Tears stream down her face. I take Rena’s hand. Squeeze. “You’re done, Rena. You’re done.”
She nods and weeps. We sit quietly looking at the fire, our hands clasped across the generations. Her voice cracks when she finally whispers, “No one ever listened to the whole thing before.”
She looks so innocent, so hopeful. “Do you think it will go away now? I was hoping I would tell it and never have to remember it again.”
“I can’t make it go away,” I say, wishing I could.
She shakes her head.
“Maybe sharing it with others will help it be less painful?” I suggest.
Then, in true Rena fashion, a rush of good memories pour out of her. She doesn’t want to make anyone go through what she did, she wants to give us something positive. “Don’t you think people will want to know about the kind American major who took us gave us a mansion on our first night of freedom?” Her eyes are brim full but she still looks for a way to make us stop crying. I turn the microcassette recorder on again, and lean back to listen until her voice becomes mine, once more. . .
Germany was divided in half between the Russians and the Americans and we decided to walk to the American side. They weren’t going to let us cross, but then I said, “Please, we were in Auschwitz and on the Death March.” The Major turned pale and told us to come through the barrier. Then he walked through the town looking for the biggest house he could find. It was a mansion—I had never seen such a large house except in movies and he banged on the door, until the servants answered. Their masters had fled, of course, and the major ordered the servants to wait on us hand and foot, “Coffee! Chocolate! Anything they want. I want you to serve them breakfast in bed and bring them warm robes and towels.” There were marble floors and oriental rugs. And a bath tub with claw feet. I had my first bath in over three years, there was no disinfectant, no SS, no men to shave me naked, just white bubbles and hot water, so hot to scald my skin off. I soaked up to my neck and sank my head beneath the surface. I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed the years of dirt and filth and slavery from my skin. I scrubbed the lice and memories away. Danka couldn’t get me to stop. I was mad with it—oh, to come out of that bath clean of all the past.
That night we slept in a real bed with real sheets, white and clean, like Erika’s and the kapos had, only even nicer because we had feather pillows and a balcony with two glass doors that looked out at a garden. Danka, Dina and I slept in the same bed. There were other rooms but we did not want to be apart in freedom. And this bed was so large, so warm and lush and comfortable. This was our first real sleep. It was deep but dark. I did not dream yet. That came later. But I heard the guards. My body knew the time and my mind heard them yelling. Four a.m. “Raus! Raus!”
I jumped from bed, no idea where I was. Quietly, I paced the room, back and forth, we should be up in the toilet, lining up to be counted.
“Raus! Raus!”
My whole body shivered. Outside the balcony windows the palest hint of light finally touched the sky. Only then did I stop pacing and wringing my hands. The sky was still grey but softer now, no longer a harsh metal sky to cut the heart to shreds. Danka’s arm slipped around my waist and squeezed me tight. This was freedom, a quiet room at dawn. Arm in arm we watched the world grow pink.
We were moved to a hospital for a few days and then a displaced person’s camp where we were nearly deported back to Germany because we had no papers. I gathered the girls we had been with in Neustadt Glewe—Dina, Danka and a few others—and we went to a Major’s office. He said he had no choice but to deport us. We fell on our knees, begging him to let us stay in Holland. “We were three years in Auschwitz. Please, don’t forsake us. We suffered so much.” We grabbed the major’s knees and wept. “Please, don’t do that to us. We have seen such horrors. Please don’t send us back.”
“All right. Enough of that.” He tried to pick me up off the floor. “I won’t deport you to Germany.” He tried to show us out the door but we were overcome. To receive such kindness after so many years of being treated like insects and trampled on. There is no way to describe our feelings—to be humans after so long of being told we were not. We fell on our knees again to thank him!
