Holocaust Testimonies

JUDY ABRAMS

Context: Salvation

Source: Judy Abrams. Tenuous Threads. Toronto: ©Azrieli Foundation, 2012, pp. 25–29. Used by permission.

Judy Abrams was a girl living in Budapest when the Nazis invaded in March 1944. After lengthy periods trying to outlast both the Nazis and the Hungarian fascists, the Arrow Cross Party, she found herself hiding in a shelter. By February 1945—a bitterly cold winter—she and those with whom she had been taking cover finally heard the comforting words of a Soviet soldier, indicating that liberation had come for the Jews of Budapest.

That January 1945—a cold month in Hungary, especially in the unheated cellar—I had my brush with death by firing squad.

Not all the inhabitants of our tenuous shelter were equally fortunate. There was an elderly couple (they were probably in their fifties but seemed old to me) who occupied a small “room” at the far end of the cellar, a space previously used for storing wood or coal. They rarely spoke. Keeping to themselves, they exuded an aura of faded elegance in shades of grey: hair, clothes and the sadness that characterized their slow silent movements. Under the layers of outerwear to protect her from the cold, I imagined the lady wearing a simple dress of soft material in muted colors. She wore her hair in two wing-like rolls, held in place by fine, brown bone combs, a style fashionable in the 1940s. Like my Aunt Marika, she never looked untidy. It was as though their previous life of ease and good taste had followed them into the recesses of the dingy cellar.

Relieved that we had escaped the ominous visit of the Arrow Cross, I was bundled off to our corner. There, in relative safety, I began to hear shouts and screams from the back of the basement. The outer door then slammed while the sound of continuing sobs lingered. A curious child, I listened to the whispered conversations and gradually pieced together the story. The “hoodlums” had not stopped at examining documents and faces. Hungarian gentiles were seldom circumcised. After the outdoor inspection, the Arrow Cross thugs led the elderly couple back into the cellar where the dignified gentleman was told to lower his pants. Their suspicions confirmed, they marched him off to join a contingent of Jews who had been “caught” and made to march toward the Danube, a certain death by firing squad. But before taking him away, the men had done something bad to his wife, to the elegant lady at the back of the cellar. This was a secret nobody allowed me to share. After this event, her hair was no longer carefully rolled on top of her head and the men’s clothes she put on did not give off the faint aroma of perfume.

Strangely, this story has a fortunate ending. One day, two young men arrived at the house carrying on a makeshift stretcher the old man we had taken for dead. In his younger years, he had been an Olympic swimmer. As the victims were lined up along the banks of the river facing the Arrow Cross firing squad, he decided to take a chance. Before the bullets could reach him, he jumped backward into the icy Danube. Through the ice floes he swam to shore, where a woman found him naked and bruised but alive. She nursed him until he was ready to be returned to his wife by the young men. Who were the young men who carried him back? Sons? Friends? Neighbours? They asked for no compensation.

In her eternal black clothes, Nagyi began to look like an old Hungarian peasant. She bustled about baking yeastless bread, much like our ancestors did in the story of the Exodus from Egypt. Only now there was no Land of Canaan in sight. She still tried to maintain a semblance of discipline and refused to give in to my requests for pieces of the fresh loaves. Warm bread was bad for the stomach, according to the dictates of some obscure rules of health. She was the one who carefully portioned out the remaining bits of duck and the ever-shrinking stores of onions and potatoes in jute sacks.

Deprivation and anxiety did not improve her naturally stern disposition, nor did it make me into a more pliant child. I prayed with Mária and Auntie Superintendent, charming them with my faith. But with my grandmother I was more demanding and capricious. We were not well-suited to each other and needed the constant intervention of my gentle Aunt Marika or Mária, who usually took my side and cajoled me into a better mood by calling me “Kis Kutyám” (her little puppy) or other funny endearments. She managed to mollify my grandmother, too.

The thin walls did not muffle the sounds of battle. Bombs and cannon balls crashed into the ruins of the house above us, and sharp bits of shrapnel embedded themselves into the walls. Hand grenades were hurled into the garden as the gunfire came ever nearer. We had mixed feelings toward the Soviet liberators, who did not have a sterling reputation. Stories of looting and more terrible things done to women circulated. Besides, the closer the battle lines came to our house, the less secure our lodgings became. We were only barely below ground level. In the garden adjacent to ours was a real bomb shelter, dug deep and lined with cement. It was decided that we, the cellar-dwellers, would try to stay there during the day and return at night, when the fighting usually slackened. As we emerged from our dark hovel, we found the icy ground covered in debris. We stumbled and slipped, crawling. Keeping low, occasionally lying down as some manner of fire or shell whizzed overhead. Bullets glanced off the icy mounds and I seem to recall seeing bloodstains on the no-longer-white snow. I cried and begged to go back to the relative safety of the basement, but to no avail. Finally, we arrived at the shelter and went down the steps into the deep, narrow tunnel where two parallel rows of benches lined the grey cement walls.

Auntie Superintendent and her respectable friends sat down next to the people already perched on the narrow benches, all of them wrapped in blankets against the cold. Our small group—Mária, Aunt Marika and I—took our places at the back of the shelter. It was wiser not to expose ourselves too much to the scrutiny of strangers in case something in our appearance, speech or behavior betrayed our ethnic origin. We sat there, separate from the others, listening to the muted sounds of battle all day long. Then, under the cover of darkness, we crept back to our insecure shelter, the mattresses on the sagging springs of ancient iron bedsteads, and ate something that passed for an evening meal.

In the morning I was adamant. I wept and screamed and refused to budge. My grandmother, whose nerves by now had been stretched to the limit, gave me one of her withering looks, threw down the pile of blankets she had collected for the journey and muttered angrily, “All right, Miss Hysteria. I’d rather die than listen to this. We will stay. Just stop!”

The epithet, Miss Hysteria, was usually counterproductive and only made me turn up the volume of my protestations. This time, I stopped crying immediately and allowed Nagyi to savour her verbal victory. To my relief, the treacherous trip to the bomb shelter was cancelled. We spent another day in our cellar, listening to the escalating sounds of combat, to my perverse relief.

In the evening, when the other tenants returned, they had terrible news. A bomb had pierced the cement casing of the shelter, thought to be impregnable. It had made a huge hole in the back, where we had sat the previous day. Surely, we would have chosen the same place again. Once more, we had narrowly escaped.

One day in February the sun slanted through gaps in the oilskin covering the glassless panes of the basement door. Everything was quiet. We knew that soon Soviet soldiers would be coming to “liberate” us, in addition to possibly “liberating” us of some of the few belongings we still possessed. Mária and my aunt hid, assuming that the rumours about the soldiers’ behavior toward young women were true.

And then, there he was. A short, dark-haired man in a Soviet uniform with rows of shiny medals on his chest. He had a kind, intelligent face. We had learned a few words of Russian in anticipation and I called out a brave hello—“Zdrastvuitye.” To our surprise, he did not answer in Russian, but instead asked, “Parlez-vous francais?” (Do you speak French?). This was Nagyi’s moment. In her inimitable Hungarian schoolgirl French, she answered yes, “Vooi,” gradually recovering her air of respectability as she translated for the inhabitants of the cellar the news that the Germans had finally capitulated. The war was over in Budapest.

HANIA AJZNER

Context: Eastern Europe

Source: Hania Ajzner. Hania’s War. Caulfield South (Victoria): Makor Jewish Community Library, 2000, pp. 129–143. Used by permission.

The testimony of Hania Ajzner, told in the third person and referring to herself as “Ania,” relates to a young Polish Jew who was smuggled out of the ghetto in Warsaw and concealed with a Catholic family. She shows in this extract the steps that were taken to assist her process of adaptation into non-Jewish life, prior to being placed in a Catholic boarding school—where an entirely new set of tactics would need to be developed in order for her to keep her true identity a secret. The account ends on an ominous note, as the girls in her dormitory view the fires coming from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April 1943.

“Remember, your name is Ania Zakoscielna. You were born in Rostowiec. Your father’s name was Jozef Zakoscielny. He was killed in 1939, in the army. Your mother’s name was Maria Zakoscielna. She died early in the war. Your grandfather’s name was Wojciech, grandmother’s Zofia. Never, ever mention Hania Ajzner, or anyone called Moniek, Sarenka, Lajzorek, or anyone else from the Ghetto, even if their name was Marisa, Jurek or Marjan. You are a Polish Catholic. You don’t know any Jews. Regard all the people you have known as dead, or, better still, as never having existed. The Germans might have got to know about them, and so they might be able to tie you to them. Now, let’s try again. What is your name?”

Her mother’s words, uttered during her training, immediately after leaving the Ghetto flashed through Ania’s memory. She was aware of her own voice making the possibly fatal slip: “…my friend Sarenka always said. … Her parents called her Bambi. She was like a baby deer, Sarenka …,” she tried to cover up. She hoped that her new friend Danka did not notice. However was she going to manage to keep her story straight? This business of remembering two “life stories” was very difficult. That night, she tried to sort out her thoughts and plan her actions. She thought back to how she found herself here in this convent boarding school, away from her mother and everything that she had ever known.

It had been dark when they had arrived at the garage in an outer Warsaw suburb, called Bielany. The driver said to them, gruffly, “I can only take one lot of you at a time to just one address. Decide who’s going first. The rest of you will be safe here in the garage.” Mrs. Cytryn had no doubts about priorities. “We have to get the children out first. Take the Ajzners out now.” But one of the strangers had been talking to the driver and Ania saw him take out a roll of bills and hand it over. The man and his wife threw their bag into the bed of the truck and climbed into the cabin. The driver opened the doors of the garage, drove out, locked the doors again and drove off.

He came back later, parked the truck, locked the garage doors and went home. The escapees had to settle down for the night, a cold January night in Warsaw. Ania was glad that Mother had made her wear two sets of warm woollen underwear, as well as two jumpers, woollen stockings, her warm boots and her warm coat. The cold that was inside her combined with the cold that was outside her. It was so intense that she seemed to turn into an icicle and she wondered whether she would actually wake up in the morning. Halineczka and Ania were settled inside the cabin of the truck, as it was marginally warmer there. Everyone else settled as best they could in the garage. Ania woke up once during the night. Before she realized where she was, she called out, “Mummy, my doona has fallen down again!” Her mother reached into the cabin and hugged her, saying, “Ssh, it’s all right, dear. It will be morning soon, and you will be warm then.” Ania remembered where she was and what had happened, and for the first time she cried.

In the morning the driver came back again, and took the other couple of strangers out. The woman hesitated, looking at the children, but the husband pulled her into the cabin. Only the Ajzners and the Cytryns were left. Ania thought mutinously that if Father had been there, he would have been the first to go. It had been he who had arranged the whole escape, including the place where they were going. As it was, another freezing night was to be borne.

Daylight finally came. The sun was shining outside. The garage was made out of planks roughly nailed together and you could see out through the cracks between them. It stood in the middle of an empty block. Fresh snow glittered on the ground and was heaped up in drifts against the walls of the garage and there were icicles hanging from the beams inside. After relieving themselves into a slop-bucket, the escapees managed to melt some ice and wash their faces and hands with it. Then they ate some bread and jam for breakfast and drank some more of the melted icicles. Ania was worried that they could not light even a small fire, but the smell of it would have betrayed their presence.

At some time during the day they heard the voices of some children who came to play on the empty block. Ania thought to herself that the world seemed all wrong. She should not have to sit there in the dark and the cold. She should be out there, playing tag, or blind man’s bluff, or throwing snowballs and building a snowman. It was not so long ago that she would have been doing just that. In those days, she had been a little girl, just like every other girl, with a loving mother and father and lots of friends and cousins. Why did they all have to be sitting absolutely quiet, so that the sharp ears of little children would not hear them? Why should she be now hiding like a rat in a sewer, with all the power and majesty of the law bent on hunting her down? At one time one of the boys tried the lock on the door, but found that he couldn’t get in. As it grew dark the children’s voices died down and they went away. The truck came back. When the driver pulled in, he said that he could take another lot of them out that night. Mrs. Cytryn stuck to her principles, and said: “Women and children first. The Ajzners are next.”

Ania, Halineczka and Mother got into the cabin of the truck, Aunt Marjan and Aunt Tola got into the back, and they set off. They arrived at Mrs. Maciejowska’s apartment after dark, on the 25th of January. Their new hostess greeted them warmly. “You poor things, you must be absolutely frozen and hungry!” she exclaimed when she saw them. There were five of them, Ania, Halineczka, Aunt Maria (Mother), Aunt Tola, and Uncle Moniek. … “No, Uncle Marjan,” she corrected herself. Thank heavens Halineczka was still Halineczka, even if she was now Wengielek instead of Ajzner. Mrs. Maciejowska bustled about, setting out bowls of steaming hot soup on the table. Then she set up a tub and filled it with hot water so that Ania and Halineczka could have a hot bath and go to sleep. They had to share a narrow couch, but they were both so tired that they fell asleep immediately.

The next morning there was a conference. Halineczka played with a doll, but Ania listened closely. First, they decided that staying together was too dangerous. The neighbours would soon notice extra food being brought in, even if Uncle Marjan and the girls remained hidden. So they would have to split up. Madzia would take Ania and move into a room with a reliable family. Uncle Marjan would go into hiding, and Aunt Tola and Halineczka would also find a room with a family. As soon as possible, Ania and Halineczka would be placed somewhere separately, either in a school or with families. Madzia was adamant that they had to keep as separate as possible. She did not say it, but Ania knew that it was so that if one of them got caught, it would not endanger the others. She had often heard her parents discuss it.

Madzia knew where the leather, which Father had sent out of the Ghetto, was stored. She assured Uncle Marjan and Aunt Tola that it was stored with reliable people, and she would pick some up whenever they needed more money. Aunt Tola would help her to sell it afterwards. Aunt Tola and Madzia both had the appearance and language skills to pass for Aryans. Uncle Marjan had to remain in hiding. During the week before they dispersed, they had to become word-perfect in their stories.

Mrs. Maciejowska started to teach the girls catechism, as well as some of the most common hymns and prayers. They had to learn the morning hymn, “When the dawn rises,” as well as the grace before and after the meals and the greeting, “Blessed and praised be He” instead of “Good morning” or “Good evening.” Then they had to learn the order of the Mass. Mrs. Maciejowska said that they would just have to watch when people knelt down or stood up, and just do the same. “To be on the safe side, at the beginning, just stay on your knees as much as possible.” Ania hoped that her knees would not start giving her trouble as they did every now and then since she had been sick.

It was a lot to learn and remember in one week. At all times they had to be very quiet. They all wore slippers so that people on the floor below could not hear them, and they were not allowed to go anywhere near the windows. “Remember, if you can see someone, they can see you too!” taught Mrs. Maciejowska. She had many Jews pass through her home, for high fees, but never staying for very long. If she had been caught giving shelter to Jews, she and all her family would have been shot on the spot.

“Remember, when you are out on the street, always walk decidedly, do not cower, and don’t cast a separate shadow. Always walk close enough to people for your shadows to mingle. Don’t make eye contact, but don’t hang your head and look at your feet. Poles walk straight and proud.” Ania thought that her head would burst with all the instructions. She had a further task, to drill Halineczka in all the new facts. Halineczka was very good. She must have been too frightened to ask any questions because she just repeated, conscientiously, everything she was told. She had her fifth birthday when they were still at Mrs Maciecjowska’s, but only Ania remembered it and drew a birthday card for her. That got her into trouble, because Halineczka’s new birthday was no longer on the 4th of February, and anyway, Polish children did not celebrate birthdays, only name days. That was the day of the saint after whom one was named and was usually, but not always, close to the actual birthday. Babies tended to be named after the saint on whose day they were born and that saint became the baby’s patron saint. Ania’s and Halineczka’s patron saint was Saint Anne, whose day was in August and their new birthdays were also in August.

After some ten days at Mrs Maciejowska’s, Ania and her “aunty Maria” left. They moved into a room in a nice quiet apartment in Slowaki Street in a modern suburb called Zoliborz. It was a five-roomed apartment belonging to a couple of teachers called Jankowski. They were a friend of Joziek Ajzner from before the war. They had all belonged to the Socialist Party. When the Germans invaded, they closed most Polish schools so the Jankowskis lost their jobs…. Ania like staying with the Jankowskis. The apartment was light, airy and warm. Their room was redolent of the Christmas tree that was still there when they moved in, although it was removed soon after. There was another woman living in the apartment, also subletting a room. She was very quiet and just stayed in her room. All the rules still applied. Ania was not allowed anywhere near the windows, she wore slippers for silence, she was not allowed to flush the toilet or turn on a tap when there was nobody at home. “Aunt Maria” was not supposed to have a child, so Ania was not supposed to exist….

Then one day, the lady who lived in the other room at the Jankowskis’ was arrested. Ania saw some men arrive, ask Mrs. Jankowski quite politely for her, knock on her door and lead her out. They never saw her again. Mother was out at the time. Soon after, when Mother was home, they saw some Germans go in through the gateway into their building. Mother grabbed Ania’s hand, and they ran out and up the stairs to the attics. They heard the Germans knock on a door of an apartment below theirs, but this time, they left soon after without having arrested anyone.

Ania’s mother decided that having Ania with her was too dangerous. Mrs Jankowski told her that she knew of a woman who would take Ania into her home, for a price. One morning Ania found herself walking along a street, just like a normal person. Ania relished the few moments of being outside. They arrived at an apartment nearby where a family was living in two rooms. There was a bedroom crowded with a large double bed, a cot and a sewing machine. The woman, her husband, her sister and Ania were all to sleep in the double bed, and there was a baby in the cot. The other room, which had the kitchen alcove and the bathroom opening off it, was out of bounds for Ania, because the woman’s customers, for whom she sewed dresses, would come to try them on there. Ania stayed there a week. She did not like it. The woman made her eat separately and did not give her the same food, even though Ania helped to prepare it. She was not allowed to play with the baby, as though she was suffering from some contagious disease. And for the first time in her life, Ania found lice in her hair. When her mother came a week later, Ania complained, and the woman got very annoyed. Mother didn’t say anything, just packed her things and took her away.

