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4-Auschwitz Memories

When you were in Auschwitz, after you were separated from your mother, did you meet anyone else you could go to as a mother figure?

It's very interesting because when I'm asked about the age, I say it's very important, I was the oldest girl almost always because I was twenty-two going on twenty-three and many, many of my age group were married and had a baby so they had no chance, right? I remember when I went to the second camp, they made me supervisor of the room because I was the most mature. Mature I always was, I was born mature. But I was the oldest in the whole group they could tell ?? one or two or three mothers. So, there were one or two, say, middle age women who never married, thirty, forty. But the majority of the girls were seventeen, eighteen, twenty, going. No, but there was somebody else who looked at me up. I was older, like Gugi, Suzy I call her, Gugi who was my boyfriend's sister-little sister-she was seventeen and I was her big sister, and for the first six weeks before I was tattooed, and before they went away from Auschwitz, I was like her mother, even after the war I was the one older than her. But I did have also once another girl who looked up to me like the older sister and I remember I have a story in my book how she was young and how she was so dependant on me and she wouldn't move from me. She went to steal food for me just not to drop her and then one day she was selected because she didn't feel good, she was sick, and I remember it was just the day I commemorated, my Yom Hashoah, and the whole night I couldn't sleep because I couldn't remember the name of the girl and I said 'I cried the whole night because I couldn't remember her.' No! I cried because it was Yom Hashoah! Finally the name came to me, so much more often others relied on me than I would rely on other, ok?

Do you have any nightmares that you remember when you were in Auschwitz?

No. No, I don't remember. I do remember, not a dream. I remember when I was in the train, how hard it was and the train crossed the bridge and I heard the clacking of the wheels and I saw the arches from the window, I sort of thought the allies would bomb now the bridge and the train would sink into the water and I would die and the cold water, how good it would be. I used to say it often because we suffered of thirst more than anything else. No, I don't remember.

Are your memories really vivid to you?

I have better remembrances than most of my friends. I can tell them dates and whenever I give a lecture the dates for me are very important when and how, and the number. I go into details. I remember they ask me sometimes about Sighet and about streets. Yeah I have a pretty good memory. I know that we arrived to Auschwitz on May 17th, 1945 that's my Yom Hashoah. I know that I was able to leave Auschwitz on December 12th. I remember I was liberated on May 6th, I remember all the dates, which are very important.

Did you keep a diary in order to remember certain events?

I like to write what happens. Now I have a diary of a year. What happened this year. But not day by day, no. My only diary-you know the story of my diary-you know? Want me to tell the story of my diary? Usually when I tell to students, I say "ok, here I was already in Auschwitz" and so many things happened in Auschwitz that I tell them that I wrote the book. And how in every letter there is a little story ? chapter of the part of Auschwitz. The chapter is called with my tattoo number. I cannot tell you all the stories, let me tell you one or two or three. Usually I end up with three stories, one is the story of the shoes, you know the story right? One is the story of leaving Auschwitz, how I called that I am a draftsman I know how to draw, I have worked in the movie house and I got out of Auschwitz, and the third is the story of my liberation, and this is what I want to tell you about. We were together with some POW in a factory there is viswasa? French POW, and they were very helpful and very protective and always brought some food and wrote little love letters to the girl of their choice, obviously they were French, they spoke French. And who knew French? Only a few of us who graduated high school. But they always gave us news about the political events. They are coming, they are a few days off, so we knew that the war is ending and we were very afraid that they were going to kill us. The camp would be mined, and then one day, on May 6th, 1945, which was two days before the end of the war, two days, we get up in the morning and the guards have left. They knew that the Russians were about one day far, so they discarded their uniforms, they put on civilians and they melded with the civilian population ?.

