanted to go to the bathroom or latrine, we had to climb down sometimes, and there was a bucket in front of the building. And they were hitting us, not to go. These were the first weeks in Camp A. Because then there were other camps.
Were these officers Jews?
Most of them were Jewish. They could have been Polish, gentiles, but I think they were Jewish. There were really few survivors. We understood later on how many had died building these barracks because they started to build them in early 1942 after the Final Solution was decided with all the rules and regulations of the Final Solution.
Had you been tatooed at this point?
Not yet.
We had just finished your first six weeks.
Six weeks was so-called quarantine camp. Incoming people come to this camp. After six weeks, there was a big selection and we never knew if it was good to be on the right or on the left. Somehow this time I found myself only with another friend on the right, and most of my row went to the left, they were younger. It turned out all those on the right were taken to be tattooed. And all those stayed on in Auschwitz for many, many months. And those who were not tattooed went back to their camp and in a few weeks they were taken to the gas chamber if selected or taken to working camps in Germany.
So I remained in Auschwitz. From Camp A they moved us to Camp B. In Camp B there were working girls. By now I was together with girls from France, from Greece, from Holland—from all over Europe. Hardly was I to have a girl from Hungary, hardly did I have someone to talk to.
From now on we went to work. See my number? I will explain to you this number later. I was tattooed. I went to Camp B. I started to work. We worked outside, we worked inside, sometimes building a hospital for the SS, sometimes on the roads carrying heavy bricks. Other times—there is a story when I worked inside a factory—all in Auschwitz. By now it was August or September. By now, thousands of people arrived to Auschwitz. By now, since the Allies were so close, they started to empty all the ghettos from Europe.
I was there when people arrived from Lodj, when people arrived from Terezinstadt. And this is when we started to believe that it is true this thing with the chimneys because we saw what was happening. I remember one day—I was absolutely sure this was true—I was in my barracks—and it was very close to the railroad station—and I saw a truck pull into the railroad station and lots of dead corpses being thrown into it. Suddenly they threw one and the guy jumped up. He was not dead. Then they just pushed him down and dropped other corpses on top of him. Then I believed that they were all doomed to the crematorium.
We were there for many, many more months. And this is when...
Wait. How were able to see that?
Because when I was moved from Camp A to Camp B, still close to the railroad station, it was very close to the railroad station. We could see sometimes. We also saw lots of people getting away from the train and not entering the camp. We saw the crematoriums burning and burning away. We were very afraid that this would happen to us also.
I would like to say that in these seven months I was in Auschwitz, there was a lot of starvation. You know girls didn't have periods any more. Some might say it was bromide, but me, as a doctor, I would say it was the starvation and it was the shock. Even during wartime, people don't do hormones. There was no nutrients for the hormones. There was a lot of starvation, there was very, very hard work. There was constant beatings. Actually I have a whole letter on the beatings if you remember. There were many, many selections. Somehow, I was lucky quite often to pass through the cracks and get out of selections. I was there until December, from May to December, not too many people stayed that long. All of my relatives, all of my friends, they all left to other camps and I was on and on and on.
Since I had written my book, there are many stories and I like to tell the story of the shoes to children. Do you want it?
Because they understand lots of things about Auschwitz. I tell them about how I had shoes that a girl gave me when I arrived and how the shoes got through after walking in mud and rain. And the sole came off, so I went to the supervisor of the barrack and I told her, "I don't have shoes, how can I go to work?" She said, "Ok. Tomorrow morning, come here and stay in front of the barrack, wait for me, I'll take you to the shoe place." The following morning there were about five girls. And what is the shoe place? There, where the trains arrived, and tons and tons of belongings were thrown out of the cars, they started to make piles; piles of shoes, piles of dresses, piles of jackets, piles. Piles of glasses. Even there was a pile of artificial limbs, can imagine? Our supervisor took us to the pile of shoes, which had already been paired. Those girls working there, hundreds of girls sorting. I envied them because I never worked there. And if they worked there, they could get a little food, a pair of shoes if they wanted. A cousin of mine brought me sometimes something from there.
The girls working there would try to pair them. When they found the right shoe, they looked for a left no matter the color. They put them together and tied them. It was good to be worn in the camp. So the shoes were already paired. My supervisor says, "Take a pair of shoes." So I started to see the size, if they were soft enough, I didn't have socks, I had lots of blisters. And I found a pair of shoes, one is brown and one is black.