After a short time, Mother told Ania that she was going to boarding school. There was a very good boarding school nearby. So this was where Ania found herself at this time. That brought her back to her immediate problem. How was she going to manage to keep her story straight? Her problems were quite different from the ones they had foreshadowed. While she was still at school, she didn’t have to pretend not to exist. She could look out of the windows, she could run around, she could play outside. The convent was a five-story building which stood in its own garden. There was a statue of St. Joseph with the Infant Jesus at the front, and a statue of Our Lady, with stars around her head. The school was run by the Sisters of the Resurrection….

There was a strict daily routine, punctuated by the ringing of the Bells. They were woken by the Mass bell for those who attended the early Mass, then there was the dressing bell, breakfast bell, and so on for the whole day….

In spite of the differences in the physical conditions, the school was conducted rather like the school in the Ghetto….

What Ania found to be profoundly different, was that she had to guard her tongue all the time. She was afraid to go to sleep, for fear of talking in her sleep. The business of remembering two “life stories” and keeping them separate was very difficult. If she tried to forget her real life and just tried to concentrate on her “new life,” there was not enough to talk about. She would have to not only make up a whole “new” life, but remember not to mix it up with her real life….

While she was trying to find some sort of mental, or perhaps emotional, balance, she also had to cope with the everyday traps that beset her. She went into the Third Grade and found that all the girls in her grade, who were just a little bit older, about ten to her almost nine years, had just had their First Communion….

At first she was glad that the other girls had had their First Communion, because she did not have to go to Communion with them, which meant going to early Mass every morning before breakfast and going to confession every Saturday. But her class-teacher, Sister Wawrzyna, decided that she ought to catch up with the rest of the class and she was given special tuition in Catechism after ordinary school was over. Her “Auntie” came to see her every Sunday, when all the parents visited. During those visits Ania recited to her “Aunty” all that she had learnt during the week. “Auntie” wrote it down furtively, so that she could learn it herself and pass on the knowledge to Ania’s cousins, Rysia and Hala….

The result of all this was that Ania learnt her Catechism very well indeed, so that she came top in the exam. The Sisters organized a special First Communion just for Ania, with a white dress, a veil with a wreath of spring flowers, and a special breakfast. It was all very festive, but what followed was a marked deterioration in Sister Wawrzyna’s attitude to Ania. Ania could not do a thing right. She was very upset and cried to “Auntie” because Sister Wawrzyna made fun of her and picked on her at every turn. Even the other girls noticed, and commiserated with Ania. But “Auntie” explained that that was one of the few nuns who knew that she was Jewish and she did not approve of a Jewish girl getting better results than the Christian girls.

One night, Sister Wawrzyna came into the dormitory after the girls had already settled down. “Get up, girls, come up to the windows,” and she drew aside the black-out curtains. They could see a red glow over the fields to the South. “That is the Ghetto, burning,” she said. “There was an uprising in the Ghetto. You must all pray, girls, for there are heroes fighting and dying there.”

Ania stood there in silence. Her first thought was that she must not show any more concern than the other girls. Then she thought of the people still there, in the Ghetto. She thought of the men who used to come and collect money to buy arms. She even thought of the little gun she had found, and hoped that it was of some use to someone, perhaps even being used right then. It was a long time before they went back to their beds. It was the 19th April, 1943.

KITIA ALTMAN

Context: Extermination Camps and Sites

Source: Kitia Altman. Memories of Ordinary People: For Those Who Have No One to Remember Them. Caulfield South (Victoria): Makor Jewish Community Library, 2003, pp. 302–307. Used by permission.

After living a precarious life in the ghetto at Będzin, Kitia Altman was sent to a work camp at Annaberg—a place she describes as a “good camp” in a nondescript area. As she describes in this account, however, in July 1944 she and those around her are placed on a truck, and then a train, and transported to Auschwitz. At first, she anticipates that this transfer will see her death, but upon realizing that she is to be moved into a barrack block she is able to start taking stock of her situation. Auschwitz, she begins to understand, will be a place requiring the most profound human realignment of beliefs regarding everything she has previously thought.

I’ve dealt with almost all of them now, faced and sorted them, decided whether to keep them or put them away. They’re all memories of a time I cannot forget yet don’t want to remember. Some I’ve come to like, others I fear. They’re all memories of a time I cannot forget yet don’t want to remember. Some images are etched in my mind so clearly that I think the event took place only recently. But I know it happened more than half a century ago.

There’s only one memory left and I can’t decide where to put it. Does it belong “before” or “after”? Or rather, does it mark the beginning of a unique and bizarre experience? I dare not face it yet, but I yearn to be able to. On occasions I’ve timidly attempted to lift a corner of the cloak that covers it. I feel I can’t postpone it much longer—time is moving fast towards the final hour. I close my eyes, take a deep breath and enter the time capsule.

Annaberg is what might be called a “good camp.” It doesn’t matter where it is. What matters is what it is.

I have with me a few possessions from Bedzin—my own shoes still in good condition, a dress, a few blouses, a skirt, a jacket and a couple of changes of underwear. I have a comb and a toothbrush and Cesia has a small mirror. Do I have a coat? No, I don’t remember a coat. We don’t need a coat, we never go out. I sleep with my friend Cesia in one bed. We have a straw-filled mattress and a coarse sheet. The blanket is dark and heavy.

Annaberg is surrounded by forest. There are about 300 men engaged in felling trees. They leave in the morning, return at dusk. Often they sing on their way back. The women like hearing it. It makes us think of home, when men came back from work. We provide them with domestic comforts of sorts. We cook and they eat at a long table. We wash their garments and the men change when they return from work. We repair their torn clothing, sweep their barracks—it’s almost normal. Time is marked by events in camp and not by calendars or clocks. We pray nothing will change until the end.

I have a French “boyfriend,” Sammi. Sammi with his beautiful smile and teeth that are even and white. He sings for me, “Parle-moi d’amour.” We promise ourselves that one day we will exchange our family names and pre-war addresses.

One day we hear trucks rolling towards the forest. Only a small group of men returns. Sammi is not among them.

July 1944 comes to an end and clouds gather above our heads. An electrifying piece of news tears through the camp—there’s been an attempt on Hitler’s life, but he wasn’t killed. Will they kill us? We expect repercussions, but nothing happens.

One day an open truck pulls into the camp and we’re loaded on. We take nothing with us. At the station a long row of cattle wagons is waiting. We are pushed in and the rolling iron doors are closed. We hear the clang of the bar. We are silent and frightened.

The memory stops, covered in darkness. The chapter has ended.

The train comes to a jerky halt. I hear the iron bar being lifted and the rasp of the rolling doors. We fall out, spilling like potatoes from a sack, stumbling. We are hit by silence, the silence of death. There are hundreds of us yet not a sound. A soft rosy glow penetrates the darkness.

“How strange,” my human mind records, “the laws of nature still operate: day follows night. There is a strange smell and an eerie stillness. Figures in striped pyjamas stand motionless. “Are they really alive?” I wonder.

Someone whispers: “Auschwitz.”

“It is all true,” I say.

We fall into formations of five, trying to keep together, already feeling the separation and the loneliness.

The sign above the gate, Arbeit macht frei. The guard mumbles loudly, hardly moving his lips: “Auschwitz you enter through this gate, you leave it …” and he jerks his head, looking up. We follow his eyes and see flames and dense smoke vomited by the high chimneys.

“The pink glow, then, isn’t the work of nature,” my terrorized mind self-corrects automatically. Suddenly, it’s not important. I feel I won’t need this information any more.

The dawn breaks, cold and grey. We’re ordered to run. We run between two rows of identical low huts. Shapes crawl out, some wrapped in dark blankets, hair sprouting from skulls, eyes unfocussed. Men or women? We call out: “Where are we? Who are you?”

No answer, no sign they have heard us. Are we in an asylum? No birds or trees, no flowers or grass. Mud, sticky black earth, our shoes sink in. We can’t run fast any more. Suddenly: Stop. A huge, red brick building. Is this the end? Already? Inside, bare floors and walls. We see windows. This can’t be it.

We huddle together, only a few of us. Where are the rest?

People in striped dresses, women with red kerchiefs on their heads rush around. No one looks at us. Our small group is tighter, we tremble, brutalized by the terror of the unknown. No uniform in sight other than the stripes. A man comes towards us—tall, handsome, well dressed, even in his stripes. I catch my thoughts like soap bubble, it lasts only a magic second, perhaps not even that long; a magic second when the bizarre reality of that place ceases to exist. Instead there is a handsome man, a beautiful woman, a meeting of eyes, a promise of a future.

“Are you mad?” my reason demands. “Here, now? This is the end of the world, there is no ‘after,’ there is no more.”

He is good looking in an elegant way.

“Anyone speak German?” A cultured, well-modulated voice. “You can ask me any question you like.”

“Will they kill us?”

“Aber was, meine Damen!”—with a slight, humorous smile. “Try another one, please.” If there is room for another question, I think quickly, then the unspoken answer is “No.” “Will our hair be shaved?” He eyes me boldly, with interest, as if he’d heard my mind ticking. Is it possible I am still attractive? On the threshold of physical destruction, is it the body that still matters? That has a last demand? Is it like the last ejaculation of a hanged man, the biological response of a mind already dead? “Your hair will be cut short,” he looks at me directly, “and it will grow quickly.”

What is he saying? Is it a promise of life, or is it the last comfort given to those who are going to die?

Cesia and I are the only two left talking to him. “My name is Dieter.”

I can’t see a yellow stripe above his red triangle. “Are you Jewish?”

“No.”

“Why are you here then?”

A short amused smile, a laugh. “Mein liebes Fraulein, there are others who hate them too.”

I look at him, surprised. He is serious now.

“In Vienna I was a lawyer. I’ve already forgotten the telephone number of my office, but this,” he points to the piece of white cloth with a number on it, stitched to his jacket, “this I’ll never forget!” He looks me straight in the eyes. “You better remember it too, I might be able to help you.”

“What is Auschwitz?” I ask.

He throws his head back and gives a short, throaty laugh. “Auschwitz exists only in Auschwitz. What is possible in the outside world is impossible here; what is possible here, in Auschwitz, can never happen in the outside world. Are you hungry?”

He snaps his fingers and a boy comes out from nowhere, running towards him. The pants of his pasiak are too long, the sleeves of his coat cover his hands. Without looking at him, Dieter barks a short order. The boy dissolves into the maze of stripes and reappears carrying a white, enamel bucket full of a steaming liquid. A shiny, deep ladle hangs at the side.

Another magic moment, a soap bubble that bursts before it reaches full size. Friday night and my mother ladling out the chicken soup—it looks the same, but it can’t be.

“Bitte, trinken Sie.”

We don’t move. The aroma of tea invades our nostrils, we feel nauseous from hunger. How strange, are we afraid the tea might be poisoned?

Dieter watches, as if reading our minds. “Ach, so,” he says and plunges the ladle into the bucket and slowly takes a long sip. Without a word he passes the ladle to me. We drink the hot, sweet tea. More, more. We can’t stop, we drink and drink. We’ve never tasted anything like it, there has never been anything like it—this tea from a white bucket, drunk with a ladle like my mother’s in a place called Auschwitz.

The boy brings sandwiches. I look inside—honey and sardines. Nothing surprises me anymore. Dieter says “Aufwiedersehen,” and looks at me meaningfully. I don’t understand. …

A shout. The space around us empties of people in stripes. Suddenly there are many of us girls, women, strangers. We have to undress, leave all our clothes behind and carry shoes in our hands. I lick the oozing honey and push the sandwich into the shoe. Cesia does the same. We are naked and still women. We run in single file between barbed wire, men stand on both sides looking, leering, lecherous. Some laugh, while some shouted obscenities. I see Dieter: there’s a lewd twist to his lips that has changed his face. He isn’t handsome any more, he isn’t elegant any more.

I shout at him in anger: “Are you satisfied with the process of entmenschlichkeit? (dehumanization)?” I’ve never heard this word before—where did it come from? Has it always been in the human language? Or did it come to me at that very instant, when my humanity was violated and the world outside looked into Auschwitz—and was silent?

KITIA ALTMAN

Context: Concentration Camps and Prisons

Source: Kitia Altman. Memories of Ordinary People: For Those Who Have No One to Remember Them. Caulfield South (Victoria): Makor Jewish Community Library, 2003, pp. 324–329. Used by permission.

Having survived incarceration at Auschwitz, Kitia Altman was transferred to the women’s camp at Ravensbrück, in Mecklenberg, northern Germany. She describes the camp as being “clean and cold” when compared to Auschwitz. In this account, she outlines a little of what life was like for her at Ravensbrück, where discipline was meted out by antisemitic Polish prisoners and there was little opportunity for obtaining the little strategic advantages that would come in a corrupt system. She shows, moreover, that attitudes and behavior among the prisoners were far from predictable, and often did not even align with each other in this strange environment.

If any place could be a colour, Ravensbruck would be ice blue.

If there was only one adjective to describe it, it would be sterile.

And that’s how I remember it: Cold and coldly sterile. Perhaps it was the time of year, wet and cold October, or maybe it seemed like that to me because I had come straight from Auschwitz.

Auschwitz, for all its horror, still seethed with humanity, albeit tortured and degraded. Screams, moans and howling were all human sounds. You could hear voices even if the words were incomprehensible. Here and there a name would be called, a name that could belong to hundreds of women, yet occasionally someone answered. But more often a name would be called repeatedly, each time with more despair until the voice ended in a shriek or a sob or simply faded amidst the other voices.

There was the all-prevailing smell of burning flesh and the putrid smell of open latrines, overflowing with human excrement like a mustard-coloured river. And there was the smell of Lysol, trying to suppress all other smells.

Ravensbruck, on the other hand, was clean and cold.

It was silent, the silence of death.

We were marched off to work in the early hours of the morning. Silence. No orchestra, no shouting. Only cold and silence.

The stone quarry was a long way away from the camp. We were given some sort of oilcloth covers as protection, not enough to keep us dry. Our hands turned blue from cold, too stiff to hold tools. It was impossible to work and the guards knew it. Yet we wanted to work, to avoid punishment and to keep warm.

Not even the roof and the four walls of the barracks could keep out the cold.

It was a known fact among us, veterans of several other camps, that Ravensbruck was run by Polish women, unlike Auschwitz, where the top positions were in the hands of Slovak Jewish women.

Our Blockalteste was Zofia. She has a pasty pallor and huge, dark rings under her watery blue eyes. She was a lesbian with a hoarse, rasping voice. She took narcotics and we soon learnt to tell when Zofia had been deprived of her dose. She became wild and raged, her strength was unbelievable and she destroyed everything in her grasp. She broke planks from bunks, tore up sacks filled with straw, hit, mutilated and even crippled other prisoners. To be a Jew on her Block was dangerous.

All the Jewish women were strictly segregated from the other prisoners in one part of the Block. There was no way to hide or protect ourselves from Zofia when she was in a deranged state and charged into our section.

There was only one person who could restrain her rages and calm her down: Pani Maria. Pani Maria was our Stubenalteste. Her family was old Polish aristocracy. Her name was hyphenated and at the time it impressed me greatly, but I have since forgotten it. She came to Ravensbruck when the Germans started to arrest members of the Polish intelligentsia, in a bid to remove leaders from the rest of the populace.

Pani Maria had the looks of a typical Polish noblewoman and not even Ravensbruck could change her demeanour. Her head was held high, her hair worn in a tight knot above her neck. She was a buxom woman with a narrow waist that curved generously into her hips then spread like a fan into a large swaying behind. She spoke German with a hard Polish accent and used only a limited and functional vocabulary. To emphasise that the language had been forced on her, she chose not to speak it correctly or fluently.

She welcomed any opportunity to have a conversation in Polish. Being in the Jewish part of the Block, she only had a chance to speak it when a transport of Polish Jews arrived. Ours was one such transport and soon some of us, myself included, established a respectful contact with Pani Maria.

But nothing prepared me for the scene I witnessed.

One evening our group returned from work, weary, cold, and with profound depression setting in. Gradually we had come to realise that although the threat of the gas chambers was no longer imminent, in this camp we would be worked to death. Here the work was real, not like Auschwitz where it had been devised as another form of torture and degradation. Here there was a daily quota of stones that had to be wrenched from the hostile ground and delivered—or else. Unlike Auschwitz, where a system of “organizing” had been highly developed and widely used and where bartering was part of daily existence, in Ravensbruck it was impossible to obtain an extra portion of bread or watery soup. There was nothing to buy or sell. Occasionally and only if one was there long enough, you could “sell” services, such as mending clothes. My friend Cesia was particularly good at this and succeeded once or twice in scoring an extra portion of bread. As we were unable to supplement our food or obtain warmer clothes, we became more and more disheartened. We felt abandoned by the world and despite not being threatened daily by a “selection,” we had the fear of becoming unfit for work, collapsing and being left to die. Our spirits were sinking rapidly.

On that particular evening, we had returned from work to find the whole Block in a state of uproar and confusion. A transport of Hungarian Jewish girls had arrived. They were bewildered, frightened and could not comprehend what had happened during the few days between Budapest, Auschwitz and Ravensbruck. They had been brutally taken away from their families, yet still hoped that they had just lost them in the confusion of arriving in a strange country where no one spoke their language. They called out names, cried and stretched out their arms in gestures of despair.

It had been a long while since we had seen such a display of emotion. Our descent into the Valley of Degradation had started four years ago. Since then, we had learned not to feel or think. These girls, although not as emaciated as us, were much worse off. They still had in front of them the shock of realizing what had happened.

In the midst of the commotion I distinguished a single voice, soothing and calm, repeating in Polish: “Spokojnie, spokojnie.”

Pani Maria was kneeling in front of a young girl, washing her bleeding knee. She whispered softly: “Quietly, my child, quietly, don’t be afraid.”

The timbre of her voice, if not the actual words, eventually penetrated the consciousness of the girls and one by one, they calmed down. Pani Maria smiled reassuringly, putting her arms around some, stroking the matted hair of others.

I watched the scene, stunned.

After evening roll-call, I timidly approached Pani Maria and asked to speak with her. She had a bed for herself in our part of the barrack. It had a sheet and a thick blanket. She invited me to sit at the foot of the bed.