So here, now, we are free! We come to a roll call and nobody's there. And we realize that the guards are not there. Well, we are free. But the gates are still locked. So everybody runs to the kitchen, and we start stealing what we can find. Potatoes, I remember we put them in our clothes, as many potatoes as we could. We all came back to our rooms, we made a big fire, we boiled potatoes, we ate potatoes. And then, one girl must have said lets go to the gas quarter and see what we can steal there. And indeed, they went there and they found boots, and this and that, clothes. And I remember that I brought from there one notebook and a pen. And I went back to my barrack and I sat on my bunk bed and I jotted the first word in my diary. "Today is May 6th, 1945. Freedom-how can you express this is one word?" And I started the diary because I could not leave-okay now we're free, they opened us, we got out from there and the Chek? population who was also freed from the Nazis were very helpful they said "don't leave yet because the roads are destroyed, there are no bridges, there are no buses, stay with us, we will give you food, we'll give you lodging, stay with us." So we stayed, for twelve days. Everyday, I wrote it down. From May 6th to May 10th and suddenly here I am May 13th a year before I was in a ghetto and I described the ghetto and May 14th when I am in the train and May 15th...and finally I get to the day May 17th, I am still there. And I start-we are ready now to leave on our trip home which was a very complicated trip because there was no transportation-and I am in a state of anxiety. I'm going home because I hope somebody will be there, maybe nobody will be there. And I start to recall everyone brother. Where are you now? Will you be home to wait for me? I cry, because I'm afraid that I go home and I will be very, very disappointed. Boyfriends, brothers! And that journal of mine which I wrote for twelve days became such an important document that it is today at the Washington museum, the original and the translation. And you could see on the diary that I was crying. I'm going home, I'm hoping to find a home, to find brothers, to find boyfriend. Whom will I find at home? And indeed, I got home. And there was no home, somebody else lived there. No brothers, no relatives. Later on two cousins came, one uncle came, of the whole thirty, forty relatives. But, my boyfriend was there waiting for me. This is the happy end, when my students hear they start clapping. So, I like to tell them this story and then sure after we came home we went to school which was a lot of hardship because it was Romania again, the Hungarians had to give it back to the Romanians and I went to medical school and we had no relatives. It had become communist. In becoming communist it had become such a close society that by the time I did find my five brothers-alive-I knew [they were] there, I could not travel, they could not come to visit me. So, sixteen years I had to wait until I finally got a visa to leave. You have this in the book.

When you left the camp, can you describe what it felt like? Can you describe what it looked like? The sounds, the smells?

When I left to the trip or I left just to stay and wait for the trip because there were twelve days where we were there held by the French POWs who were also liberated and held by the authorities to give us food-

After that, when you left for good.

When I was on the trip? Well, it took me almost a month to get back to Sighet. Because we had to take trains and rides and walk and rodes were destroyed, sleep in the train stations. Budapest we stayed a few days well, I remember this event. As my train, which was an open train we all sat there and we took lots of stuff from the house. We got a German house  there, we lived in a German house and it was well stuffed and we took with us as much as we could carry and we sold it [to] peasants for food on the trip home. And I remember we were sitting on the train and on the train also came full with liberated prisoners. And I was screaming, "did you see any Apsan? did you see any Apsan?" Because I was wondering what happened to my brothers. I knew two brothers came with me and I didn't know whether they were alive or not. And somehow in the last day, close to Budapest, someone said "yes! we were together with an Apsan." I said, "Which one?" and his train left and I didn't know which one. I was very upset until I arrived to Budapest and it turned out that one of my brothers who lived in Budapest and I did know he was taken to the camps. He was taken through Budapest to Hungarian camps, anyway, he also came home and this is when I met my first brother but he immediately left abroad. He wouldn't stay, or nothing. And, well, I don't have to tell you about the hardship when we came back to Sighet and lots of others came back and there was this Jewish organization like the Jewish Center and everyday we went to the Jewish Center they had food, they had clothing and you could see people coming, arriving, and telling others who came [who were] already there. They met the relatives and you heard someone had died. And crying, and there were so many tears of happiness and of sorrow when they found out where the brother or sister was.

Missing transcript1:04:24 - to 1:04:50 While I was there in Sighet still a few more weeks, everyday we went to these posted notices......

Transcribed by: Dot G (2010)
Proofed by:

Do you remember any of the smells inside the camp, in Auschwitz?