Ok. Lots of people had unmatched shoes in Auschwitz. So, the following morning I go to work. We marched out of the camp, hundreds of girls. As I was marching, suddenly I see this one leg has the pair of my brown shoe. I got very excited about it. Indeed, I went after the girl when we arrived there, and I find her and I say, "Why don't you give me your brown shoe and I'll give you my black one so I have a pair or matching shoes. And she says, "Well, I want to have a pair of matching shoes. No, you give me." She wouldn't give it to me, and this goes on for days and days and days, every morning we argue. One day, I didn't see her anymore and I don't know what happened to her. And a few days later a friend of hers brought me the brown shoe. What happened to that girl? She got sick. She was taken to the infirmary. When she arrived there she realized the facts that the infirmaries and the patients were the first ones once selections started. She will never, never get back to work. So when her friend came to visit, she gave her the shoe to give it to me. And this is how I had a pair of matching shoes. This story is only right to realize what happened to the stuff and what happened to shoes and what happened to the people in the infirmary.
Now, I have many stories like this, but I am going to tell you to the end because you are short on time. The months passed. There was a lot of starvation, there were a lot of beatings. I have many stories about beatings. And selections. Now it was winter, it was December, and it was freezing cold. I was in the third camp, Camp C. In Camp C there were wooden barracks. It was not heated. We are all infested with lice. We couldn't go to baths—they took us once every three weeks for disinfection and we did not even get a piece of soap.
So we're dirty, infested, some had even all kinds of sores. I had frostbite, and I remember that I had men's shoes, and when I found a piece of paper on the sidewalk, I would put it in instead of socks.
It was miserable—cold, hungry, lesions on the feet. And no more work. They stopped the work because it was winter. The Allies were very close to the camp. The Soviets were coming on our back. They were beaten, and they were maybe one to two days from the camp. It was December. We realized if they come, maybe they will liberate us, but the Nazis are going to kill us before. They still had the crematorium. So the only hope was to get out of Auschwitz into a working camp. Indeed, every day, civilians came from Germany, and they were looking for 200-300 girls for slave work, and taking them to the working camps. Somehow, whenever I stayed in line, I couldn't get in the line. Then, on December 12, as we saw two civilians entering the camp, my whole barrack ran and stayed in line to be chosen. The guy numbers 200 girls, he says, "200, I have enough. You go back to your barrack, I don't need more." Here I'm the fifth in that row, and I'm desperate, and I get this great idea. I scream in German, "I am a draftsman, I know how to draw, please take me!" He took me. I was among the 201 girls who were taken on that night for disinfection, for a bath, for other clothing, for other shoes. Put on a train, and shipped to the other camp—it was called Weisswasser. Do you have any questions about being in Auschwitz for seven months?
Tattooed
Can you explain when you were tattooed?
I will tell you a little more about getting the tattoo. When I was selected to be tattooed, there were a few Hungarians, but they were all sent to other camps and other barracks. I got my number, there's nothing interesting about it. But I had to fill out a form with all the questionnaires, which I completely forgot that I filled it. After the war, when all the other—remember when I told you out of the five, only I came into the camp—out of my boyfriend's family, only one sister came out, which is 20%. It always bothered me why Moishi, so handsome, so talented, didn't make it. I was questioning myself, did he live beyond the first night, or did he die with my father and with the children and the elderly? I didn't know. When I went to Israel to Yad Vashem and I saw an exhibit of the sonderkommandos, it bothered me very much, "Moishi, Moishi, Moishi." Then, in 1990, after the revolution against communism, the archives were opened of Auschwitz, but only for survivors. So I was told by some friends that we could write to the Red Cross and they would tell us. "If you write them, 'your father was here, when and how he died, they will say the day or the camp.'" So I wrote them a letter about ten years ago, and I said, "On that and that day, we arrived, five people. Father, name, age. Mother, name age, Moishi, name, age. Yanko, name, age." And myself—name, age and my tattoo number.
I waited for about four years until I got an answer. They had nothing on mother, nothing on father, nothing on one brother, nothing on another. "On you, we know exactly when you were born, the day in Sighet. You arrived to Auschwitz on that and that day, you were tattooed on that and that day. You left Auschwitz on that and that day." Which shows that all those who were tattooed were registered in a most detailed way as only the Germans can do. Those who were not tattooed, must have gone to the gas chamber by number. 300, 500, 600. Understand? So this is what I wanted to say. The meaning of the tattoo. Here I have 7000, six weeks later when already hundreds of thousands have arrived. And "A" was a new series which started with the Hungarians. So six weeks later I was only the 7000th, and by then two to 300,000 had arrived. So you got it, the meaning of it?
Can you talk about the experience of receiving your tattoo?