“Pani Maria”, I asked, “do you like Jews?”

“No, not at all.”

“But,” I said hurriedly, “I saw you being so kind to those Hungarian Jewish girls.”

“My child,” she said, making herself more comfortable on the bed, “these wretched girls are human beings first and Jews only second.”

My mind was confused. I could not understand the neat, surgical separation of human beings from Jews. Back home in Poland, we were always Jews. From time to time, in a condescending manner, someone might say, “But Jews are human beings too.”

Pani Maria continued: “I am a member of the National Democratic Party.”

“The NDP? Endecja? The most anti-semitic party in Poland?”

“Yes, that’s true. But as you know, our motto is: “Economic boycott yes, but physical violence, no.” My child, this place is not Poland. These Jews are not an economic threat. To me they are all poor, persecuted human beings.”

I listened in disbelief. Here we had Zofia, a simple and brutal person to whom the fact of being a human being had no value at all. She was in a position of power given to her by a system based on an ideology of supremacy of one group over another. At the bottom of this hierarchy were Jews. Anyone was superior to a Jew.

And here I was, talking to a cultured, intelligent person in our mother tongue, who put her ideology of civilized hate away to nurture us with the milk of human kindness.

Pani Maria continued: “When the war is over, I’ll be as anti-semitic as before. I’ve accepted the duties of a Stubenalteste in the Jewish barrack only so I can protect the Jews from Zofia’s violence, which is unjustified. I will protect you here as best as I can. But I don’t want you back in Poland. Yet I don’t like to see you suffer like this either! It is inhuman.”

Some time in December 1944, when we were moved from Ravensbruck, I took with me the memory of the humanitarian Maria and vowed always to cherish it. However, the contrasting roles the two women played became blurred with time.

I hope Pani Maria survived and returned to Poland. I have fulfilled her wish and never returned to the land of my birth. It is clear to me now that we were as equally victimized by Zofia’s brutality as we were by Pani Maria’s ideology.

KITIA ALTMAN

Context: Salvation

Source: Kitia Altman. Memories of Ordinary People: For Those Who Have No One to Remember Them. Caulfield South (Victoria): Makor Jewish Community Library, 2003, pp. 357–363. Used by permission.

Toward the end of the war, concentration camp prisoners were exploited increasingly as slave labor for the purpose of making up for the rapidly depleting workforce, as all German men were conscripted for military service. Kitia Altman found herself working in an underground facility that produced V-2 rockets. By December 1944, however, with the war in both the West and the East going badly for the Germans, the regime being experienced by the prisoners began to soften slightly. Then, without warning, the factory was evacuated and the women with Kitia were once more on the move. Instead of facing an imminent demise, however, the group was confronted by a thoroughly unanticipated development: their liberation. As Kitia shows though, despite their new status as free women, and with the opportunity to build new lives, “we were never totally liberated from our past.”

I sit in front of a blank page trying to conjure up a memory, any memory, stored in my mind from that time I cannot forget.

I find myself plunging my hand into the seemingly inexhaustible reserve of incidents, faces and events. What will the price be this time? Horror? Redemption? Pain? Humour?

Humour? How can anything that happened during the Holocaust be funny?

Well, it can, and it was.

Galgenhumor, gallows humour. The humour of the condemned was our defence against the dehumanisation, though we were unaware of this at the time.

Once when the air was foul with smoke from the crematoria, I heard a woman say: “That’s him. I can smell his feet.” The pent-up fear broke as we laughed longer and louder than the occasion warranted. The woman must have repeated the words to countless terrorised and frightened “newcomers” to shock them out of their fear, and to make the bizarre familiar. I found out the woman wasn’t married, so the feet she referred to were but a grim joke!

Calling someone a Schmuckstick, literally an ornament, was another endearment meant to ridicule our horror of physical deterioration: “Don’t let yourself go. You’ll look like a Schmuckstick.”

I’ve read that in some camps girls made up funny, satirical verses about the food, their looks and behavior. They sang these to the tune of pre-war tangos, fox-trots and waltzes. Inmates wrote and performed their own “revues” to the great delight and applause of their friends. The fun they made of themselves gave them the courage to face reality and spurred them on to spin dreams of the future.

After the usual Sunday delousing session, my head rested on the knees of my friend who performed the vital task of searching for hair lice, Cesia and I would engage in our own well-rehearsed dialogue which never ceased to amuse us. One would say: “Oh, how I’ll miss this crackling sound!”—of a crushed louse between two fingernails. To which the other would reply: “Don’t worry! I’ll save you one for after the war.”

Humour was an important tool in our survival kit. It released our fear and gave voice to our hopes. But you needed friends to laugh with and friends whom humour could help. The humour of Auschwitz was cruel and brutal, because it had to prepare and toughen you for the hell into which you had been thrown. It hurt, but it made you stronger. However, not everyone could take the medicine.

This “funny” memory dates from a time long after Auschwitz. Perhaps not that long in terms of calendar days, because we didn’t count that way any more. What we counted were events—the unpredictable, unscheduled and often inexplicable.

We had been out of Auschwitz for three months; however, this was not clear to us until much later. We had almost settled down to a routine of working in the salt mine producing V-2 rockets, Hitler’s last secret weapon. We felt safe, far from the crematoria and falling bombs. We worked among German civilians, highly-skilled professional engineers, technicians and other experts in their respective fields. Our work was considered essential to the war effort and as a result our conditions, by comparison, were bearable.

It was Christmas 1944 and the earth’s belly kept us warm. On Christmas Eve, we were given thick soup and a larger portion of bread. We had heard from a reliable source that the following day everyone was to get a boiled potato, still in its skin.

Cesia and I were joined by another girl from Bedzin, our hometown. Her name was also Cesia and we called her “Little Cesia.” She was sixteen years old and the war was in its fifth year. She speculated whether this would be the pattern of our lives forever.

Just when such thoughts started to penetrate our minds, the journey back from the realm of evil began.

One day, it must have been in April, we didn’t go down the mine. None of us liked any change to the routine as we didn’t know what it would bring. How were we to know whether the next cattle train would be our last, or perhaps the first of our journey back to life?

The female SS officer, the one with a crown of blonde plaits around her head, called us and put her arms on the shoulders of the two girls nearest her. “Meine kinder (my children),” she said. “Anyone who needs clothes, please tell me. The warehouse is full of them.”

No one spoke. We all wore regulation stripes and in a camp no one wants to look different. We immediately suspected a trap. Next, another SS officer addressed us. “Frauleins (young ladies), please follow me in a formation of five. We are leaving the camp.” We felt no joy, just fear, the only human emotion left to us.

The column of undulating stripes moved quickly. Some guards, guns on their shoulders and malicious smirks on their faces, said: “This time you’ve had it! You’ll dig your own graves!” It was possible, but it didn’t add up. Meine kinder and Frauleins from the officers and this from the common guards?

The cattle wagons were waiting. The open doors revealed floors scantily covered with straw, but straw nevertheless! There were ramps in front of doors. No one shouted, no one pushed. The officer carefully counted sixty into each wagon. We had always “travelled” in hundreds before.

“Please sit down and leave a space near the door free.”

An elderly German soldier hopped in and placed a gun across his knees. The door closed and we heard the familiar clang of an iron bar. Inside, the wagon was dark. We uttered a sigh of relief—with a German among us, we felt safe. They wouldn’t drop gas or shoot at random if he was there. Only one German, yet we felt protected by his presence.

Our little group sat on the floor in silence, as did the others. The German calmly puffed at his pipe. We smelt the tobacco and saw flickers of sparks. The train moved slowly and no one knew what direction it took. We lost count of the hours. The little window in the wagon darkened and then after a while, a thin timid light managed to find its way through. Another day.

The German puffed at his pipe, the gun still across his knees. Suddenly the train came to a halt.

“Raus, raus, alle raus! Los!” Perhaps the smirking guards had been right after all.

The station was small and the sign bearing its name had obviously been removed. A tiny white square of a house was the sole visible structure. It seemed to be empty and it was. We were pushed in quickly and roughly. A double bunk was the only furniture and this was demolished in seconds by the surge of striped bodies. The door above a high stone step was slammed loudly. A small window was painted over with white wash.

In no time, we stood ankle deep in urine, faeces and vomit. Girls cried, wailed and called for help. The Germans opened the door and the stinking mass flowed out towards them. The door was quickly shut again.

The guards had been right, we would die here, drowning in our own excrement.

The girls near the window scratched off a bit of the white wash and we took turns to put one eye to it. Someone saw white buses arriving on the clean, empty platform. They had red crosses painted on their sides. We began to scream in terror.

“Alle Juden raus! Schnell, los!”

The door opened again and we scrambled out, our legs and the hems of our dresses stained with brown muck. We watched as horror entered the eyes of men wearing strange uniforms with Red Cross armbands. They motioned for us to enter the white, ambulance-like buses. No one budged. The men looked baffled and approached the German guards. The guards, their backs to us, tried to make them understand we were frightened because we thought the buses were gassing vans. We heard the word “Gaz, Gaz.”

No one knew what the men from the Red Cross thought, but one of them must have understood. He slapped his forehead with an open palm, then smiled broadly. He entered the bus and closed the door behind him. After a few minutes, a triumphant expression on his face, he opened the door and like a stage actor making a sweeping gesture, invited us all in.

Again, no one budged. Puzzled, he looked at the guards. This time we performed the pantomime, pointing to the motor saying “brr, brr” and by twisting a wrist, indicated turning a key. This time the Red Cross men quickly understood.

We wanted the motor turned on and only then for one of their men to enter the bus and close the doors. The men, satisfied they had finally understood our bizarre behavior, waited for us to move. Some of us were so weak we were unable to do so without support.

Erna, a Czech woman, was thin and straight as a rod. Even then, with her glasses askew, she looked like someone’s efficient and dedicated secretary. Her face carried a look of perpetual disapproval mixed with disbelief. Erna had always refused to acknowledge what was happening to her and around her. She believed someone had made a terrible mistake and would soon apologise for messing around with her orderly world. We protected her, so innocent was she of evil.

A young strong man ran and lifted her up in his arms, her thin dirty legs dangling from the wooden clogs. Suddenly we heard Erna’s voice, firm and clear: “At last, in the arms of a man again.”

Initially we just giggled, then the laughter took on a momentum of its own. It was deep, liberating, humanizing laughter. We no longer thought of Erna; we laughed because we had discovered we were alive—not only in a physical sense, our bodies still moving and our eyes still seeing, but also emotionally. We were alive because our senses had started to serve us again! We had registered feelings other than paralyzing, destructive fear.

We saw sunshine, we saw a cleanly swept platform that didn’t hide any gruesome ghosts of terror and we could see the comical side of this unremarkable moment. Smelly, clumsy, pitiful and emaciated, we rejoiced in our freedom to laugh and be human again.

In years to come we used this freedom to rebuild our lives, to start families, learn professions and trades and to acquire experiences.

Yet, we were never totally liberated from our past.

FRED ANTMAN

Context: Before the War

Source: Fred Antman. A Tale of Three Cities: Berlin, Shanghai, Melbourne. Caulfield South (Victoria): Makor Jewish Library, 2011, pp. 28–29, 33–34. Used by permission.

An eight-year-old boy in 1938, Fred Antman came from a Berlin Jewish family. He was subjected to various antisemitic measures at school, and then, in October of that year, witnessed the arrest and deportation of his Polish-born father—part of the much larger events leading, eventually, to the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 9–10, 1938. Fred’s young age precluded him from appreciating fully the significance of what was happening, and it is interesting to note that in this account he is vague concerning precise dates. As the account proceeds, however, we see his later thoughts enter the picture, as he reflects on subsequent developments from his country of sanctuary, Australia.

The Nazis gradually began to target religious events. On 28 October 1938 my brother David became bar mitzvah in the Rykestrasse Synagogue. This was an exciting day for us and the reception that evening was our last family simcha (celebration) in Germany. The very next day the Nazi party decreed Jewish gatherings illegal, whether they were social or religious. The Rykestrasse Synagogue was to be burnt down in the following month, along with most of the other synagogues in Berlin, but as it was built within a block of apartments, private interests prevailed and it was only wrecked. Today it is Berlin’s oldest synagogue, standing proudly where it always has.

Since I was six years old I had attended a public school not far from our home. Suddenly I found that my classmates began avoiding me and would not allow me to participate in sporting events. I was given the cold shoulder. When I asked one of the boys why they were doing this, he told me that his father had ordered him not to have any contact with “Jew boys.” Things deteriorated, and some of the boys began to set on me on the way home. They bashed me every day and called me “Dreckiger Jude” (dirty Jew).

My parents saw my dilemma and made arrangements to enroll me in a prestigious Jewish day school at the other end of the town. This required me to make a long subway journey to get there, but the environment in that school made me very happy. I made new friendships and most importantly was able to participate in the school’s sporting events. I was a good athlete….

October and November 1938: I clearly remember that at 6.00 one morning there was a knock at our door. It was the Gestapo. They told my father to get dressed quickly, pack a suitcase with the bare essentials and come with them. They offered no explanation.

My father came into our room and kissed my brother and me before leaving the house. As we were curious kids we ran to the window in time to see him being loaded onto a waiting truck. We did not believe we would ever see him again. This happened between 29 and 29 October 1938, when all Polish-born Jews were deported under the famous Nazi Polenaktion. My father’s brother, Kalman, was deported at the same time.

As part of the ongoing campaign to destroy Jewish life in Germany, the authorities began deporting Polish Jews back to Poland. Poland refused to accept the 16,000 to 18,000 Jews who remained stranded in the border town of Zbaszyn. My father and his brother were among them. In November 1938 highly organized gangs from the SA and SS wreaked havoc on the Jewish population. They smashed the windows of all Jewish establishments and looted their contents. Synagogues were burnt to the ground and Torah scrolls trampled in the streets. Any Jews caught on the streets were beaten to a bloody mess with stanchions. Hitler then had the audacity to demand that the Jewish victims pay for the damage! This was the infamous Kristallnacht. I was only eight years old at the time and witnessed the destruction from the window of our third floor apartment. The next day I walked with my grandfather, Robert Vogel, to find it still burning. I saw the Torah scrolls lying in the streets amid the smashed stained-glass windows. I could not understand how anyone could be so cruel. When I asked my grandfather to explain it to me he could not answer.

While this scourge against the Jews continued, the rest of the world remained silent, distancing themselves from the Nazis’ hate campaign. Strangely, a rare voice of real protest came from the Aboriginal people in far off Australia. A meeting of the Australian Aboriginal Advancement League moved a resolution protesting against the cruel persecution of the Jewish people by the Nazi government in Germany. They asked that it be brought to an end. A deputation of Aborigines gathered on the steps of the German Consulate in Canberra to present their resolution and ask the Consul to convey its message to his government. We never knew whether the Consul did so.

Hitler confiscated Jewish properties and assets and imposed heavy taxes on Jewish businesses. With these financial gains he began to build the world’s biggest war machine, creating a massive army that put the vast numbers of unemployed men into uniforms, and assembling an arsenal of heavy armory. With Herman Goering he built a superpower air force and dreamed of conquering Europe and, indeed, the world. He eventually succeeded in invading many countries, including Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, France, Belgium and Holland.

HENRY BARCLAY

Context: Before the War

Source: Henry Barclay. Run, Henry, Run. Caulfield South (Victoria): Makor Jewish Community Library, pp. 73–80, 81, 85–86, 87–89. Used by permission.

In this account, Henry Barclay, a student from Poland studying in France, provides a fascinating view of what it was to be a Jew outside the danger zone. His family remained in Poland, but he was all too aware of developments in Germany and what they represented for the Jews—and also for Poland. On September 1, 1939, Germany attacked Poland; with France and Britain declaring war on Germany two days later, Henry decided that he had little other alternative than to join the French army. Although he received employment in early 1940, he instead joined the French Foreign Legion—a remarkable journey for a Polish Jewish graduate of a French university.

During that last year at university I shared my working space in the laboratory with Lamasuta and ate my meals with the Russian lady as usual. I also met a young student in the library who came from Lvov. His name was William Henshaw.

Anti-Jewish propaganda gathered further strength after a Polish Jew shot dead a German diplomat in Paris in November 1938. That dead man was the third secretary at the German Embassy and that incident led to Kristallnacht, the “night of broken glass.” Antisemitic riots broke out in Germany and Austria. Synagogues were destroyed and shops looted. Many photos of these events were published in the world press. Everyone knew what was going on.

In my mail from home my parents had already mentioned the deportation of Polish Jews from Germany and said that there was now a committee in Lvov to help these German Jews. All kinds of rumours circulated in the coffeehouses I frequented but I had no time for them. I had to study.

I tried to contact Jurek to find out how he had done in his final exams in chemistry. But my search was in vain—he seemed to have vanished into thin air. I got in touch with his friend Nanette, but she too was unable to find him. Nanette began helping me understand the French language terms used in physics, because the Polish-French dictionary I had was useless on this subject. She had worked as a secretary for years and was a very capable young lady. Her linguistic assistance to me regarding the laws of physics was invaluable. We often met in coffeehouses, but sometimes also at my place. She was engaged to a wealthy businessman called Pierre, who also helped me. My uni friends began spreading a rumour about my having a new girlfriend, but Nanette was like a sister to me and she was a big help.

From the beginning of 1939 the money my parents sent from Poland suddenly became irregular. Sometimes it was sent through Belgium. I had the feeling that my financial situation was about to become very unstable. My university situation friends from Poland were experiencing the same problem and I began to wish that the university year was over.

By the beginning of June 1939 I was putting the final touches to my study for the final exams. My program was nearly finished so I contacted a few of my friends who had completed the exam the year before and asked them what it was like. I did not leave one stone unturned. I wanted to know everything I could about the exams from previous years. My first exam was in laboratory work; then came an oral exam and the last exam was in industrial chemistry. I remember the day of my exams well. I left home very early and on approaching the main entrance to the university a black cat ran across the street. I was superstitious and didn’t want to use the front entrance so I went to the side entrance to enter the exam hall. This cost me a few minutes of very precious time. I started to run and arrived at the main exam hall in the nick of time, just as they were closing the door. I was lucky.