Girls who made it from Auschwitz through Death March and Neustadt Glewe to Holland,
It was the Americans who sent us to the Red Cross and Relief Team Number Ten, where the commander, a Dutchman by the name of John Gelissen, put us to work helping Dutch people to get home. These were people like us, finally freed from the camps, but we saw no one from Auschwitz. We remembered how the girls from Amsterdam dropped like flies. How many of us had survived?
After a few weeks all the Dutch people had found their homes. The commander was at a loss what to do with us—we had no home, no family, and no country, either. So he gave us jobs. Danka and I sewed, the others cooked or cleaned. As long as we worked we could stay in Holland, so we worked hard. We worked so hard that when the commander discovered we had been hoarding bread under our beds, he was very understanding. It was so embarrassing, but we could not help ourselves—we had never seen so much bread in three years. And just in case things turned bad again, we hid loaves of it under our mattresses until it got moldy and began to smell.
He sat us all down and said, “You do not need to save your bread anymore. You will never lack for bread again,” he promised. We nodded but were not convinced. I didn’t want him to be mad at us, so every night I checked to make sure the bread we had hidden had not gotten moldy again, and after a month or so, we started to believe that there would be bread tomorrow and stopped storing the extra crusts under our mattresses.
John Gelissen and Rena Kornreich’s Engagement Picture
The commander was very kind and good looking too! He took us dancing but danced twice as many dances with me as with the others and so I began to fall for him. Danka adored John but did not think I should fall in love with a Gentile. I had already fallen in love with a Gentile once before though, so it seemed only right to fall in love with a Gentile, again. Gentiles are not so different from Jews. We are both human beings. We love; we laugh; we cry. And on July 29, 1947, two years after the war, John Gelissen, commander of Relief Team Number Ten, married me.
We tried to start a family at once, but I miscarried. When Sylvia was born, I was so happy. I can’t tell you. When they handed me this little perfect baby, my own baby, and I counted all of her perfect fingers and all of her perfect toes. ‘I love you,’ I told her. ‘And I love you John and I love you nurs and I love you doctor. I love the whole world!’ And I meant it too.
We followed Dank to the United States in 1954 and had four children total: Sylvia, Joseph, Peter, and Robert, and now we have three grandchildren, Shaun, Julia, and Zachary John. When we retired we went to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, which reminded me of the Carpathian Mountains in Poland.
“I found a good husband and have a good life . . . but I will never forget. Every year on May second John gives me white and red carnations, to celebrate the anniversary of our liberation. This day is more important than your birthday, he writes, because without this day there would be no birthdays to celebrate. Love, John.”
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Rena Kornreich Gelissen died on August 8, 2006. She was surrounded by her family to the very end. For four years, John visited Rena’s gravesite every day and used to joke that she finally had to listen to him. He joined his beloved Rena on, July 10, 2010. They are buried together in Bethel, Connecticut. Every May 2—Remembrance Day—we send red and white carnations to be placed on their graves.
The Brandel Family (left to right: Norman, Danka, Sara, Eli)
Danka and Eli Brandel were married in 1948 in Holland. After everything Danka had been through, all she wanted was to have a family of her on, but she had difficulty conceiving. The doctors in Holland could not help her. In 1952, they moved to America where she went to an obstetrician/gynecologist, who performed a procedure that Danka considered a miracle. She was able to conceive, but like her sister she too miscarried. Finally, Danka was able to carry a baby to full term though and gave birth to a son, Norman, in 1955. It had taken seven long years. Soon after Danka had Norman she told Rena that she had too much love and had to have another child. This was another hard pregnancy and Danka nearly lost the baby, but in June 1957, Sara was born. She named after Mama, Danka and Rena’s mother.
“Family was the most important thing to my parents, especially after losing most of their own. They were devoted, protective, and loving parents. Needless to say, they were overjoyed with their grandchildren, and spent as much time with them all as possible. Never having had the opportunity to know my grandparents due to the war, I didn’t realize how much I missed of that special relationship until I witnessed my own children enjoying that special bond with their grandparents.” Sara Brandel Cohen, Danka’s daughter
Danka and Eli have five grandchildren: Andrew, Eric, Jamie, Jenna, and Adam. Danka passed away on November 21, 2012—she was 90 years old.
