page 4 of 12

Play Movie

Please report errors to: info@tellingstories.org.

4-Arrival in Auschwitz

Can you tell us about your arrival to the camps?

On the third day in the late afternoon, the train stopped. People climbed on suitcases to the little window to see the name of the station and they read something like "Auschwitz." We didn't know anything about Auschwitz, we didn't say anything. Some people saw something far away—some barracks, and we almost prepared to descend. But it started to be night and the car didn't move. We tried to lie down again and that's when the train moved again. Later on, I realized they moved from the station of Auschwitz into the camp. This was a special ramp which they made when the Hungarians arrived.

Again, the train moved for about ten minutes and stopped. Suddenly, a commotion started outside, noises from outside. They opened the door and they started screaming, "Everybody out! Everybody out!" By now we were in Birkenau. It was night by then and we heard orders given in German and shots were heard, and dogs are barking, and orders given in Yiddish. "Everybody down! Down! Down! Leave everything in the car!" People jumped inside the car and these were the sondercommandos in striped uniforms. I just remember that I had a feeling that a jail was close by and they used the jail people to help them. They started to push all of the belongings in front of the train. They spoke Yiddish—we didn't understand.

Now we were down on the platform—thousands of people—and they push us and pull us, and people start crying and screaming. We start to lose each other and the families tried so hard to hold to—and they push us and it is night and far away we see some smoke and soot and flames and smells. It was like a nightmare.

In the midst of this nightmare, we heard on the loudspeaker that men and women—men should make a separate column on the left. When my mother heard this, that father's going to leave, she just collapsed in my arms. Now she's fainted, and we try to bring her to and we all scream and cry and people push us and are pushing to go because they had to move the column ahead. We scream and cry and when mother opened her eyes and she saw where she was—the nightmare—she fainted again. We to shake her and cry and scream, and finally mother came to. We hug and kiss and cry, and finally they push the men. My father and my two brothers disappeared in the crowd at night and we never saw them again.

Mother's just crying and crying and I try to calm my mother and help her up, and "Mother, don't worry, I'm going to be with you." I felt so good, I'm going to be with my mother. "I will help you, I'm a grown up girl, mother," crying and crying. And through the whole column of women and children, I pushed and pushed and pushed. It's night. All those smells and all those noises—people screaming and looking for one another.

As we marched, the column is pushed ahead. Suddenly, I realized that in the front of the column, there is a little—maybe it was an elevated platform—I'm not sure, but I could see a few SS officers. It was lit and a few SS officers—one of them was Mengele; I could see him with gloved hands showing young girls to go to the right and others to the left, and when I realize that, I tell mother "They are separating us!" And mother starts screaming and crying "Don't leave me! Don't leave me!" "No, I won't leave you." I figure out how can I stay with mother? And I thought, maybe if I would be as old as mother—mother was forty-six years old. So I put my kerchief over my head, I tried to walk stooped, to limp and go with mother. As the column before us separates and we arrive in front of the officers, he shows me go to the right, mother to the left. I ignore him, I say something, I mumble, I continue to go with my mother, again limping. He sends someone who comes with a bat and hit my arm so hard that I had to let go of mother. I am pushed to the right and mother is pulled to the left, I look back, I cry, I see mother, she's crying after me, screaming, holding her hands. This is the last time I saw my mother—this is the image, it stays with me. Mother, just like a statue of pain and anguish and I am pushed and pushed, I am pushed.

And others are coming, and I don't see mothers anymore. All those who come to the group of young girls, they're all crying, because everybody left behind a mother, a sister—they're all crying. And other girls come, and they push us and push us, I don't see them anymore. I didn't know what happened there, obviously.

Selection in Auschwitz

All those, right, who are pushed to the right, and here they start a whole group of girls—a big group of girls are chased through a little forest, they chase us, they hit us, they scream at us, they whip us and we run and run and run through a little forest until we arrive at a big building. We enter a huge hole and they us to line around the hall, to align against the wall. They tell us to undress and make a big pile in the middle of the hall. There were men working there, so we had to undress completely, they told us to keep only the shoes. Then, there was an old inmate, probably a Polish girl, with a little basket going to each one of us and asking for the last remaining jewelry and cut all of the jewelry which was left on us like rings and earrings and chains—they took all the jewelry.