After the exams my friends stayed back to discuss in great detail what they had written. I was so tired that I did not stay but went straight home and threw myself on my bed, exhausted. Over the next few days I watched the display area where they published the results on the board. When the chemistry results came in everybody was pressing close to the board to see the results. I came second in the year and graduated very well. I immediately wrote to my parents informing them of my marks. The day was 24 June 1939.

At this time a strange feeling came over me. I felt happy but somehow I did not know what to do next. I was very, very confused. After receiving their diplomas most of my friends, who were mainly Hungarian, left France and returned home. Some of my Polish friends suddenly disappeared and I did not know where they had gone. My Siamese friend, Lamasuta, left in a hurry for Paris. I was left with a lot of free time. I did not know what to do.

I started to read the newspapers to find out what was going on in the world. On the streets of Caen I occasionally came across some people speaking Spanish, remnants from the Republican army who had to leave their country. They were starting a fresh life in France to earn their daily bread. I realized that I had missed a lot of news regarding Adolf Hitler. He and his Brown Shirts were strengthening their dictatorship. The German Jews were the special objects of Hitler’s attacks and were subjected to severe persecution. They had been eliminated from civil services, the justice system and medical professions. They had also been asked to hand over their precious stones and metals, such as gold, to Hitler’s government. Britain, France and Poland signed a pact to support each other in the event of war.

I could not get my hands on any news from Poland, though I did hear that Polish troops had been sent to German borders. Eventually, at the end of July, a letter came from Poland dated 6 July 1939. My father mentioned that this was the second letter he was sending so as to be sure I would receive one of them. One came, but I never received any others. The letter was addressed to me, the “Engineer Chemist.” I was very proud of this and he was very proud of me. In his previous correspondence he had never mentioned anything about the political climate in Poland. This time he mentioned instability but did not explain it any further. He suggested I should continue my study and specialize in my profession.

He also mentioned that he would like to visit me in the beginning of August, but that he did not know if he would be able to get a visa or enough money. My mother was with my sister on holiday in Muszyna and he told me that they would be coming back to Lvov in two weeks’ time. When my mail from Poland was delayed and I did not receive my monthly allowance, I knew something bad was going on in Poland. In the paper I could not find any answers and realized I would have to pay more attention to my survival. I had to make myself a program. First, I had to examine the newspapers daily and listen carefully to the news. Secondly, I arranged with my landlady to pay less rent. She agreed and this was a help.

From the day I arrived in France, I had saved money, so by the time my exams were over I had enough to keep me going for a few months. I also went to the employment office at the university and asked about a job. I had a lengthy discussion with the officer and he said that with my diploma I had a good chance of getting employment, yet this would take time and I would have to be very patient.

I sent two letters to my parents in Poland—one registered, one at the normal rate—hoping for the best. But somehow I felt it was no good staying in Caen, so I went to Paris for a few days to find out more information. The day I arrived was 1 September 1939. I felt like I had jumped from boiling water in Caen to the frying pan in Paris. The hotels were full and I arranged to share a room with some other students, because this was the only way I could stay in Paris. Paris was full of activity with lots of people everywhere. The coffeehouses were filled up and people who did not know each other were talking together like old friends. I tried to buy a newspaper, but they were sold out.

The main news was that on the morning of 1 September 1939 the Polish air force had been nearly completely destroyed on the ground by the Luftwaffe, which also knocked out some of the Polish railways. The Luftwaffe had attacked Warsaw and other Polish cities. They were organized and knew where to hurt the Poles the most.

German motorized forces then swept into Poland. It was a blitzkrieg, a lightning-fast war and something new in the way war was conducted. The fast-moving ground troops moved in conjunction with the air forces and the Polish army was no match for them. In other news I read that France and Britain had declared war on Germany. In the papers I found out that New Zealand and Australia had also joined Britain in the war against Germany.

In my hotel I met a young Jewish girl, a refugee from Germany. She spoke little Polish and I spoke little German. She had managed to escape from Germany, where her parents had lived for many years, but had been expelled back to Poland when the Nazis took over. On coming to France she had lost contact with them and now she was searching for them with the help of a philanthropic organization of German Jews. She was also getting some help from an American refugee organization called HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), which had an office in Paris. She had been trying to get to America but in those days it was very difficult and time was a factor. I tried to find out more about Hitler from her, but she was very reserved.

I was advised to contact the Red Cross in order to receive news from my parents in Poland. They had big offices in Paris where people could send letters through Switzerland to Poland. They had a lot of requests and I was only one of many trying to get news of people in Lvov. From them I found out that Jews in Germany must wear a yellow Star of David on their clothes. There was war fever in Paris and the old army depots were very, very busy. They had a lot of volunteers wanting to join the French army. I was one of them. I asked if I could add my name to the list and was told that the only way I could join the French army was through the Foreign Legion. I wanted to join as soon as possible, but there were so many people wanting the same thing, they told me it would take a good many months before I would get an answer from them.

My Siamese friends had disappeared into thin air so my dream to work in Siam had been shattered. I could not find them anywhere. I abandoned my dream of working overseas and had to find work as soon as possible to be able to eat; it was not easy for a foreigner.

I left Paris on 29 September 1939 to return to Caen, hoping to find a letter on my desk, but my letterbox was empty. The last letter I received from my father was dated 6 July 1939.

Well, no more coming to Paris, Papa! I started reading the last letter he had sent me, over and over again. The more I read it, the more upset I became. I felt tears coming to my eyes. I felt lost.

After I arrived back in Caen, I went to the town hall, where I told them I would like to join the local civil defense. The Mayor of Caen wrote to me and thanked me for that. Wherever you went in Caen, whatever you did, everybody talked about the war. In Paris they had talked about the mystery behind the Maginot Line, whether it was strong or not, and whether or not Paris could defend itself. Everywhere you went, war was all people were talking about. Still, life must go on….

The following day, 30 September 1939, was my lucky day. The university employment office sent me a letter saying that on 4 October I was to start a job with a company called Société Des Sucreries Ternyck, in the north of France. I was to confirm acceptance and start straight away. Beside the employment office was a library where I immediately borrowed some books on processing sugar from beetroot, which is how SST made theirs. For the next four months, my life was guaranteed. I had a job and now I had to improve my knowledge of sugar manufacturing. And that was that. In just a few hours your whole life can change….

My work with the sugar company came to an end and I got my official certificate of leave on 26 February 1940. It stated that I’d been employed from 4 October 1939 until 25 February 1940, and was signed by the director of the company….

I was sorry to be leaving the factory. I felt comfortable there and my employer had looked after me very well. Now I could live off the money I had received for so many months’ work. I was tempted to stay in Paris for a week, but remembered that the French army was on the horizon. So I left for Caen by the shortest route I could find. In Caen I had a surprise waiting for me. It was an important letter from the French army requesting my presence at the Legion army depot in Marseilles. The Foreign Legion was founded by King Louis Philippe of France, for operations outside France. It had always been an elite unit within the French army.

I realized that I had very little time to get there. I contacted my friend William Henshaw and we discussed the future, although you can never really discuss what the future holds. I told him that I would be joining the French army until the end of the war and that I would write to him. I left him some of my possessions and told him that I would go to the Red Cross in Paris. I left him my address and told him to keep in contact with me, because during war, you never know what will happen. There are a lot of surprises every day and life is very unpredictable.

My landlady was sorry to see me go and wished me good luck. I told her I was joining the French army and going overseas. After I said goodbye to some of my friends in Caen I left with a lot of hope for the future. Everyone wished me good luck and I left for Paris. I did not stay long in Paris, where my main objective was to go to the Red Cross and leave them my address before I left for Marseilles.

On the train to Marseilles I met a lot of French soldiers and everyone was talking about the Maginot Line. It seemed that everyone had put all their hopes concerning the war into that line. One the other side, the Germans occupied what was called the Siegfried line, consisting of obstacles, concrete barricades, cannons and fortified structures. This ran along the area opposite the Maginot Line. In the train I felt very confused. I was thinking about my parents and my sister, about what they were doing and what was going on in Poland. I was hoping that I had made the right choice in joining the French army. I took a risk and did not know if I had made the right decision. I hoped that I would get used to it. I also knew that in the Foreign Legion soldiers wore a distinctive white cap called a kepi. On arriving in Marseilles, I noticed a soldier on the platform wearing a kepi and asked him for directions to the army base.

It was a very emotional time for me, because I had never been in the army before and did not know what to expect. It was all a big secret to me. As recruits within the Foreign Legion, we were indoctrinated with the saying: “The Legion is my home, is my family, is my nation.” The Legion Mystique was important and had resulted in many heroic acts and military victories. Men of fifty nations wore the white kepis of the Foreign Legion. The Legion’s motto was Legio Patria Nostra (the Legion is our Homeland). The Legion had always thought that loyalty to the government of France was secondary to the loyalty to the Legion.

When I arrived at the Legion’s office I stressed that I was a volunteer and would be there for the duration of the war. I also mentioned that I preferred to be incorporated into the tank division if possible. They knew I had certain factors in my favour, because I had all the necessary French permits for driving. I knew that within the Foreign Legion there were some of the toughest and most dedicated soldiers the world had ever known. They would live for the Legion and die for it too. For them the glory of the Legion surpassed all else. It took me a very short time to adopt this motto, because this is the only way I knew I would be a good Legionnaire.

France had always employed the Legion at the forefront of its colonial wars. I was told that I would be sent to the most famous military depot, at Sidi Bel Abbes in Algeria. The medical examination and physical testing of volunteers were very thorough in the Foreign Legion; they tried to eliminate all people not suitable for the army. I was tired after all the tests and there was no pause for a cup of tea between them; it was all hard work. Finally, they vaccinated us. We all queued up together—the big ones, small ones, skinny ones, fat ones. There was a six-foot-tall chap in front of me with magnificent muscles. I really envied him. I think he was a Yugoslav. I was a little shrimp beside him. He was vaccinated before me and within the blink of an eye he had fainted into my arms. He was very heavy! Eventually I came before the doctor and asked him for my injection. He said: “You got yours when you were holding the Yugoslav!” And he winked at me. This was my day.

BRONIA BEKER

Context: Evading Persecution

Source: Bronia and Joseph Beker. Joy Runs Deeper. Toronto: ©Azrieli Foundation, 2014, pp. 26–31. Used by permission.

The love story between Bronia and Joseph (Josio) Beker was, if nothing else, characterized by devotion. In Bronia’s account of their attempt to avoid detection by the Nazis in the ghetto, followed by their escape to a secure refuge in the countryside, we see the physical stamina—and sacrifice—required for a successful time in hiding. We also see the efforts of a young woman to come to terms with why it was that she had the good fortune to fall in with Josio, whose connections enabled him to find ways to stay alive in spite of the many obstacles placed in their way. Finally, Bronia’s story provides us with a glimpse of some of the many challenges facing those who sought to stay ahead of the Nazis and keep away from harm.

One day in April 1943, a few days before Passover, the Germans surrounded the ghetto. Always on the lookout, we saw what was happening. In general, we slept very little, walked around at night on alert, and never got undressed to go to sleep. That day, we all ran down to the bunker, where we had food already prepared and cots to lie on. On a previous occasion, we had stayed there for two days and the Germans had gone through the house without finding anybody. On that day in April, ten of us went down: me, my father and sister, my half-brother with his two daughters, and my sister-in-law and her three children. After about six hours, we heard heavy boots running down the steps to our cellar. They were looking for us, digging.

We held our breath and didn’t move for about half an hour, until they left without finding our bunker. But the pipes through which we got air must have gotten covered during their digging. We couldn’t breathe. I was the weakest of all of us because of the typhus that I had just barely recovered from. I remember seeing my father sitting on the floor in his prayer shawl, praying, and my brother with a hammer in his hand trying to open the entrance to the bunker. Then I fell down and everything went black.

When I woke up, or, rather, when the doctor brought me out of my unconsciousness, I opened my eyes and saw many people around the bed in which I was lying. My cousin Cyla was beside me. The first thing I asked was, “Where is my sister Sarah?” When I saw the looks on their faces, I understood that she was gone. Everybody in that bunker except for me, all nine of them, had suffocated. I was alone.

I became wild with grief. When the doctor tried to give me an injection to calm down I grabbed him by the throat, wanting to kill him for bringing me back to life. I had felt so peaceful while sleeping, and it seemed to me that I had been woken from a good, sound sleep to face a dreadful life, alone and terrified. I could hardly move my right foot, which was very swollen and had a big sore where my garter had been holding my stockings. Because I fell first and was face down, I was close on the ground where there was still oxygen while everybody on top of me struggled for air. Somehow I survived, but I could taste the lime floor in my breath for a long time afterward.

I had been unconscious for about twenty-four hours. I was told that the day after the Germans left, my aunt got out of her bunker and, knowing where ours was, came looking for us. She opened it and called, but no one answered. She found everybody dead. Some neighbours started to pull out the bodies one by one. When they pulled away the body on top of me they tore away my garter, which had dug itself into my swollen flesh and left a wound on my leg.

When Josio came into my room he was stunned. I will never forget the look on his face—he could not believe that I was alive. I couldn’t understand it myself. I believe it was fate. From then on, Josio took care of me. I was completely helpless and couldn’t walk because of my sore leg. I would never have survived on my own and didn’t care at all. On that horrible April day it felt as though I had lost everybody. Only Josio had survived. He told me that the Germans had caught a thousand people, told them to dig their own graves, and then killed them all. Then the Nazis made the ghetto smaller yet again.

As I lay in bed, watching the peasants come into the house to take what they wanted, I thought how dear every little item had been to my mother, how she had collected those things over the years, how she had kept everything. It was a horrible experience, lying there in bed wanting to die, to go to sleep and not wake up. But Josio wanted me to live, so I did. He still had his mother, brother and sister, and their house remained within the new border of the ghetto. He gave me a small room at the back of his house and I moved in, taking the bare necessities and leaving the rest.

I could not figure out why he wanted me. He was so handsome, so good, so everything. He was all a girl could dream of. He could have had his pick of the most beautiful girls in town—there were still a few left—but he wanted me. He took such good care of me, better than a mother would. I lived in that little room in Josio’s house for a month. Life was unbearable, but I thought, I can’t keep crying and being a burden to Josio, so I told myself that I was away from home on a vacation and would soon be together with my family. Really, I saw no way out, no way of living through that hell. But Josio could get out of the worst situations, and he never gave up.

One day, Josio came running into the house. “The Germans are back in town!” He quickly picked me up and ran, his mother and sister following. We reached the fields outside the village and stayed there the entire night. In the end, we found out that it had been a false alarm, and came back. It was nevertheless clear that we just couldn’t live like that anymore. Josio started to look for farmers who would take his mother, brother and sister. He found a few who were willing, but he couldn’t trust just anybody. Finally, he found a very nice man, someone he had known for years, who was willing to keep them in a hiding place in his house. Josio and his brother then brought two bullets, thinking that if they were caught they would shoot one German and leave a bullet for themselves.

In the meantime, life in the ghetto became even more unbearable. The Nazis came to town more often, making all kinds of demands. We could tell that the end of the war was near and they were getting desperate. I didn’t worry at all. I was not afraid anymore because I just didn’t care what happened to me. But Josio did. Josio was making plans with his close friend Kawalek, a dentist, who still had a fair bit of money. The two were very fond of each other. Kawalek had a Protestant friend named Gnidula, who once said to him, “If things go really badly, come to me and I will keep you hidden in my house.”

One day, in the middle of May, Josio and Kawalek took Gnidula up on his offer. They went to Gnidula’s farm to build a bunker in his barn for us to hide in. They worked for two days, building the bunker under a chicken coop, and then came home. We stayed in the ghetto for two more weeks and then heard an announcement that it was to be liquidated. After June 1, 1943, no one would remain. The Germans were coming to take everybody away. After that date, anyone seen would be shot. We knew that the time had come to leave. Whoever had a place to go, left, and the rest remained, waiting….

I will never forget the exodus from Kozowa. I was leaving everything behind and yet, we were lucky to have a place to go. We sneaked out in the middle of the night so no one would see us. We feared not only the Germans, but also the Ukrainians who lived all around us—they were our greatest enemies after the Germans. Some of them were always ready to point a finger at us, or even kill us themselves.

We left the house and everything in it, leaving the door open. All I took with me was a sheet, a skirt, a coat and pyjamas. We walked for a long time, reaching our destination before sunrise. When Gnidula saw me and Kawalek’s wife he was furious. He wanted to take just the men, not the women, and it took a lot of persuasion before he finally agreed to let us stay. I thought that we were in heaven—Gnidula’s house stood all alone in the middle of a beautiful field with green grass all around. He was a gardener and he had a strawberry field nearby. It was so very peaceful, a lovely day in June. The sun was shining, everything was green, and I could have stood there forever. But all that beauty was not for me. I had to hide, to bury myself somewhere. When I crawled into our bunker I felt safe. I didn’t think that perhaps I was seeing daylight for the last time in my life, or that maybe I would never be able to feel sunshine again or breathe fresh air. It’s hard to believe that I was actually happy to be there in the bunker, yet I was. I was thankful to be hidden from the eyes of evil men and to be together with Josio.

The bunker was a dark hole in the ground with an entrance through a camouflaged opening from the chicken coop. In the barn, there was a wall with wheat stacked against it, so when someone came into the barn, only the wheat was visible. We spent our nights in a narrow spot in the barn and moved around a bit in the morning, exercising before going to spend the day in the bunker, where we could only sit or kneel. At night we covered our feet with blankets and for light used a small bottle filled with kerosene and a wick. We played cards to pass the time. Gnidula came once a day to bring us food and tell us the news. He brought me a notebook and a pencil so I could write my thoughts and feelings. He wanted to know what it felt like, being buried alive. I wrote little poems for him, which he always enjoyed reading. I also knitted him a sweater. Every day he left a pail of water in the barn. We washed ourselves even on the very cold days when the water froze. Somehow, despite the ice water, none of us ever caught a cold.