Gertrude (Rena’s oldest sister) emigrated to the United States in 1921. She married David Shane and had one son, Irvin. All of the family photographs from before the war come from Gertrude, who died in New York in 1994 at the age of eighty-eight. Rena has no idea what fate befell Zosia and her children, Herschel and Ester Stuhr. Despite efforts to locate the children in hopes they had been hidden in a Christian orphanage, Rena was never able to find her niece or nephew. Any information about their fates would be appreciated. lt is believed that Nathan Stuhr, Zosia’s husband, was lost in Siberia.
The fate of Sara and Chaim Kornreich is unknown. Rena believes that they were among the one and a half million Jews exterminated in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. According to Alex (Jozef’s son), the Jews forced to leave Tylicz for Florynka—Joseph, his family, and the Kornreichs-were transferred to Grybow, Poland. Alex escaped from Grybow and fled to Slovakia where he worked in the resistance. While working for the underground he heard reports that the Jews in Grybow were forced into the Nowy Sacz ghetto or put into vans and gassed. Alex survived the war; he has one son and two daughters and lives in New York City.
Fela Drenger #6030
Dina was separated from Danka and Rena in a military compound in Holland; she emigrated to France, is married, and has one son. Erna and Fela Drenger survived Auschwitz and emigrated to Israel. Of the twenty-five Jewish families who lived in Tylicz before the war; none live there now.
Records indicate that Tolek Krukont died in Auschwitz on 24 September, 1942. After saving Rena and her father, according to the rumor in Tylicz at the time, Officer Hans Joskch was transferred to the Russian front.
Because of the coat she found in “Canada,” Rena believes that Jacob and Regina Schützer were exterminated in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Rena never heard what became of their daughter, Cili Schützer, there is no mention of the family in the digital records now available through the Auschwitz Museum. Sadly, Gizzy’s death is recorded—Gisela Schützer died on 23 October, 1942 (this information was not available when we were writing this book). The family Rena was staying with when she turned herself in, the Silbers, were able to escape from Slovakia and emigrated to America.
After the death march, Janka was separated from Rena and Danka in Ravensbruck. She survived the war and is married and lives in Germany. Rena does not know what happened to Mania (Birnbaum, Mania b.1922-06-08, camp serial number: A-15260 ) and Lentzi, who were also separated from Rena and Danka in Ravensbruck. It is not known what happened to Aranka.
In 2012, on the 70th Anniversary of the first transport, we heard from the Gross family. They never knew what happened to their cousin, Adela Gross. Adela’s cousin, Lou Gross, was only a toddler when Adela was sent to Auschwitz. The authorities came for her sister, but her sister was ill so they took Adela instead. When they came back, the Gross family hid Adela’s older sister and fled into hiding. Adela’s sister survived the war and every year, Adela’s family in Slovakia, honors her memory by going to the train station in Poprad where the first transport originated.
What became of the kapos Emma and Erika is unknown. But to Emma, Rena always wanted to pay a debt of gratitude—without Emma they might never have survived. Other women from the first transport have also reported a kind kapo by the name of Emma—her last name was never known.
Andrzej Garbera saved many lives, including Rena’s; he died a war hero at the age of twenty-three. In 1990, Rena returned to Poland for the first time since the war and was finally able to place flowers on his grave.