I have a little story with that girl and I have to tell you the story. When I was in the ghetto, my mother was very worried about the young girl—I was the only girl in the family—what to do to help me if I was in danger. Mother came up with the idea to buy a pair of shoes with wooden soles and a wooden heel where the heel could be removed. In that little hole of the heel, she put some jewelry—some rings, some chains—and put back the heel. A new pair of shoes, with wooden soles and telling, "Little daughter, if something happens, you always can buy your right of freedom of your life with something which is in your shoe." Those shoes in the train were too heavy, so I removed the shoes and I took from my little brother a pair of sandals.

So here, when we arrived to Auschwitz, in that chaos and commotion, I completely forgot about my precious shoes, and I stepped down on the platform with those sandals of my little brother. When this girl came to remove the jewelry, and she saw me with the sandals she says, "How are you going to exist here with this?" I say, "I don't have any other shoes," so she removed her loafers, a good pair of shoes, and she took my sandals and put them on and gave me a pair of shoes. I blessed her, when I was in Auschwitz, that she gave me a pair of good shoes, for a while.

Here I was, undressed now, with the shoes that she gave me, and then we all had to go toward the corner of the room where there were a few stools and a few men—barbers—and we sat on the stool and they shaved us, all over. The shaving, it was a very painful process because the girls cried. It was now a sea of hair—braids, we had long braids. I remember how the braids always made me have nightmares about braids. This is why I always wear braids, maybe. So, shaving. The girls were all crying and when they shaved them they didn't look like them anymore, they looked like their little brothers—they could laugh. After we were all shaved, they ordered us to go to the next room, which was a shower. We got a very short shower, with no soap, obviously. And then to the dressing room and everybody got one gray uniform—short-sleeved, gray uniform—and two pieces of underwear.

Then we all gathered outside. They told us to arrange ourselves, five in a row in a column, and they counted us. Guess how many, okay? I heard 421, "Vierhunderteinundzwanzig." It meant 421 girls entered the camp on that morning, it was by now morning, right? After the war, when I asked how many men entered the camp—because many men were on the front, on those work detachments—I heard there were only 200 men who entered the camp that morning. You put together 400 and 200—600, 600 people, 600 men were alive the following day, and of those 400, eighty percent, eighty percent were taken to the gas chambers. We didn't know for a long time, we didn't believe and we didn't know.

Okay, so now I am in the camp, entering the camp. Do you have any questions about this?

Auschwitz

Could you describe the smell of the camp?

The smell I felt already at the station. Only later, when we were in the camp for a few days and we saw all those chimneys, that's when it became a problem, you know, the idea of what they contained. I will tell you of that.

Let me tell you how I usually describe a day in the camp. The camp that they took us to was at that time in Birkenau, Camp A. So as they took us into the camp—it was early morning, and what we saw—and this is what I have pictures of [referring to historical images shared with the interviewers], what we saw entering the camp. It was a vast extent with hundreds and hundreds of gray barracks. Everything was gray—the barracks were gray. The barracks were in rows and separated, each row of barracks—or two rows—separated by the other rows by barbed wire and watch towers. All over, they built these huge towers, and huge electrified fences. Hundreds of barracks.

As we enter Camp A early morning, I hear some music playing. Thousands of women in Camp A all align in front of their barracks for the early roll call. Thousands, well dressed—we were only in the same dress—it was raining a little bit, and it was cold, early morning. To feel the raindrops on your shaved head, it was a very strange feeling. Here, they had so many rags on them and they were crying, many of them, when they saw us marching in. We didn't understand why, but they knew why. They take us through the camp, right? So many, many barracks. This was a camp with brick barracks, not wooden barracks, which was other camps, brick barracks. They take us in further, and further and all over, women in front of their barracks until we get to an empty barracks—I think it was number fourteen, or twelve. They take us in, and the barrack was completely empty, it was lined with three-tiered bunk beds, built in. There is a picture of it. They divide us, there was a woman there who separated us for the middle and upper level—eight girls here, eight girls there and she said "Put the shoes on the cement." They push us, it was very low, you could hardly sit you had to crouch inside.

A few hours later, another transport arrives and more girls are divided into the same bunk beds. Following them, another group arrives. You know there were three, four trains arriving to Auschwitz from Hungary. By a couple of days, we were about twelve girls for every level. We had to put our shoes under our head. I don't remember if I had or not a blanket. But for sure there was no mattresses, no pillow, no sheets, no nothing—just a plain plank. This is how we slept, twelve girls. We were just like sardines in a can. If one girl—we always had girls who wanted to change position at night and we just screamed at them, because we all wanted to change position.