We stayed in Gnidula’s bunker for nine months, never raising our voice above a whisper and learning how to sneeze without making a sound so that no one would know we were there. We had to be careful that people who walked by the barn didn’t suspect anything because some of them wouldn’t have hesitated to call on the Germans. Gnidula kept us well informed about the events of the war. The front lines kept moving closer to us and we had high hopes of surviving. In March 1944, about thirty kilometres from us, the front stopped and remained in one place for a whole month.

We kept waiting for the Soviets to liberate us, but sometimes we couldn’t stand it any longer. We felt disgusted, angry and nervous, and we started to fight amongst ourselves. On calmer days we would tell each other our dreams and wishes. I wished that I could go over to a well and drink as much water as I wanted and walk with the wind blowing through my hair. Josio wished that he could cut a piece of bread from a whole loaf. Kawalek wished to drink from a clean, shiny glass. We kept making wishes and playing games and hoping that someday this would all end. When our spirits were low we prayed not to wake up. It would be so easy just to stay asleep forever without thinking.

DONALD (CHIPKIN) BERKMAN

Context: Evading Persecution

Source: Donald (Chipkin) Berkman and Maryann McLoughlin. Two Voices: A Mother and Son, Holocaust Survivors. Margate (NJ): ComteQ Publishing, 2010, pp. 24–30. Used by permission.

Donald Berkman was only an infant when the Nazis attacked the Soviet-occupied part of eastern Poland in the summer of 1941. Moved from his hometown of Druysk to ghettos at Vidzy and then to Swieciany, the villagers of Druysk eventually arrived at the much larger ghetto of Vilna (Vilnius), where almost all of them were murdered in the enormous bloodletting that took place in the Ponary Forest. While Donald was too young to be fully cognizant of the broader details of his and his family’s experience, certain things stand out in his memory—such as his survival with his mother, his being hidden as a result of efforts from a friendly priest, and the experience of “roaming the woods around Vilna until the end of the war.”

1941 had no Halley’s Comet, but nonetheless it was a monumental year, a year of great destruction, a year of terrible losses. 1941 was the year of Operation Barbarossa when the Germans, in violation of the Non-Aggression Pact, turned on the Soviets on June 22, 1941, opening the Eastern Front. The Nazis unleashed 4.5 million troops, attacking the Soviet Union along an 1800 mile front, laying waste their lands and killing helpless citizens. In 1941 as the Wehrmacht raped and plundered its way across the USSR, the Einsatzgruppen (special mobile killing units) followed, murdering thousands and thousands of Jews, living in shtetls and cities, for example at the Babi Yar massacre in the Ukraine.

Later in 1941, on December 7, without a declaration of war, the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor on the island of O’ahu, Hawaii, was attacked by the Japanese….

1941 was also the year I was born—January 25, 1941. I don’t remember much from my early years. I was born in Druysk, a shtetl that my mother has told me about. Druysk was an unusual town because the population consisted of Jews—523; Christians—0.

My father, Yosel Berkman, was a cobbler, just the soles. The customer brought the upper parts of the shoe, and my father attached the uppers to the soles or he repaired the soles on shoes. Yosel had a brother and sister. His father had died young. His mother, Shana, lived with us. My mother, Sara, did handling—she sold salt, herrings, needles, thread, and kerosene and went outside the village and sold these. My parents lived in a one room house with a thatched roof, a dirt floor, an outhouse, and a well for water right outside the house. My mother told me that the Soviets came in after the partition of Poland. They were Communists, but we were not. We were bourgeoisie. They rationed food and other commodities. People did not like them. People who owned land were taken to Siberia. We were not landowners, so they did not bother us. In fact, my mother worked in a Soviet store; they made her work there. She sold only three things in the Soviet store: herring, butter and kerosene.

The Germans came in soon after I was born in 1941. My mother later told me that one day, when I was six months old, there were rumors of a German Aktion (operation involving the mass assembly, deportation and murder of Jews). Everyone ran. However my mother was not in the room, so my aunt who had four children, grabbed me and ran, leaving her own six-month-old baby on the bed. The rumor was a false one. When my mother returned, she asked her sister why she hadn’t taken her own baby. My aunt answered: “You have only one child. I had to save him.”

In 1942 the townspeople were removed from Druysk to a ghetto—a small ghetto in Vidzy, where my father and other male relatives cut peat and chopped down trees to be sent back to Germany. The women stayed inside the ghetto—cooking for the men and children. Some worked for the Germans sewing and mending uniforms.

After several months they moved us to Swieciany Ghetto, a bigger ghetto. There too the men worked in the woods cutting trees. When they were finished cutting trees in the one location, they were sent to the forest. They had to be available to work or they were shot.

Then these workers, including my father and all my other relatives, were to be taken to a ghetto near Vilna. Many were transported there from Vilna as well as from the small towns in the Vilna Gubneria. My mother had pneumonia—very bad feelings—about this transport. She hid with me in a closet for three days. When all was quiet again and the commotion had died down, she came out of the hiding place.

From the ghetto near Vilna, my father, his mother, Shana, only fifty two years old, our relatives, and the rest of the Jews from Druysk were taken to Ponar (Ponary) where they were killed in pits. There they were murdered, burned, and buried.

I am haunted to this day, wondering if my father had to watch his mother murdered. I am so glad he did not have to see my mother and me killed.

The six pits there had been used by the Russians for the storage of ammunition, kerosene and gasoline. However the Germans used two of the pits for killing men, women, children and babies. Most of the killing was done by Lithuanians, supported by the Germans. In three other pits, the Sonderkommandos burned the bodies. The Sonderkommandos lived in the sixth pit. The Lithuanians helped because they were grateful to the Germans for expelling the Soviets from Lithuania and promising the Lithuanians their freedom and, after the war, an independent Lithuania.

All the killing of the citizens of Druysk was done in three days in 1942. From the hundreds of Druysk Jews, only twenty-one people survived, including my stepsisters and me—eighteen adults and three children. Of forty-nine members of my family, including first cousins, only my mother and I survived.

After we had escaped deportation to Ponar, I remember we stayed for about three months in a monastery. The priest we knew arranged for us to hide there. The monks kept us for a while. My mother was kept there as a cleaning woman. They gave me a Polish name, Micha. One of the monks made a little cross for me. I walked around the monastery wearing this tiny cross. The monk also taught me Catholic prayers. When the Germans came around, the monks turned us away because they were afraid of being killed.

We then went into the woods, roaming the woods around Vilna until the end of the war. We went around searching for households that were sympathetic to Jews, for people who would give us bread. Basically we lived in the woods for almost three years, scrounging around for food.

My mother was good at healing, using plants from the woods. Once I had a bad infection on my head. During the night she went into a barn and got pitch that was used on the cart wheels, and she put that pitch on my head. Pitch is loaded with coal tar, the same ingredient that is in tar soap and the black salve that people used to use. The wound on my head healed. Another time my hands were covered with an infection. My mother took my urine and put this on my hands and they healed. Urine contains urea so perhaps this healed my infected hands. Another time I had worms that came out in my stool. My mother saw this and fed me garlic, which helped.

At the beginning we tried to hook up with the partisans; however, the partisans would not take my mother because she had a child. The partisans were afraid of children. They thought the children crying, if they were with the group, would disclose their hiding place. They would have taken her if she would leave me because she was handy and strong. But she did not want to leave me—thankfully! Therefore the partisans would not take us. They chased us away. They were afraid that I would cry. Many people had suffocated their children rather than allowing them to cry and betray the group to the enemy….

I remember the cold in the forest. I was always cold. Neither mother nor I had warm clothing. I did not even have a jacket. Lithuania has very cold winters and where we were was particularly cold. I was always cold, cold!

Clothes were definitely a problem. I grew out of mine. Mother’s clothing became tattered and worn. Throughout the war she had only one dress. By the end of the war there was no material available, not for anyone. Mother eventually had to carry me in the front of her body. I helped cover her, and also her body heat kept me warm.

To keep warm at night when we slept, my mother would make a shelter of branches, or she would look for potato pits. Poor people, at that time and place, didn’t have basements, so they dug holes in the ground where it was colder but where it would not freeze. They stored their extra food such as potatoes in these holes. They would line the holes with leaves, drop the potatoes in, and then cover the opening with a board, and place more leaves on top of the board. Potatoes were very important because they were one of the staples; peasants ate bread, potatoes, and herring.

My mother found these holes by scuffing her shoes along the ground. When she found a pit, we would sleep there. We would crawl in, piling leaves on top of us to keep us warm. At night, in these holes we were warmer than we would have been, exposed to the wind, snow, and cold.

We awoke early in the morning. First thing: we would try to find water. The morning dew settled on the leaves, so we licked the leaves or the blades of grass.

Then mother and I foraged for berries, wild mushrooms, anything that grew in the forest or fields. We often went in to fields to steal a little corn. Corn from the fields was the best—sweet.

Toward the end of the war we found a dead horse. Mother cut pieces from the carcass and we ate them. We ate them raw; we could not have a fire because it would have signaled the Nazis that we were in the woods. In addition, mother had no way to light a fire. I still remember the good taste of meat.

After we ate something, we would hide in the forest for the rest of the day, we could not risk being seen. Mother would make a shelter of branches where we could rest until nightfall. At night we looked for more food. Then we could go up to houses; this was too dangerous during the day. We looked through the windows to see inside if there was a woman alone. Women tended to be more sympathetic. If a woman was in the house alone, my mother would knock. However, my mother would not try to knock if through the window she had seen a man. But sometimes we were so hungry, she had to knock anyway. She was afraid a man would turn us in. Some women and some men helped. Most turned us away.

After we ate, we looked for a place to sleep during that night.

This is how we spent most of our days and nights while we were hiding in the forests.

HENRY BORENSTEIN

Context: Eastern Europe

Source: Henry Borenstein. All Alone: A Young Boy Hiding in Wartime Poland. Caulfield South (Victoria): Makor Jewish Community Library, 2008, pp. 33–38. Used by permission.

A boy in the Warsaw Ghetto, Henry Borenstein was left largely to himself as various beloved members of his family became victims of the Holocaust. With little else to keep him in the ghetto, he decided that the only way he could take his revenge on the Nazis was to find a means to escape the ghetto and join the fight outside. This account relates his efforts to leave, and his subsequent flight; wandering the countryside and encountering other, smaller ghettos, he eventually boards a train for one more village—only to experience a shock when he arrives at his destination.

This event happened in the later half of 1942. My mother and my two aunts were both gone. I was alone.

One day I heard shooting in the yards and German voices screaming: “Alle runter! Alle runter!” “Everybody down!” I was living on the second floor. On the staircase was a window leading to a ledge that was about twelve inches wide. Without thinking too much about it, I climbed out of the window and onto the ledge. The drop to the ground was about four to five metres. I shuffled along the ledge, holding onto the wall, and managed to reach the opening to the shul by walking along the rafters.

I think I have mentioned already that in our yard, the second yard at 35 Nawleski, there were three synagogues: a stibl on the ground floor; behind that the Mizrachi place, and the main synagogue. I lay down on the rafters of the main synagogue and covered myself with a lot of holy books, just in case the Germans decided to look around. The women’s balcony was about four metres below me, but the staircase leading to it had been removed. So there was no way anyone could reach me from inside the shul.

Looking out through the holes I recognized someone I knew. Her name was Lonia. She married just before the war broke out and worked as a seamstress for my aunt. She was heavily pregnant with her first child and now the Germans had her. From my shelter I could see her terrified face. Lonia is another person I knew who is now gone.

I could still hear shooting in the yard and lay there under the books until everything went quiet again.

I stepped out into Nalewski Street, where lay the scattered belongings of the people who had just been taken away. I spied some potatoes dropped there by one of the victims and gathered up maybe two or three kilos of them. These potatoes enabled me to survive in the ghetto for another two or three days.

A few days later I managed to escape from the concrete jungle of the ghetto—although that was only the beginning. I was determined that the Germans would never take me alive, that if I could not fight them, then at least I would run and run and run! …

I was sitting on the curb of the road, about one hundred metres from the gate on the intersection of Leszno and Zelazna streets, trying to figure out how to sneak out of the ghetto. Suddenly, a Jewish policeman came up to me and asked me if I would go to the baker’s for him and buy some rolls. This shop was about one hundred meters away, on the Aryan side. I said I would go. He told me to come closer to the gate and said he would wave his hand when it is safe for me to go across. He gave me a few zloty, said something to the Polish policeman and then, when the German Źandarm turned his back, he waved to me.

I went through the gate at exactly that moment, while the German had his back turned and the Pole was not watching.

I had only walked a distance of about ten meters on the Aryan side when I was suddenly surrounded by five or six Polish teenagers asking me for money. I knew who these kids were: we called them szchmalcowniks—people who hung around outside the ghetto for the express purpose of blackmailing escapees. They would not hesitate to denounce anyone they found to the Germans.

I already knew that Ukrainian and Latvian soldiers were positioned outside the ghetto to guard the walls and shot anybody who escaped, so I told the Polish boys to move on a bit further where nobody could see us—and then I would give them money.

I continued walking down the road and came to the door of the bakery, where there was a queue of Polish people. I ran inside the shop, leaving the Polish teenagers behind. I saw a door and just ran through it, emerging in the shop’s empty back yard. I jumped up onto a tall rubbish bin and managed to scale the high fence. Then I found myself in another yard, but this one led to a street. I stepped out into that street, wondering where I should go next.

I jumped onto a tram and ended up at Dworzec Wschodni, the eastern railway station. I went to the booking office and bought a child’s ticket to Rembertow, where my father was living.

There were plenty of Germans standing on the platform, as a hospital train was just passing, full of injured Germans from the Eastern Front. I managed to avoid them and boarded the train to Rembertow, a twenty-minute ride away. Just then I remembered that as a deterrent, the Germans had hanged a few Poles near Rembertow railway station.

I was not long in Rembertow, though I cannot remember exactly how long I stayed there. A couple of weeks after I arrived we heard rumours that the dreaded Einsatzgruppen, the mobile extermination teams, were about to arrive in the town with their killing apparatus. One morning at around seven o’clock I heard some turmoil down at the railway-station end of the ghetto and I just ran out the other side—I think into Okuniewska Street. I didn’t even have time to say goodbye to my father. So now I had escaped from two ghettos. By this time it was July and the weather was warm. Where was I to go next?

I had one idea. I decided to go to my uncle Rafael in Falenice. I went to the Rembertow railway station where I saw a few non-Jewish faces. I had been selling cigarettes to an engine driver who drove steam trains and had become friendly with his wife and son, who could not speak. He was mute. He was about seven or eight years old. When I went into the station the little boy saw me and began making noises and pointing his finger at me, to draw his mother’s attention to me. I left the station quickly and hid.

Falenice was on the Otwock line, so I decided I would try and go there. I walked from Rembertow to Growchow, a suburb of Warsaw Praga. I took another tram and returned to the railway station to board the train to Falenice, without a ticket. The line to Falenice was narrow gauge. It ran alongside the river Vistula, then turned toward Falenice.

There was a ghetto in Falenice. I sneaked in and found my uncle. I told him what had happened in Warsaw and Rembertow. I had only been there a few days when the Sonderkommando (work unit of Nazi prisoners) arrived at one end of the Falenice Ghetto, and once again I ran out the other end.

Now I was completely on my own, with no friends or relatives to help me. All I had was my burning hatred of the Germans and a passionate desire to live. I did not want to go like a lamb to the slaughter and was determined to manage on my own. I decided I could just walk from village to village, trying to adapt to circumstances as they arose. My only assets were my immaculate Polish language, my green eyes and dark blonde hair.

While in Falenice I heard there were still Jews living in Wysoki Mazowiecki, so once again I jumped on a train without a ticket and went there, only to find that the ghetto had already been liquidated.

MAX BORNSTEIN

Context: Evading Persecution

Source: Max Bornstein. If Home Is Not There. Toronto: ©Azrieli Foundation, 2012, pp. 105–109. Used by permission.

Jews hid from the Nazis all over Europe. Once a person reached the conclusion that hiding was the most viable option for staying alive, plans had to be made and help sought; successful concealment, essentially a solitary undertaking, was usually not something that could be achieved alone. Max Bornstein was one who tried to do so by himself, and succeeded. As he sought to cross from occupied France into the so-called “free” or Vichy Zone, he faced a number of obstacles which he relates in this absorbing account of his escape.

Restrictions against travel for Jews were becoming increasingly severe, so I had to make a decision based on the most reliable sources of information available and work out a practical strategy that would, I hoped, lead me across the demarcation line. I was afraid that if I waited much longer it would become impossible to get out of occupied France and felt that I had no choice but to act quickly.

Sadly, so many Jews did not see the necessity of escaping, relying instead on Providence, hoping that the good Lord’s mercy would see them safely through this turbulent period. Even when they became aware that there was danger in staying, many chose to ignore it, unwilling to abandon everything they had worked so hard for to flee empty-handed to an unknown fate. My own aunt and uncle with their three children were among them. They lived in a lovely apartment with all the advantages of a secure economic future and chose to remain in Paris. In 1942, the Gestapo came knocking on their door. The three members of my family who were home, my aunt Leah, her son Philippe and her daughter, Luba, were interned in the transit camp in Drancy and from there deported to Auschwitz, where they perished in the gas chambers.

The night before I left Paris for the second time, all my friends again gathered to bid me farewell. We talked long into the night, reminiscing about the many good times we had shared. I will retain these memories of my good and loyal friends forever. I can still hear their last words to me, “Bonne chance, mon vieux. (Good luck, old pal.) We’ll see you after the war.”

A few of my friends came to the station this time to help me buy my ticket in case the clerk asked for identification. One of them was a native-born Frenchman, so the travel restrictions didn’t apply to him. Pretty soon I boarded the train heading for Moulins-sur-Allier, about three hundred kilometres south of Paris. En route, I had time to think about where I should get off the train—an all-important consideration if I was to avoid running into the German inspection that was most likely to occur at the main station there.