There is no experience to it. It was painful, it was bloody, so what? We've never cared for a little blood or a little pain. The only idea was, that from now on, I was moved to the next camp, and I lost all the contact with my camp, to Camp B, very few Hungarians came with me there. And then at the end of the war in Camp C, which was the most miserable. And then I was in Camp C. Near me was the Czech camp, and I have some experiences with them. So many people came in the fall of 1944 because they emptied all the camps. I remember one instance, I was in Camp C, I got up in the morning and we heard people talking and children crying. We all ran out to see, we went to the fence. And there are people dressed in home clothing, with their hair on! Children, strollers, we couldn't believe it, we thought it was the end of the war. And then we found out that they were brought there from Terezin. And sure, they wanted to feed the children, but they didn't have food. We wanted clothing, and we just sort of did some transactions. We dropped our food, we got their jackets because they had all the clothing! And this lasted three, four, five days.
And one day we get up, empty! No one remained in the camp. And that spoke more than the noises. We knew what happened to them. So this experience not only of us, but those arriving and arriving at that time in the fall.
So let me tell you how I got out of Auschwitz, ok? So we arrived after a couple of hours to a second camp. And that was a nice working camp. There had been another 200 girls there—they were well-dressed, warm, everyone gets one bed, can you imagine? With straw and blankets. Sure, we still slept two in a bed because it was cold and we needed more blankets. But we had a little bit more privacy, there was a bathroom that we could go wash up in whenever we wanted. We went to work in a factory, and there were civilians in that factory. They were French POWs.
You know, it's nice to see men, young men, and those French people were very sympathetic to the Jewish girls. Each one chose a pretty girl, and started to bring her—we couldn't talk—but dropped her a little sandwich, a little food, a little letter in French. Who could read French? Only me because I had graduated high school, I had eight years of French. So here I was in between, writing and reading the letters. Sure I asked for a toothbrush, and after eight months I got a toothbrush. I asked for a needle and I could sew myself something. It was a little bit more humane. But one day I got sick. I had fungus, infections—luckily it was not so bad, they put me in the infirmary for a few days. If I had been more sick, they would have sent me to Auschwitz, to the end. But I was not.
Five months have passed working there and only in the last two months, I heard—not my name, I heard at the roll call, "Where is the draftsman who we brought from Auschwitz?" Here they put me in an office, where I was the only prisoner, with a German engineer—he was pretty nice to me, with French people and Holland people. I had it a little better than the others—I was the only one, they took me always when I needed to go to the restroom, the guys brought me some food, I remember that the Germany guy brought me on Easter some cake that his mother had made him. I was very impressed. And he always told me, "I know you could do better drawing." I had a little experience in drawing.
Anyway, five months have passed. Then, again, the French told us how close the Allies were. This is how we had news. We knew that the Russians are very, very close to the camp. We're very excited, nervous. We were very afraid at what would happen, if they were going to mine the camp and kill us.
Then, on May 6, 1945, two days before the end of the war, we get up in the morning and there were no guards. We went to have roll call, no guards—they ran away. They dropped their uniforms, and they melted with the civilian population, there were lots of Germans going back to Germany. So here we are, free. Now, we couldn't digest yet how—because the camp was still locked until the French people came and opened the camp. Everybody ran to the kitchen, to steal potatoes. We brought potatoes in our dresses, as many as we could. We made a big fire, burned everything in the fire, and ate potatoes—we didn't find salt, but we found sugar. You can eat potatoes with sugar. So we ate. And then I remember, it must have happened this way, I remember that one girl said, "Why don't we go to the guard's quarters to see what they have there?" Indeed, we all ran to the guard's quarters, and we found boots, and socks, and clothing, even lamps. I stole a notebook, and a pen. I came back to my bunk bed, and I sat down and I said, "Today is May 6, 1945—Freedom. How can you express this in one word?" And I started to write my journal.
I wanted to go home. I didn't know who was home. I always hoped Moishi would me among my brothers. But the Czech population, they were very, very nice to us and said, "Why don't you stay here. The roads are unsafe. We will tell you when it is safe to go. We will feed you, we will house you." And indeed, they fed us, I put on twenty pounds in twelve days. But everyday, I jotted in my journal because it was the anniversary of arriving to Auschwitz. And when I write about Auschwitz—you have it in the book, you saw it—I cried my heart out. That journal is now at the Holocaust Museum because it is a document that you write on the day of liberation. But I used it for the book. Indeed, after the twelve days when they let us go, and then when we arrived home, there was no home. There were none of my brothers whom I expected, no, Moishi was not home, my parents were not home. My boyfriend was home, and the rest you know the story. Now you can ask me questions.