I tell you, one day, early day, in camp A, early morning—about three–four o'clock—the sirens started sounding, everybody out for roll call. The supervisor for that barrack—the barrack had about six, seven, eight-hundred girls, there were about twenty barracks like this in A Camp and about twenty in the B Camp. In early morning, the sirens started to sound, and the whistles and "Everybody out, out, out." We needed to go somewhere and couldn't. Everybody had to go out and align for roll call. It was very cold. It's four o'clock in the morning. We had to—five in a row, and wait until the SS people made their rounds from one camp to another, from one barrack to the other. When the supervisor would say that this many girls were all here. Those roll calls could last for hours, for hours, whether rain, shine, snow. People sometimes couldn't hold it, they had to relieve themselves, others fainted.

I remember how those early times, when they were all from my hometown, we were all the Hungarian girls. I had my five—it was Zsuzsi, who was my boyfriend's little sister and three cousins. Girls of fifteen and sixteen—we always put them in the middle. I didn't like to stay in the front because it was painful for me. Another, Haedi, was almost as old as I was—I was the oldest—I stayed in the back. This is how we stayed for roll calls. The roll calls lasted sometimes hours, and the sun came out and at least it was a little warmer.

Finally, when the sirens sounded, we could break the formation and everybody ran. Where? To the latrines. Where was the latrine? I have a picture of the latrine—the one in the barracks of this Camp A was a latrine with a cesspool in the middle. I remember it was open and three rows of seats with hundreds of holes. I think it was in the cement. Holes, hundreds of holes, and all around, "Faster, faster" we couldn't hold it anymore. There was a line, and some really couldn't hold it. Finally, when we got to a hole, to relieve ourselves, there was no toilet paper and after that we all ran to the next barrack which was a lavatory, to wash off a little bit, all over. Obviously, we didn't have soap, we didn't have towels—nothing to wash up. After which, we all had to go back to our own barracks, and crouch in front of the barrack for the breakfast.

Now what was the breakfast? They brought from the kitchen a cauldron of so-called coffee or tea, and they brought in a sheet, brick breads—dark, moldy. They cut it in front of us so uneven—on the tables—so unevenly that we're all looking to get the bigger piece and put a piece of jam or a piece of cheese or whatever on it, and everybody got a slice of that one. unclear statement And one bowl was filled with tea, it was served for five girls with no spoon and no cups. At last we were all friends, I never had to fight with my friends about how many gulps they drank. But we understood, after a while, how many gulps of coffee there is in a bowl like this. That was the daily ration of bread.

At noon they brought us there again, we had to stay there in line for soup—a cauldron of soup, served in one bowl for five girls. We didn't have our own bowls at that time for soup. It was a thin vegetable soup made of cabbage, of turnips—who knows what, sometimes carrots. If I saw potatoes, I saw potato peels, because potatoes were always stolen by the girls in the kitchen. Very thin, we had to drink it. In the evening, we got the same vegetable soup that we had to drink day in, day out for weeks. It was absolutely the same.

Every day, more and more people arrived. One or two weeks later, the food was so tasteless, some couldn't eat it. Some started to lose weight. The girls were dirty, they started to be infested with lice. They were cold always, they would scratch themselves for the lice. In two, three weeks there was another selection at which time they checked us in the bathhouse, naked, and if the girls were too skinny or too pale or had scratched wounds, they separated them. Sometimes you saw sisters being separated, it was heartbreaking—the crying and the running—one after the other—one being beaten or finally letting them go with the others that were selected. This is how everyday more and more Hungarians arrived. I remember how a cousin of mine, a little girl off sixteen, arrived a few days later into another barrack. Faigi. She was so happy to find me, I was older than she was, but it lasted only a few days that I saw her.

This whole lasted about six, seven weeks. And everyday, two, three thousand—two, three transports of Hungarian Jews arrived. Meanwhile, we sent that many people—there were four chimney into Birkenau, four gas chambers in Birkenau—and there were days when all four we spewing flames and soot and smoke. When we asked the old timers what they are, they were laughing at us, mocking—"You're crazy, What do you think, your parents ending up there. It will happen to you too, soon." And, indeed as we were beaten and always threatened to end up in smoke. This was all the first few weeks when the Hungarians came and we were together with the Hungarians.

Then one day, I will stop here because the new selection...unknown phrase