When the train got to within thirty kilometres or so of Moulins, I concentrated on looking for a small station or spot in between stations where it might be safe to jump off. All I had with me was a backpack that contained only a few essentials—the best advice I had been given was to travel light. Looking out the window, I saw the train pulling slowly into a small station, probably Saint-Imbert, and when it came to a complete stop, I saw that the station was almost deserted—there was only one station attendant and a couple of other people; there were no German soldiers in sight. I went quickly to the exit and stepped off the train just before it began to pull out of the station. Cautiously, I walked from the station toward Moulins and the border crossing at the demarcation line to assess my chances for crossing over to the free zone. Needless to say, the actual checkpoint was swarming with German guards as far along the banks of the Allier River in either direction as I could see. From where I was standing, my prospects appeared hopeless, but this time I was determined not to turn back.

From my vantage point I could see—with much envy—how easily French people were able to cross over into the free zone. Even if I were remotely inclined to try requesting legal permission to cross over, they would arrest me on the spot for violating the rule that restricted stateless persons from travelling beyond a twenty-kilometre radius from Paris. On top of this, foreign Jews were not permitted into the unoccupied zone without first obtaining a permit from the Kommandantur.

The limited equipment I had brought with me included a pair of binoculars that I had purchased at the Marché aux Puces (flea market) just before leaving Paris. My first escape attempt had made me realize how useful binoculars would be in spotting German soldiers from a distance. Since any attempt to cross the demarcation line at Moulins would clearly be futile, I decided to follow a route south along the river. After trekking along roads and through fields for about four hours, I came across a farmer’s field that seemed like a good place to rest for a while.

I made an important discovery while scrutinizing the area around the field with my binoculars: the German observation posts were thinning out as they got farther away from town. These gaps might give me the opportunity I needed to sneak across the river. From my hiding place in the farmer’s field, I could observe the Germans’ every move and learn their routine. I watched them for hours until my hands were practically numb from holding up the binoculars and my persistence finally paid off. I was able to discern the pattern of their movements that would tell me when exactly to make a break for the river and swim across to freedom.

I noticed that at regular intervals the German guards strolled over to the next post quite a distance away, stopping to chat for up to half an hour at a time. Everything seemed to be in my favour except for the fact that the sun would soon be setting and it would be much too difficult to make my escape in the dark. I didn’t look forward to the prospect of spending the night in an open field, but there didn’t seem to be any other choice. Fortified by the wonderful sandwiches my aunt had prepared for the journey, I settled down for what felt like the longest night I had ever experienced. As twilight gradually turned into pitch darkness and I could no longer see anything through my binoculars, I tried to use my backpack as a pillow and fall asleep. But try as I might, I couldn’t get comfortable and I spent a very cold and restless night. Daylight couldn’t come soon enough.

By the time dawn broke, all I wanted was a hot café au lait. My wristwatch told me that it was five o’clock, and it was becoming fairly light out. When I looked through my binoculars, however, I wondered if I was hallucinating. There were no Germans anywhere. By some strange miracle they had all vanished, leaving me free to safely make my escape across the river. I was so nervous that I kept checking to make sure that they weren’t just napping or hiding, ready to jump out and grab me. I gathered up my courage, picked up my backpack, slung it across my back and cautiously moved toward the German control post until I was near enough to see that, beyond a doubt, the German sentry was not at his post.

To say I was baffled would be an understatement, but without any further hesitation, I took advantage of the situation and went straight to the river and took off all my clothes except for the bathing suit I wore underneath. I then packed my clothes into the backpack and strapped it tightly across my shoulders. With one final look all around through the binoculars to satisfy myself that I was alone, I plunged into the frigid river. The sudden shock left me gasping for air and my cumbersome backpack made every stroke more laborious than the last.

I wasn’t a particularly strong swimmer and could only swim short distances before running out of breath. I also tended to panic unless I stayed close to the shore. Under the circumstances, I had to rely entirely on willpower to keep me going. The freezing water temperature was only a minor concern compared to the far more serious problem of remaining afloat. As my strength waned, my arms felt as heavy as lead, forcing me to stop and rest. I went into a real panic when several times I swallowed mouthfuls of water. When I checked my progress after the incidents, I saw to my dismay that I had only covered about a third of the distance. Using every ounce of energy to increase my pace, I forced myself to labour on mechanically, afraid that my strength would give out at any moment.

The realization that the Germans might spot me and shoot me gave me the impetus to keep going. By the time that I had covered two-thirds of the distance and was within reach of the free zone, however, my strength began to seriously fade and I was consumed with fear. I was so exhausted that I could only occasionally kick my legs. At the very moment when my strength gave out completely and I was no longer able to stay afloat, on the verge of going under, I found within myself a renewed energy that came from pure determination. I managed to fight off my fatigue and before long I found myself grasping the shores of the unoccupied zone of France and my entry into freedom.

FRED BUFF

Context: Before the War

Source: Fred Buff (edited by Maryann McLoughlin). Riding the Storm Waves: The St. Louis Diary of Fred Buff. Margate (NJ): ComteQ Publishing, 2000, pp. 34–35, 42–43, 48, 51–58, 60–69. Used by permission.

Fred (Fritz) Buff was a teenager from Germany who was a passenger on board the ill-fated SS St. Louis, a ship conveying nearly a thousand Jews seeking sanctuary in the New World. Bearing visas for entry to Cuba, they were to be sorely tested when the voyage terminated in Havana harbor on May 17, 1939. This remarkable testimony contains extracts from the diary Fred kept during the voyage, told in a clear and compelling manner. Although lengthy, it is an engaging narrative of a most tragic episode in the West’s failure to rescue Jews when provided with the opportunity to do so in the months immediately preceding the outbreak of war.

May 13, 1939

On May 13, 1939, approaching 8:00 PM, the St. Louis, the largest motor ship of the HAPAG line, weighed its anchor to take almost 950 passengers to a distant land, a land where all these men, women and children expect to restart their lives, a land where all our thoughts and our eyes are focused upon—CUBA.

It is with mixed feelings that we board take our personal farewell from Germany by trying to sever all memories of our lives to date, yet to carry forward hitherto memorable life experiences.

With tears in our eyes we could not completely forget what we called our home, our place of birth. We clung to the telephone at the pier to call our loved ones with a last farewell, but one thought filled our hearts, the thought about our future.

This is how I spent the first evening aboard, at the ship’s railing, thinking about my parents and my sister who had to stay behind; about the many people, both young and old, whom I had learned to esteem and to love during the short years of my life; and about dozens of other thing which jogged my memory, especially the devastating events of the last few years, ever since the Nazi regime came to power in Germany.

It was a clear and pleasant evening on this 13 of May 1939, an evening which was to lead toward happier days….

May 20, 1939

After being underway for seven days, we encountered the first ship on the horizon. It appeared to be a freighter that was sailing in the opposite direction—towards Europe.

With the exception of the glimpse of the Azores, we have seen only sky and water to date. Seeing another vessel provided us with some welcome diversion and conversational material.

Despite all the entertainment and other pleasant goings on, my thought frequently drift towards Havana and Cuba, our country to be. I am comforted to have made good friends aboard the ship. Hopefully these friendships will continue ashore. With the uncertainties we must expect to face, we should not have to face them alone.

Today is the cut off day for all outgoing mail which is addressed to be returned to Europe with this ship. The assigned personnel have asked passengers to stop submitting mail. The large volume of mail already accumulated needs to be sorted and processed, apparently an overwhelming task for them.

The telegraph station is also a beehive of activity. It looks as if everyone wants to wire greetings and a progress report to relatives and friends about our successful crossing and impending landing. I also stood in line to cable my parents to tell them that all is ok with me.

Now that we have arrived at the doorsteps of a new world, I am filled with anticipation, yet rueful that my parents and sister were not as fortunate as I and had to remain in Germany. My only wish to them is for an early auf Wiedersehen (reunion).

For many fellow passengers Havana will end years of separation from their families and will mean reunification with their spouses and children.

We came aboard this ship in Hamburg as individuals with a common destiny, and we will leave this ship like a community that has had the good fortune to travel together and hopefully will have enjoyed much of a sorrow free two weeks voyage from Hamburg to Havana. When can we ever again experience such joyful days? …

May 26, 1939, Friday

The last day before reaching Havana was dedicated to luggage. All suitcases had to be packed and placed outside our cabin door by midnight. Only hand luggage could be held back. Everything was arranged for an immediate disembarkation early the next morning. During the last day land was visible on and off. These must have been groups of islands. Also Florida’s shore was in sight, as an announcement had informed us through the loudspeaker system.

On this last day before Havana we were mostly occupied with landing preparations. We read the disembarkation instructions, visited with our newly acquired friends, and made plans to meet again in Havana.

Nervously we went up on deck to see if from there land was visible. May 27, 1939, tomorrow, exactly fourteen days after leaving Hamburg, we should be stepping onto terra firma (Latin for solid earth)….

Arrival in Havana, Cuba

May 17, 1939, Saturday

We have reached the harbor all right. At 4:00 AM, the ship’s horn blasted several times to awaken us. However, most of us, including me, did not sleep anyway because of all the excitement of our arrival. Those who expected family reunions were already at the railings of the ship. I joined them and witnessed the ship’s entering into the harbor. It was dawn. I was able to make out the outline of the palm-tree-lined shore and a bit later the villas of Vedado, Havana’s “upscale suburb.” This was a beautiful sight.

The streets were already coming to life with car traffic. Also pedestrians kept pace with the slow forward speed of the ship into the harbor. Some of the passengers already recognized their loved ones among those pedestrians and exchanged calls of welcome. What a reunion was ahead for them!

I rushed back to my cabin. I appropriately dressed for the impending landing, gulped down a cup of coffee, and returned to my observation post. I wanted to make sure not to miss anything of this evolving city, within hours our expected place of residence.

The sunrise was bright and rapid. The St. Louis dropped anchor. We were lined up for a medical examination. A doctor had come aboard. The line moved quickly and led into another line for the inspection of our landing permits.

At this rate of progress, getting off the ship should follow shortly.

At 8:00 AM, the ship was already surrounded by small boats, rented by family members and friends. They circled the ship searching for their next of kin among the densely occupied railings. The boats came close enough to the ship to establish eye contact and were within shouting distance.

Indescribable joy prevailed among the successful parties. Some bullhorn equipped boats were still seeking their connections.

More and more boats arrived at the scene. They were left undisturbed by the harbor patrol, but so far there was no indication that disembarkation was about to begin. The time of the early expected morning hour disembarkation had already passed.

Rowboats filled with local teenagers arrived at the scene. They had come to dive for and retrieve coins they begged to be thrown from the ship into the water. Their agility was amazing. Despite the obvious pollution of the harbor’s water, they always seemed to come up with their reward.

There was no doubt, as yet, in anyone’s mind that these delays were short lived and probably due to a Manana mentality, which we believed was prevalent in tropical environments. We patiently awaited signs of progress.

The horn sounded our call to lunch. The horn sounded again at 3:30 PM, our call to tea, and again at 6:00 PM, our call to dinner. With every sounding of the horn, we expected it to be our last sitting on the ship. Our optimism was premature. Conflicting calls from the circling boats below were not exactly helpful. Some claimed they knew we were still getting off this evening. Others only heard about Manana, while third options assured us that sometime tomorrow we will get off without a doubt! Not that we are in a great hurry, not while the ship’s crew is taking good care of us, although those with family ashore would rather be welcomed in person.

May 28, 1939, Sunday

The next day came and went without change. Throughout the ship a degree of unrest and concern spread.

Yet the daily appearance of the small boats and the efforts of relatives, shouting encouragement up to the deck did have a somewhat calming influence.

One person aboard claimed to have heard the reason for the delayed landing: namely, the arrival of two additional shiploads of immigrants. Their disembarkation had taken preference over our ship. We questioned the validity of all those well intended messages; none had come from the captain of the ship or from other authorized sources.

The general unrest and nervousness aboard started to become of real concern as to the true meaning of these delays?

All of us had orderly documents as issued by the Cuban Secretary of Immigration. Without those we could never have boarded the ship in Hamburg.

One day after another, the little boats still appeared every morning and stayed all day. Again and again it was to be Manana, but by now even the shouter’s voices had lost all vigor.

Something must have gone amuck. There was no doubt any more, yet we were in the dark as to the real reason. Are we destined to be quarantined? Why? Where? And for what reason?

The bulletin board told us of ongoing negotiations for our release, but there was no mention of a pending solution. All this led to more confusion and doubt.

Instead of lining the railings as we had been doing for the past days, we now took frequently to deck chairs as we brooded over the lack of progress.

An American warship had arrived in the harbor and anchored nearby. The warship fired salutary cannon shots, maybe a dozen or so, which apparently was the practice during diplomatic visitations. The unexpected booms woke us from our semi sleep and deep thoughts about our future. Even the unthinkable return with the ship to Hamburg had entered our minds for the first time. We forced ourselves to discount that possibility. That could not possibly become a reality!

June 1, 1939, Thursday

Six days had gone by—without an encouraging word. Before our eyes lied Havana, the city, its capital dome, the shore—the keys to our rescue and to our future!

Our nerves during these trying days had to endure a severe test. One passenger apparently could not bear the strain, so he cut the veins on both his wrists and jumped overboard in bright daylight. As once before, the call “Man Overboard” was heard and spread like wildfire. A lifesaving ring was again tossed in the victim’s direction. Again a seaman courageously jumped into the water, and this time was able to hold the victim from drowning until a boat came to the rescue. This took the man aboard and headed for the shore.

To keep control over our nerves became paramount. Weakness was no help whatsoever. It became our responsibility to deter others from doing likewise. Young men, myself included, were organized into a suicide patrol, to take our turn at policing the decks, especially at nightfall. Soon thereafter an important news announcement was circulated regarding our stalemated predicament, an indication of Cuba’s President Brù’s intractable stance. “On Friday, June 2, 1939, the St. Louis ship is to leave the harbor of Havana after its seven day stay.”

President Brừ had refused to continue negotiations unless this edict was carried out.

The boats were here again; this time it was not from happiness and joy, not after the adversity of the latest news. However, our daily visitors still tried to instill us with courage, even with their own heavy hearts.

Negotiations had not been terminated. There was still a ray of hope which should not be given up or set aside….

June 2, 1939, Friday

One day later, on Friday morning, the day of our exit from Havana’s harbor, the passengers were summoned to the large ship’s lounge. The presidents of the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC or Joint) from New York and from Havana had come aboard to address the group. [Lawrence Berenson, an attorney, represented the American JDC.]

Everyone assembled in silence and in anticipation of the words from the leaders of our destiny. This gathering did not miss its objective and undoubtedly saved passengers and crew alike from further calamities.

The mere thought of being able to rely on the report of those distinguished men renewed our own spirit and strength for facing the immediate critical weeks ahead.

Surprisingly the President of the Cuban Customs Office followed with his own speech. It was difficult to hold back tears as he expressed his foremost wish, the early return of all passengers to Havana.

Most importantly all the speakers expressed the assurance that we will not be returned to Hamburg despite the absence of a favorable outcome as of this date.

These were obviously the most important and promising words for our ears. They eased our ominous suspicions about our future, even in the face of the impending departure from the harbor of Havana. By now, we almost looked forward to our departure from there because as welcome as our visiting small boats were at the outset and after our arrival, the more disquieting they had become as time went on and as our outlook became cloudier day by day.

At 9:45 AM our visiting dignitaries left the ship. This was a dramatic parting for them as well as for all of us.

Soon thereafter, at exactly 10:00 AM the ship’s bells rang, the engines started to hum, and the ship started slowly to turn its bow towards the exit of this scenic harbor.

Our hopes and expectations about a return to Havana had been somewhat enhanced by the earlier gathering and by the speeches of the prominent participants, especially since negotiations were alive and, as reported, in a productive atmosphere….

Departure from Havana, Cuba

No one who was a passenger on the St. Louis will ever forget this departure. Everyone was emotionally drained, even the bravest were shaken. After all, hundreds of next of kin had been ashore waiting for our arrival. Just visualize all the women and children who saw their husbands and fathers only from the little boats below or on the nearby shore and who, after long separations, are now suddenly being torn apart.

It was also a calamity for those of us, me included, who had arrived without being welcomed by family members. Our hopes had been dashed. We had been set back in our aspirations and expectations only to return to uncertainty and darkness.

Slowly the St. Louis navigated out of the harbor followed again by a multitude of slower boats. This time they were not manned by friends or relatives, but by members of various organizations who had chartered these boats as a sign of sympathy for our plight. I counted as many as thirty of these boats that had decided to accompany us out of the harbor.

During these hours the passengers and the ship itself had become an international sensation, sadly and involuntarily.

The piers were jammed with people. It looked as if thousands of people were waving their handkerchiefs, as we did from the ship, while drying our teary eyes at the same time. In addition, hundreds of autos with their horns tooting moved along the quay at the ship’s slow speed. They kept pace with us until we returned to the open waters of the Caribbean Sea.

Two official boats accompanied the ship well past the harbor’s exit. One of these was a Cuban police launch; the other was occupied by the dignitaries of the morning’s meeting. Even the police waved to us and shouted “Hasta la Vista!” (See you later) and “Auf Wierdersehen!” (Farewell until we meet again) as expressions of sympathy.

During the seven days in the harbor several policemen had been assigned to duty aboard the ship. Many of us struck up cordial relationships with these officers. They were interested in our predicament as well as in our backgrounds and did not hesitate to voice verbal concerns for our safety.

It took little time for the ship to distance itself from the land until we lost sight of it altogether….

The Fourteen Day Odyssey

Thrown back into the vast expanse of the sea, the ship seemed to cruise aimlessly between Cuba, the open sea, and the American coastline.

More than ten days after negotiations had taken place, a solution had not yet been found. How difficult must it be to find a place of refuge for less than 1000 desperate people?

Just now an announcement was posted that a decision would be forthcoming within two hours. Hardly anyone took this seriously. Too many times similar messages were prematurely announced and subsequently withdrawn with regrets. These highs and lows had sapped our energy and confidence.

Another day of great excitement was behind us. The ship had taken a northeasterly course which it had maintained for several hours at an advanced rate of speed—in the direction of Hamburg.

The effect on our nervous systems was just as if an exploding bomb had been dropped. The deck could have been compared to an inferno of aroused humanity. This was just too much to bear; any port other than Hamburg could be tolerated. Just the mention of the word brings back recollections, and the resolve of most of the people aboard was to die rather than ever see Hamburg again.