Of the men prisoners who helped Rena and Danka little is known: Heniek and Bolek, Stasiu (Artista), and Tadziu (Wisniewski, the water pump operator) were Polish citizens. While Rena does not know if they survived or if they are still alive, she would like to thank them, wherever they are, for helping save her life and her sister’s. (Author’s Note: With new digital archives now available a partial list of prisoners in Auschwitz is now available and the following names were registered: Flajszhakier, Heniek, b.10-5-1920, camp serial number:141992; Lajchter, Heniek b.22-6-1922, camp serial number:177913; Jakubowicz, Heniek, b. 1919-08-25 camp serial number unlisted; Zajdler, Bolek, b.1911-10-10 (Niwka), camp serial number:184092, remarks:ewak. 1945 KL Buchenwald
Marek Sterenberg (#161910 ) did survive the Death March; he never made it to America, though. He stayed in Poland and became a guard over Nazi prisoners, the very men who had tortured and brutalized him. In retaliation he took vengeance on his former captors. Marek was overpowered and disarmed by one of the SS prisoners, and shot to death.
Of the SS Rena came into contact with, especially the lesser ranking SS, little is known. The following information has been compiled for the reader’s information from various sources, including two survivors’ personal accounts.
“It is estimated that (Carl Clauberg) conducted sterilization experiments on about 700 women. In 1948 he was tried in the Soviet Union and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Freed in an amnesty in 1955, he returned to Kiel in the German Federal Republic, boasting of his ‘scientific achievements.’ Only after the Central Council of Jews denounced him was he arrested, in November 1955; he died in August 1957, shortly before his trial was to begin” (Czech, 81 0).
Josef Mengele was “accused of selections, fatal injections (phenol), shootings, beatings, and other forms of deliberate killing” and the suspicion was raised that “he threw newborn infants directly into the crematoriums and into open fires. . . . For over twenty years Mengele was able to evade all extradition attempts; he died in a swimming accident in Brazil in 1979” (Czech, 819).
“Heinrich Himmler . . . used terror and force against the opponents of the Third Reich and transformed his fanatical race ideology into concrete politics and organization—like the system of the concentration camps. . . . At the end of the war, Himmler tried to escape capture disguised as an army private; after his discovery and arrest, he committed suicide on May 23, 1945. . . . Rudolf Hoss (SS Lieutenant Colonel). . . was named Commandant of Auschwitz in 1940. Characterized as an assiduous, petit bourgeois executive, he organized mass murder with technical and administrative meticulousness.
Arrested in 1946, he testified at the Nuremberg Trial and was extradited to Poland in May of that year. In April1947 he was sentenced to be hanged and was executed on the grounds of the camp [Auschwitz]” (Czech, 814).
“Among the SS supervisors, Mandel, Taube, Drexler, and Hasse distinguished themselves in their savage treatment of women prisoners” (Strezelecka, 396). Margot Drexler finished the war in Bergen-Belsen. There is a survivor’s account that on the day of liberation female prisoners dragged her into the latrine and held her head under the sewage; this account does not confirm whether she died or not, or if she was ever put on trial for war crimes.
SS Juana Borman, “the women with the dogs” in prison.
Juana Bormann was also known as “the women with the dogs.” We did not find out who she was until after Rena had passed away, but she would have been so relieved to know that SS Borman was convicted and hung for her crimes against humanity.
SS Irma Grese at her trial.
Irma Grese (#9) was referred to as “the beautiful beast.” Both women were tried in the Bergen-Belsen war crimes tribunal and sentenced to death by hanging for torturing and assaulting prisoners (source: Gutman, 1990).
SS Maria Mandel in prison.
Maria Mandel was put on trial for war crimes and sentenced to death by a Polish court. She was executed in December 1947 (source: Rittner and Roth, 29). It is unknown whether her sister, Elisabeth Hasse, was ever held accountable for her actions, or what happened to Maria Mullenders.
According to Caroline Moorehead, author of Train in Winter, SS Unterscharführer, Reporting Officer, Adolph Taube, was executed for his war crimes—however, at this date we have not been able to confirm which tribunal he was convicted at or where he was executed. There is no record of his cohort Freidrich Stiewitz, ever being held accountable for their “calisthenics” or other murderous actions in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Rena in Auschwitz 1990