No, well I felt the smoke, I felt the burn that was very familiar to us. There were very heavy days. I was in Auschwitz a very long time,much longer than many others, all together seven months. Most of the Hungarian Jews, after a few days,a few weeks were sent to working camps.I stayed down I was tatooed, the others were not tatooed. There were many many events in the few months I was in Aushwitz, very severe, this was the time when all the Polish ghettos were emptied and brought to Auschwitz, and very few entered the camp. That was the time when Kerichenstad was emptied and this was one of the very interesting remembrances of mine. First I was in camp A and B, they were both with the brick barracks then they took me to camp C which had the wooden barracks.The camps were aligned, there was the C and the Czech camp and the Gyspy camp. Close to us was a camp called Czech Camp, we didn't know why. And one morning we get up and the camp is full with people, Czech people, with their own clothing, with children, without their heads shaved, with packages, whole families came together. I could not understand what happened. Is the end of the war? This is how we felt. So we went to the fences and started to talking to them. They wanted food for the children, so we threw them food, and they threw us clothes because they had the clothes. We didn't understand what happened, a week later it was completely empty, they were all gassed.

Two days ago, I got from someone a document called Protocols of Auschwitz, Vrba translated in Hungarian. Vrba tells the story how when they brought the people from Theresienstadt they kept kept them for a few months. Even they couldn't figure out what was their rational— to bring families, leave them there and then a few months later take them to the gas chambers. So I also had one event of this.

Since you were so interested in sciences and medicine in high school...

I was interested to go to college, I knew I was going to be a professional, knew I was not going to be a semstress. I knew I am not going to be just a housewife. But for all the years that I had to wait, from '40, when I graduated until '45 the end when I started again, there was 5 years. I never lost this ambition to go and study.And it was a lot of hardship during the study years, but still it was in your life. People ask me, "Did you talk about it?", "Did you think about it?" I said, "You know, life had everyday new challenges. You had to take care of the new challenges. I was pregnant with a baby when I was in my first year of medical school. So here we had family and we had to work, we had to study and we had exams and there was communism and I didn't talk about my experiences, nobody would have been interested. Let me put it this way, the Jews from that town and the other Jews have not been in camps and they didn't want to hear it. They had this guilt feeling. So I didn't tell my story for a very very long time.

Seeing all of the sick people at Auschwitz, did that make you feel any differently about medicine?

I didn't think about medicine when I was in Auschwitz.

No?

No, no. I did not think.And if you are asking why we thought, I have to understand it. We lived in such a basic level that what counted was eating and drinking and having a good nights sleep and not having lice and not being beaten.Very very basic.

And there were times when you completely didn't care because the time, when i said the end of 1944, which was the most active time of Auschwitz. So many trains came and came and came and so many people entered the camp,and we were desperate because we knew, we understood already, and we believed everything and we were afraid that we would also end up dead.

When people say they do philosophy in camp, I am very sceptical about it. Sure sometimes we were laughing with the girls, someitmes we were singing,we were talking about parties.And what food and how to cook this and that. But essentially [it] was a very gloomy time.

Because you knew a lot of languages in high school was that helpful when you were in Auschwtiz?

Well in Auschwitz I was glad that I spoke a little German. And sure from Yiddish they would always understand. In Auschwitz and the other camp I was lucky to know French because I could sort of connect between the girls who didn't speak and the men who wanted to help out.It was helpful to speak all those languages.Then I learned English and Portuguese.

Could to talk about how you felt when you were in Auschwitz? Were you optimistic?

No I was just telling there were times when we were very very depressed.And sure there was always a glimmer of hope. But you know, when you saw was happened, when someone on you right or left is selected, there is very little hope.

I'm not sure I cried in Auschwtiz, I was resigned. We talked of being once liberated and telling them the stories, which never happened because by the time we were liberated everybody was interested in other stories.It is hard to describe one's–in those few months in Auschwitz I was in so many working camps, you work a few months and suddenly the put you in another. You see so many things, as I told you I saw those people coming from lodge and saw those people from terestage coming and I saw so many selections and so many sickness. You know the story of my shoe, when the girl went to the infermary and you knew you shouldn't be sick because from the infermary you can not come back to work.