For some unknown reason, the ship’s course was reversed once again by 180 degrees and we sailed again in a southwesterly direction towards Cuba. But it was not long before we again headed northeast. There had to be a reason for this, but it escaped us. This could not just happen by chance.

This time the change caused less excitement because, during the night, a newly received telegram brought the first encouraging news. It stated that an as yet unnamed European country had apparently agreed to accept a certain number of the ship’s passengers, subject to the close of still ongoing negotiations with Havana.

Even this news was accepted with skepticism, but at least it revived a glimmer of hope that work on our behalf was still going on and that all was not lost.

This morning we were treated with a fairylike view as we sailed in close proximity along the Florida coastline. We were close enough to see the miles of beaches and also the tall buildings of the famed Miami Beach resorts. Large pleasure boats were fishing nearby; judging by the size of these yachts they had to be owned by well to do Americans.

An American Coast Guard boat was heading in our direction and a Coast Guard airplane circled the ship to monitor our course and to prevent anyone from attempting to swim ashore, enforcing the US decision of refusal and rejection.

We could not understand why this land of our dreams and also of our likely final destination would not liberate us from our agony and uncertainty? Isn’t this the land of large unpopulated and underdeveloped areas? It was very hard to accept the disinterest of the American government.

After two more days of status quo, a long expected telegram was posted that the ship was to head towards a small Cuban island Pinosa [isla de Pinos] and to land there with all of its passengers.

Although we had never heard of this island before, we were happy beyond words. We hugged and kissed each other. For the second time we rushed to the telegraph counter to inform our dear ones around the world of our fortunate turn of events and to ease their minds from worrying about this seemingly never ending odyssey.

This rerouting required another change in the ship’s course back into the more tropical zones. We were unconcerned that this island had few inhabitants or that we most likely will have to be housed in temporary structures of tents. We were convinced that this arrangement was only of a temporary duration. Again we packed our belongings and awaited further instructions about this new landing site….

June 6, 1939, Tuesday

Within hours the ship turned once again in the direction of Europe, and we had to endure another disappointment. How could that last telegram possibly have been posted? Was it perhaps only intended as a sedative?

How were we expected to trust any further announcements? Are we destined to become another ship like the Flying Dutchman in Wagner’s opera? The ship which had to cruise around for seven years? The only credible answer for us now was to have solid ground to walk on!

Daily, dozens of calls for help from our ship’s committee still leave the ship. Silence from everywhere is the only response. By now all the European countries have received our appeals. Europe might yet be the place of last resort, except Germany, although in our own minds we had already drawn the curtains for a final separation from the continent.

Last night the movie showed Mother’s Song (Mutterlied) with Benjamin Gigli. It was remembered as a great film. But who could possibly have enjoyed any film, no matter how great, after what we had been through these past days.

As another diversion the activity staff started instructions in various languages. I attended an English class but had serious difficulty keeping my mind on the subject; others could not do much better. All of us were preoccupied with the more serious matter of survival.

We had already left the Gulf Stream behind, and the tropical temperatures are abating. Europe is approaching rapidly and irreversibly. America has been left behind. Our hopes and aspirations of returning there have faded away. The faster we are closing in on Europe, the slower time seems to pass: hours appear like days; days, like weeks. We feel as if we have aged by years.

How concerned our families must be as they follow our whereabouts via the world’s news broadcasts. I, for one, am restless about the lack of any message from my parents and sister. It seems like a conspiracy for so many mishaps to occur all at once.

Our last resort now is Europe. We have reached a point of no return. Most of us aboard have assigned quota numbers from the United States and also affidavits that guarantee that applicants will not become a public burden upon our arrival there. These documents for US Immigration had been applied for prior to our embarkation and, therefore, should be honored regardless of where we might get off this ship, including by all the European countries, at least toward temporary asylum.

Several more days have elapsed. These were days of new occurrences and new tensions. Could the world possibly have heard our calls for help? Could our misfortune possibly still turn out for the better? We are now only a few days from Europe and are running out of time. No country has given its permission for our landing on its shores, but we are told that several incoming telegrams have confirmed Holland’s willingness to admit 200 people.

Once before Holland [The Netherlands] was inclined to break the deadlock. This response proved to be premature. The question now is, Can it really be true this time, or is it again only a rumor? If true, there are still over 750 more people who need to be admitted elsewhere, and the example set by Holland would have to be followed by others. The mood on board took a big leap for the better with Holland’s initiative, which could be the opening development to bringing the odyssey of the St. Louis to an end.

Every day now we are summoned to the lounge to be updated by the ship’s committee on rapidly developing events. We are also being reminded to remain calm and composed as the efforts for our release are moving toward success….

June 16, 1939, Friday

We are now only one day from Europe. Another meeting has been called. “The die is cast!” England, France, and Belgium have joined with Holland collectively to absorb all the passengers of the St. Louis in approximately equal numbers.

Our jubilation is fantastic, indescribable and spontaneous. The horizons have opened up. We were not forgotten after five weeks at sea, most of the time under severe duress and mental strain.

Finally a harbor has been found for our rescue—Antwerp, Belgium….

June 17, 1939, Saturday

All the passengers left the ship in Belgium. The Belgium contingency was transferred to Brussels. The three other countries were prepared to transport their allotment of passengers to their respective homelands.

MARIA CENSOR

Context: Eastern Europe

Source: Maria Censor. Letters to My Mother. Caulfield South (Victoria): Makor Jewish Community Library, 2000, pp. 58–65. Used by permission.

A Polish Jewish young woman passing as a Christian, Maria Censor was employed as a care worker in an orphanage in Radosc, near Warsaw, when she became aware of the fate of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto in April 1943. In this account she describes her own fate: having been caught by antisemitic Poles, denounced as a Jew and taken to Gestapo headquarters in Warsaw, she was released after being forced to surrender some of her valuables. Upon her release, the traumatic situation in which she found herself wandering the streets until, eventually, she found her way home—still undercover, but at least safe for the time being.

Meanwhile I applied for a job of carer and kindergarten teacher in the children’s home in Radosc near Warszawa. The home was run by a “Patronat” society caring for orphans and children of criminal prisoners. During the occupation children of political prisoners were naturally taken under the Patronat’s wings. Again, as if by a miracle, I secured the position. The home was in Radosc, about four kilometres’ walk through a forest from the railway station. It was beautiful, peaceful countryside, untouched by war. The home was in Radosc, about four kilometres walk through a forest.

The home stood on the edge of the forest, surrounded by a large orchard, the trees heavy with ripening apples, surrounded by a large orchard, the trees heavy with ripening apples and pears. There was a vegetable garden full of fresh vegetables. What bliss! A large dog of uncertain heritage came towards me wagging his tail furiously. He had spotted a sucker. I approached my new place of employment with mixed feelings. I was tired, having lugged my suitcase from the station on this very hot summer’s day. I was apprehensive, for it was a live in position. Most of all I was worried about you, Mama. I knew we could not see each other for a long time and I was already missing you.

A man appeared, he introduced himself as Piotr (Peter) and took my suitcase. He was “old,” maybe thirty. Mr. Piotr took me inside the house to a little office. He informed me that the “head” would see me in a few minutes. I was left there, standing, my suitcase at my side. The headmistress greeted me in a friendly manner and took me around the two storey building, explaining my duties as we looked at dormitories, dining and recreational areas and of course staff living quarters. I was to have an attic room with another group leader. There was a bed, washstand and a tiny cupboard space for each of us. There was another room for the other two carers right next door to ours. They had to walk through our space to reach their room.

Everything was orderly and clean and appeared well organized. I was happy. I thought of you, Mama, and hoped that you were as comfortable with your new surroundings as I was with mine.

All the children were outside playing on the undulating fields, games children play all over the world. They sounded happy. They looked well fed, so different from the city waifs, dirty and emaciated, congregating around the tannery. And those others, the Jewish children starving on the streets of the Ghetto.

Mr. Piotr was the caretaker. He appeared extremely ill prepared for this demanding manual job. He spoke in educated Polish and looked like a well-to-do city dweller. His hands were clean and not callused. He worked hard and often was visibly exhausted. Who was Mr. Piotr? I suspected that he was in hiding like me. It worried me at the time. I was always very polite to him and felt sorry for him. Then an impossible thing happened. He, Mr. Piotr, fell in love with me. I welcomed the feeling that I had someone older looking after me, like a brother or an old friend of the family. We spent many evenings together, walking, reading, talking. Of course I had a big story, usually improvised, of my life in Swiecie, my two brothers and sister. My fictitious tale led to my present position of being alone and the whole “family” repatriated to their place of origin, which had been annexed to the Third Reich in 1939. Mr. Piotr was very nice, but I had no reason to suspect his attention as anything more than brotherly concern to make this little girl happier.

I had every second Sunday off duty. On one such Sunday Mr. Piotr invited me to go to Warszawa with him to visit his relatives. I had not left Radosc for many months. It was too risky to visit you, Mama. The Ghetto was being “liquidated.” Transport after transport of cattle wagons passed through Radosc with their terrible cargo. Although I saw them with my own eyes, I did not want to hear the cries. I blocked my ears and averted my eyes, feeling so helpless, so useless. The children made my life possible. They were a lovely group. Starved of love, insecure, they thrived under my youthful non-disciplinarian care and I loved them all and enjoyed my work immensely.

I gratefully accepted Mr. Piotr’s invitation and we travelled to Warszawa to visit his cousins. It became very clear to me that the “cousins,” a lady and her partner, were not “working class.” The greeting was cordial. The table was set beautifully, the food simple and well presented. Their table manners were impeccable. I was being very closely watched. Who were these people? On that “pleasant” Sunday afternoon the Ghetto was burning. The soot and smoke were in the air. The gunfire could be heard. The clouds of smoke obliterated the sun. The windows in the flat were tightly shut. Suddenly I felt scared, almost out of control and so helpless. For a few moments my usual assurance left me, my emotions took over. Somehow I regained control and was able to continue polite conversation with my hosts, hoping that they did not notice my lapse.

It was an incredible experience. I knew I was not the same person who a few hours previously had arrived at this friendly meeting. I felt empty inside. On arrival back in Radosc Mr. Piotr began to show me more than the usual friendliness. How dare he, this “old” man of thirty! I was totally disgusted and very disappointed in him and I told him so. I had lost a friend when I needed one so desperately. Was Mr. Piotr a friend? Who was he? The other three carers were much older than I and they all fitted the description of “old maids” in my youthful perception. Any of them would have valued Mr. Piotr’s attention, but he just retreated into his quarters and became almost a hermit. He went about his duties in silence hardly acknowledging anybody. I remained friendless.

My work with the children continued. Their state of hygiene had always been important to me. The home had one large area called “the bathroom.” It had not bathtubs, but a row of timber dividers forming square spaces, each with a tap and a shower, or rather a rubber hose with the perforated nozzle of a watering can attached. The dividers were knee high; the floor was tiled in light brown tiles. We only had hot water twice a week, on Wednesdays and Fridays when Mr. Piotr fired a big furnace. I remember scrubbing my charges vigorously, playing the “clean, clean” game, which I invented in order to make the children want to be clean. In summer the children got hot and sweaty and they learned to be “clean, clean” in cold water. Our group was reprimanded for making too much noise on cold water days. Imagine trying to keep twenty-five small children quiet while they are splashing each other with ice-cold water.

I conducted fitness classes for my “littlies” and the headmistress commended me for this enterprise. As a result I was asked to take the whole institution through fitness exercises every day during their summer school holidays. These took place before breakfast at six every morning. Some older children were only a year or two younger than I. The boys gave me a hard time, but after a while I was able to separate them from the group. I formed them into foot-racing teams and they raced against each other, providing entertainment for the others until breakfast time, when the runners received larger portions.

My stay in Radosc strengthened me physically, it toughened me. Mama, I thought of you, I wanted you so much at my side. There were nights when I dreamed of you. You were there, somewhere in the distance and I tried to reach you but my legs would not move. I would wake up in terror, hoping that in my sleep I did not reveal who I was. My roommate would sometimes make some comments about my “nightmares” the next morning and I would be terrified that I had broken my cover.

Scant news wafted into my retreat. The liquidation of the Warszawa ghetto was always hotly debated. I tried to appear uninterested. The march of Dr Korczak and his children was mentioned with some sadness, since it was a well-known fact that the Jewish children were also looked after by the Patronat. The headmistress was very shocked that the whole orphanage had been deported. She kept saying that it could happen to us in Radosc too. Again, I tried to stay out of these discussions.

On the whole I became very complacent, more comfortable, until that fateful day of autumn 1943—the only time I was caught.

After eighteen months in Radosc Children’s Home I thought that with luck I could manage to live there till the end of the war. No such luck! One cold morning, two thugs walked in, and ordered me to come with them to Warszawa. I was in the middle of breakfast. I remember the bright yellow of the hot mamalyga, the cornmeal cereal I was eating. I followed the two men without a word. My workmates sat very quietly, fearful of the sense of danger that hung in the air. On the way out, I managed to throw on my warm coat and grab my “papers.” We walked through the forest, three kilometres to the railway station. It was a cold, beautiful morning. As we walked, the thugs told me that they knew I was Jewish. They were taking me to Gestapo Headquarters in Warszawa.

All the way, I kept denying their “preposterous” accusation. I did not cry. Nearing our destination, I told them I had a gold watch on a chain. Would they let me go if I gave it to them? They snatched the watch from around my neck and tore the little gold ring with its ruby teardrop off my frostbitten finger, leaving a gaping bleeding hole. Then they just let me go.

I ran and ran. Hungry, homeless, penniless, one hour to curfew – where to go, what to do? Cut my hair, change my appearance!

I found myself on Karcelak Square, a place where I had never been before, a market square where only “other people” went and you could have your pockets picked. Windswept, dirty, unfriendly. In the dusk I found a little hairdresser’s shop with one chair: “Please cut my hair and accept it as payment,” I said. This was a very dangerous move to make. The barber could have been suspicious. A Jew on the run, call the informers! They would strip this kid clean and throw her to the Germans. The barber cut my hair gently, a thick plait about seventy-five centimetres long, then straightened the line at the back of my neck. I felt cold as I emerged, a short-haired Marysia and I felt different. Did I say Marysia? What a lapse, deadly dangerous. There was no Marysia in 1943. My name was Urszula, Ula, never to be forgotten, even in my sleep.

The curfew was approaching. Where to go, what to do? I, Ula with the short hair, with just what I was standing in: a skirt, a jumper, a coat, still a good coat from home. Shoes with holes in the soles, stuffed with paper, socks darned so many times and with so many colours that the original heels and toes were non-existent. The darns rubbed and blistered my frostbitten feet and made every step difficult, but they were steps I had to take to survive.

That cold evening, alone, lost, hungry, I started walking in the direction of Tatiana’s address. By some miracle I had memorized it when some time ago, we had bumped into each other after having lost touch for two years. As in a dream I walked and found the place. Warmth enveloped me, a safe house, at last. No questions were asked.

Tatiana’s one rented room with the use of a kitchen was heaven. Nobody asked me any questions and I also did not ask any questions—who the men were who came and went, who ate and drank, and talked and talked…. I just cooked and cleaned and I was accepted. I belonged, though I was never told as much in words.

Some days and some nights I was left alone, instructed to answer the phone that never rang. These lonely nights were horrifying. I constantly expected to be discovered, dragged out and shot. I sensed I was playing a dangerous game. It was the Polish Underground that I was working for, but I did not know it at the time.

Mama, after all these years, I cannot imagine how you suffered not having heard from me for months at the time. There was no way I could communicate and actually visiting you was extremely risky for both of us, but I had to see you to let you know I was still alive. I had to see you in the hospice, where you were placed in the care of nuns.

With more freedom to move around the city and living a short distance from the hospice, I decided to visit you. Mama, you were not surprised as I walked into your ward. My heart was beating fast and the relief of finding you still in the hospice was enormous. I felt as if I was going to faint. And you, Mama, you just smiled at me as if you were expecting me to come.

“What happened to your hair?” you asked. “Oh, I just wanted a change,” I replied. All matter of fact, even if our hearts were racing, we could not cuddle or kiss, just a peck on the cheek. Remember, you were my “aunt.” We had to be careful. Remember, you had to call me Ula. I was wearing a man’s suit jacket which was much too large for me. You looked at me and I knew what you were thinking. So I explained that it was fashionable to wear men’s jackets in Warszawa in the spring of 1944. Spring of 1944—last time I saw you, touched you, talked to you.

This scene remains in my mind in full colour. So many years passed and yet I still remember your words: “You will survive, you will survive—alone.” I did survive; I still feel guilty about it.

FANNY COOPER

Context: Western Europe

Source: Fanny Cooper. “Crossing of the Lake.” In Memory Guide My Hand: An Anthology of Autobiographical Writing by Members of the Melbourne Jewish Community, vol. 3. Caulfield South (Victoria): Makor Jewish Community Library, 2004, pp. 61–66. Used by permission.

When Germany invaded Belgium in May 1940, a large number of Jews and others began a panicked flight south to France, away from the war and the advancing Nazis. Fanny Cooper and her family were among these. As she writes, they ended up in Vichy, or unoccupied, France, where they were left relatively unmolested until July 1942. From that point on, however, antisemitic measures instituted by the collaborationist government of Marshal Philippe Pétain saw the start of deportations from France to Auschwitz. With little other option but further flight, the family sought sanctuary in Switzerland. Fanny’s description of what follows traces the family’s journey across Lake Geneva by boat—other than her father, who had been arrested and taken to an unknown destination. The account ends on a positive note, however; one of the rare cases of a “happy ending” concerning a deported family reunited intact.

While rummaging in the garage through an old suitcase I found, to my great surprise, a pile of papers. They contained letters and various documents, the existence of which I had completely forgotten since my immigration to Australia in 1950. I also found an exercise book from the school I attended in Lausanne in 1943. I remembered having written that story (in French) and having received good marks for it from the teacher. I was the only refugee girl in the class. It was probably a free topic.

To be suddenly faced with the original and looking at my own handwriting when I was thirteen years old was quite a moving experience. What made it even more emotional was that I also found numerous letters exchanged with my mother, father, sister and cousins, who were each in a different location in Switzerland until the end of the war. We were the remnants of our extended family who were fortunate enough to survive, while my uncles, aunts, and a twenty-one year old cousin were not so lucky. I spent a couple of days (and nights) sitting on the floor, surrounded by all these ghosts from the past strewn around me. Memories of this distant and painful past came flooding back.

It all started in May 1940 when the Germans invaded Belgium. Our family of twenty-three people, including my grandmother, who was wearing a sheitel (wig) and only spoke Yiddish, joined the great exodus of hundreds of thousands of people: some in cars, some on bicycles, some on foot, some with wheelbarrows carrying the elderly and personal effects, some pushing prams with small babies—all running towards the South of France. The huge crowd was easily visible from the air and from time to time German planes came down very low and machine-gunned indiscriminately sending everybody scurrying into the ditches on the sides of the road. My family came out unharmed but not everyone was so fortunate.

We ended up in Nice, in Vichy—“free” France, where we lived in relative safety until July 1942. That was when Marechal Petain and his clique of collaborators decided to assist the Germans and began to round up the Jews, who were subsequently deported to Auschwitz. We immediately tried to find a hiding place. It was not easy. We were, after all, strangers in the city with hardly any acquaintances except for our Jewish refugee friends who were in the same situation. It was sometimes possible to find shelter for money, but we never felt secure, and kept running from one place to another nearly every night. Father, with his rather Jewish features did not dare to come out in the street in broad daylight, so he sent me, an inconspicuous twelve year old to do some necessary errands, such as selling valuables to keep us going. I went around the streets of Nice wearing a chain with a large, very visible crucifix on my chest. Of course I was scared, especially when I saw the black police vans of the French gendarmes roaming the streets and the herding of groups of Jewish families.

I remember one night when we were taken to a place which was supposed to be a private home. It at once looked suspicious to us. It had a long passage with doors on both sides and looked like a small hotel or boarding house. It was already known that a hotel was the most dangerous place to be in. Since most refugees lived in hotels, it was the first place the gendarmes looked for Jews. The owner of that place, to whom we had paid the money, tried to reassure us, telling us that each door was a room of a member of his family. But we did not believe him and although we had nowhere to go, we hurried downstairs and into the street. We walked the streets all night, separately from each other and hiding in doorways when we saw a passerby or worse, a black police van hunting for people like us.

In the end, we managed to get hold of false papers and a smuggler who organized a train to the border and the crossing of Lake Geneva from the French to the Swiss side. That was the topic of the story I had written at school so many years ago and I reproduce a translated version of it below….

Not a sound, not a movement. Little by little the night is approaching. It is dusk. The lake is glittering in the moonlight. Everything is so calm. Suddenly a slight murmur is heard—subdued, whispering voices, the crackling of steps on the gravel. Where is the caravan of dark shadows heading to? How many are there? Five, six, seven, walking straight down to the water? There, moored to the shore, is a flimsy rowing boat rocked by the slight swell, awaiting the passengers it will carry to the other side of the lake. Time is pressing. Furtively, the shadows step into the boat and make themselves as comfortable as possible on nets and pieces of shabby timber. They must not be seen or heard.

Who are these mysterious travelers? Are they smugglers? They may appear to be shady characters but in reality they are a small group of Jews. There is me, Fanny, aged thirteen, my grandmother, my mother, my older sister Berthe, my uncle Max and his wife. There are also the two boatmen.

That they are Jewish, in itself, reveals our predicament—the situation of hunted animals that are fleeing from France as from a fire, because today’s France is for us Germans—death. Taking every conceivable risk, we are attempting to reach Switzerland.

It is about nine in the evening and already quite dark on the October night of 1942. Now starts the crossing of the lake of which we are so eager to see the other side. Little by little the boat moves away from the shore. The boatmen command absolute silence, no sound that could alert the French police who are constantly on the lookout for escapees. Search beams are crisscrossing the lake from time to time. I will make no sound, I am much too terrified. I will pray to God for the success of our undertaking, while looking at the grey mountains of Switzerland discernable in the distance. I pray for patience.

The boat keeps gliding and with every passing second, France, the land of terror, is getting further away. How much I wish not to see France any longer and to reach the other side—Switzerland, the land of freedom! All that is heard is the rhythmic sound of the oars and the splashing of water. At this moment my thoughts are with my father who is not with us. I instantly recall the scene at the Thonon-les-Bais railway station where we disembarked after a long train journey a few days ago. I see the two men dressed in black standing at either side of the exit—Vichy gendarmes. They are not checking documents, they scrutinize the faces of the incoming passengers. A few are arrested, obviously on account of their Jewish features, my father among them. Grandmother makes a move toward her son, but I notice it. I grab her hand, pull her away with all my strength and whisper, “Come, Grandma, come.”

My poor daddy! Where is he now? He who tried to save the family by organizing our escape had been caught himself. What will happen to him? What will become of all of us? I just cannot understand why this is happening to me, to us. What have we done? The sight of a red light appearing on the water suddenly interrupts my thoughts. It is getting nearer and nearer. My eyes are widening in horror. Is it the French police who will arrest us, take us back to the inferno and destroy all hope of staying alive? Auntie Sarah, who sits next to me, puts her arm around me and whispers into my ear, “Let us pray together.” But it is only a fishing net. The panic is over.

The boatmen are working hard and we, the passengers are dreaming. What are we dreaming of? Of our past happiness, present misfortune, future hope?

From the distance I can already catch sight of the lights of Lausanne and Geneva. The sky is like black velvet strewn with diamond-like stars. The tranquility of the landscape should induce calm, but how can I be calm in the present horror?

The shore is approaching. It is getting closer and closer. Here she is—Switzerland—freedom at last. But are we saved? Perhaps we are being cheated by the boatmen who, after depriving us of our money, have taken us to a different part of the lake that may still be in France? Over the last few months we had been cheated so many times by those who were supposed to provide us with safe hiding places.

And now, is it really is Switzerland, will we be allowed to stay here? Rumours had been circulating that the Swiss authorities have begun to expel those attempting to cross the border. The last we heard was that only people with children were allowed to stay. I am the only child in our group—perhaps I am the savior….

After his arrest in Thonon-les-Bains, my father was taken to a transit camp in Rivesaltes near the Spanish border, from where Jews were being deported to Auschwitz. He managed to escape and retraced his steps to the Swiss border, which he crossed a few weeks later, with two little boys, who he found wandering on their own. It was thanks to the children that my father was not expelled, and at the same time they were also saved.

SUSIE CYMBALIST

Context: Evading Persecution

Source: Susie Cymbalist. Susie’s Story: Surviving in Budapest. Caulfield South (Victoria): Makor Jewish Community Library, 2011, pp. 69–74. Used by permission.

When the Holocaust hit Hungary in March 1944, it did so with overwhelming force and speed. Often, there was little time or opportunity for people to arrange a response adequate to the challenges that now confronted them. Later in the year, for those who managed to survive long enough—especially in Budapest—things began to settle down sufficiently to enable the possibility of escape or concealment for some. As Susie Cymbalist’s account demonstrates, help from non-Jews was often crucial in assisting Jews, though some of the usual forms of subsistence (especially food) were often lacking in sufficient quantities. Susie’s memoir is a corrective to the view that once people were in hiding they were necessarily saved; all too often, dangers awaited people from others than the Nazis.

Soon afterwards came the order for young Jewish women of around my age to assemble on the sports oval at the local high school where the Kisok met. (Kisok was the sports association for children in their high school years.) The order said what belongings we should bring. We all knew we could be deported to Auschwitz. By this time I was so demoralized I was ready to accept anything. I could see no possible way out and had lost the will to struggle against “the inevitable.”

Our benefactor, Dr Andor Bossányi, turned up at our flat with his usual bag of delectable food. I told him that my age group had been called to assemble and I intended joining them. He objected to this strongly and said, “You are not going anywhere until I tell you what to do!” I said, “What about my mother?” To which he replied, “I will take your mother but not your grandmother.”

The next day Dr Bossányi came to the flat and gave us his instructions: “Take off your yellow stars and walk back to your old block of flats at midnight. The house janitor will know of your arrival. He will put you into a windowless basement room until a taxi arrives to take you to my scarlet fever ward at the contagious diseases hospital.” We knew of this hospital, which was located in the periphery of the city. It meant that we had to drive past heavily armed Arrow Cross guards.

Soon a taxi driver did arrive. No doubt he had been well remunerated and had received his instructions. Dr Bossányi told us not to talk to him and that when he called out to us to duck, we should get out of our seats in the back of the taxi and as low to the floor as we could. As we approached the armoured sentries at the border on the outskirts of the city, our driver accelerated and called out to us to duck. As we dived low we heard shots being fired. Luckily, they missed us and we arrived at the hospital safely.

The resident doctor was waiting for us and asked us if we had ever had scarlet fever. We had not, so he injected us with the germ, saying that if we came down with it we would have to stay there for six weeks. We were admitted to a ward with only two beds. Every morning Dr Bossányi, his resident and some nurses came to check us on their wards rounds. He had told them we were refugees from eastern Hungary who had been infected with scarlet fever. We actually did not contract the disease, though we had flu-like symptoms that lasted about a week. We spent about three weeks in that ward.

One morning Dr Bossányi returned to speak to us alone. He was somewhat agitated and told us he had been denounced by somebody on the staff. There was going to be a raid and we had to leave. Dr Bossányi gave us some money for public transport and an address in Buda where we were expected.

By this time the Russian army was halfway to Budapest and had occupied all of eastern Hungary. The Nazis knew they had lost the war but maintained their aim to keep exterminating as many Jews as they could. The Arrow Cross, under their leader, Szálasi, was extremely efficient at doing just that, so the trip to Buda was an anxious one for my mother and me. We went by public transport and had to change trams. We happened to pass our old home and one of the neighbours noticed us but pretended not to have seen us. We had been the only Jewish residents in that block of flats….

On our trip to Buda, eventually we found our destination, the home of a retired army colonel. He had been giving false identification cards to army deserters, but told us he had run out of them. We would have to stay in his and his wife’s apartment until a new supply arrived. We felt somewhat safe, for the time being.

The new cards arrived and the retired colonel told us we would be going to two different places. My mother was going to a small Catholic hospital on the Buda side. It was protected by a Papal or Vatican flag. The doctor in charge was, of course, part of the underground. His name was Dr Szentiványi and he neither received nor requested anything for this dangerous work. It was known that if the Hungarian Nazis discovered a Jew being hidden, not only was that Jew shot, so were his accomplices. As well, my mother was in need of some medical treatment; she had fainting spells, possibly brought on by low blood pressure.

An older single woman (whose name and address I have completely forgotten) was introduced to us. She offered to look after me, but for a price. As mother had been brave and clever enough not to have surrendered her diamond jewellery, when the woman came for me, Mother picked a platinum Movado watch surrounded by diamonds out of her little pouch. When she handed it to the woman, she had the good sense to say that she would give her more when she handed me back safely after liberation. The watch was of great value, but this woman risked her life by hiding a Jew.

My identification card was in the name of a refugee from Debrecen, which is in the east of Hungary and already occupied by the Russian army. If a Hungarian soldier had asked me just one question about the city I would not have been able to answer and would have been shot.

The woman took me to her flat which was on the third floor of a modern building in Lipótváros in District V, an area previously popular with middle-class Jewish people. That made me even more anxious about being recognized by somebody. By this time Budapest was being bombed regularly and the order was for tenants to go down into the safety cellar each night, where there were stretchers for everybody. However, I was too nervous to appear among the crowd of about fifty for fear of being recognized, or asked about Debrecen, and stayed in the apartment at first. One morning I woke up and looked out of the window and everything looked different. When the woman I was staying with came upstairs from the shelter, she was white-faced and agitated. “There was a lot of bombing last night,” she told me. “One bomb fell opposite this house and you can see the ruins of the building. You can’t stay in the flat alone any longer. You must come down the cellar tonight. If anything should happen to you, we would both be in great trouble. It would be most suspicious.”

That night I went down to the shelter in great trepidation. The woman introduced me as her relation, a refugee from Debrecen. Luckily nobody knew me and nobody asked me questions about Debrecen. My next big worry was about the Arrow Cross soldiers, who regularly searched the area for Jews in hiding. The rumour was that they were somewhere in the neighbourhood. An announcement was made that all the bridges that crossed the Danube were going to be exploded and if anybody wanted to go across to Buda, the next day would be their last chance to do so. I had the silly (on hindsight) idea that I should go over to visit my mother in the hospital. I did not realise that Arrow Cross soldiers would be checking people’s identification papers at each end of the bridge. A couple near me were checked, but they just looked at me and let me go. My mother was looking very frightened and even more worried than when I had left her. She wanted me to stay with her, as apparently the doctor in charge was quite agreeable to this. But I thought the two of us would be even more suspicious and decided to return to the flat in Lipótváros alone. I confronted the same identification checking at the Buda end of the bridge. Once again I was extremely lucky and was not asked to produce my papers nor asked any questions about Debrecen.

After this my problems only increased. My food consisted of one bowl of soup made from potatoes stored in the cellar by an Italian family. They cooked for everybody. There were also red onions piled up high in a corner, by the same family. I ate one raw onion every day. I also may have eaten onion cooked with the potato soup. I can’t remember now.

We had only one toilet in the cellar and there was another on the ground floor just inside the building. A man was on his way to this one when he was hit at the entrance of the building with a splinter from a bomb, which proved fatal. It was the nature of Russian bombs to disintegrate into multiple splinters. He just lay there for weeks, as it was impossible to shift him while bombs were falling incessantly. His wife was still in the cellar with us.

I had just one set of clothing, including a skirt. A young man whose stretcher in the cellar was near mine (and who, I later realized, was a military deserter) offered me a pair of army long johns. They were my one precious item of warm clothing for a long time, even much later when I joined queues at bakeries or cycled across the icy Danube to the office I worked at in Pest.

The situation regarding food was becoming more and more difficult. One day, in the few minutes of pause between bombs, somebody called out that there was a dead horse on the road nearby. People rushed out with knives to cut pieces off the still-warm carcase and made soup out of it. I could never touch that. Interestingly, after not having eaten much for a while, I didn’t feel hunger any more.

MAUD PEPER DAHME

Context: Western Europe

Source: Maud Peper and Maryann McLoughlin. Chocolate, The Taste of Freedom: The Holocaust Memoir of a Hidden Dutch Child. Margate (NJ): ComteQ Publishing, 2015, pp. 18–25. Used by permission.

Maud Peper was a small Dutch girl who, with her sister, was hidden on a farm in the rural Netherlands during the Holocaust. The Spronks, who took them in, were an elderly Christian pair who arranged for the girls to assume a new identity as part of a charade designed to secure their safety. In recounting her experiences, Maud provides a useful snapshot into how a child perceived the many changes around her; moreover, she shows that the young age at which a child observes these developments need not necessarily preclude her from demonstrating a certain level of understanding of what she sees. Maud’s testimony ends with a roll call of those in her circle who lost their lives at the hands of Dutch Nazis on October 3, 1944.

Jan Kanis left us on a farm in Oldebroek with Mr. and Mrs. Spronk, Kobameuje and Hendrik, who were in their sixties and had no children. Mrs. Spronk’s brother, Evert Flier, lived with them. He was a deaf mute and used a trumpet–hearing aid that we yelled into so that he could hear us. He had a little building on the side of the house where he made wooden shoes.

The farm was located on a major highway. In the back of the farm were meadows. The area was very poor; these were hard times. The farm had no running water or toilet. We used an outhouse and a water pump.

The first day we were there the Spronks made us hide in the wheat field because German soldiers were walking around. I wasn’t scared because they told us we were playing a game—hide and seek. We had just arrived and already had to hide! They gave me a black umbrella in case of rain. We then zigzagged through the wheat. The wheat was very high because it was August but the wheat had not yet been harvested. It started to rain, so I opened the umbrella. You could see the umbrella for miles. Rita started crying, wanting her “mommie.” So between the crying and the umbrella, the Spronks decided to take us back into the house. That evening a couple of relatives came over to meet us. I don’t recall the conversation other than my telling them, “I am so grown up that I can wear the yellow star. And I know how to spell and write my name.”

After the relatives left, the couple took me aside. That very first night they told me why they were concerned.

During that first night on the farm, the Spronks talked to us about our names and our stories. I knew my name, but they changed it. I was now Margje (Margie); my sister, Rika. They said that our last names were now their last name—Spronk. We had to call the Spronks, Auntie and Uncle; him Oom and her Tante. Rita, however, could not say Tante but said Tannie instead, so we called her Tannie.

Then they said that this is your story, and you must remember it: “You are our nieces. Your family was bombed out of the city. You were homeless but are now living with us. You are no longer Jewish. You are now Christian. You have to remember this! If you do not remember this correctly, the German soldiers will take us all away.”

A decision was made that we could not attend school. They were afraid that we might reveal something about our previous life to one of our classmates whose parents might be a Dutch Nazi. Our story was drilled into me every single day. I lived in constant fear; I was scared to death, knowing that if I messed up, we would all be taken away. Rita and I were now Onderduikers (literally divers, or underground), the name given to Dutch people who were hiding from the Nazis. The German edict was that anyone hiding Jews would suffer the same fate as the Jews. For a six and a half year old child, this was really scary and overwhelming.

On the highway in front of the farm, there were no cars except military traffic and the Roma’s (“Gypsies”) wooden carts. When we were first there, we saw the Roma a lot. The adults warned us, “They steal children.” We ran like the wind whenever we saw them coming….

Later I remembered that these Roma used to ask for our cats. They were very hungry. So like many Dutch, the Gypsies killed and ate cats and dogs because there was very little food available during the war, especially towards the end of the war.

In addition to the troop movement, the Nazis had placed a huge anti-aircraft gun in the back of the farm. One morning, Rita and I went outside to get eggs the chickens had laid. We saw German soldiers sitting at an anti-aircraft gun. Rita went up to them and asked them if she could shoot the gun. They told her, “You’re too little. Wait until you are older.” Rita did not realize the danger of conversing with the German soldiers, as I did. This really frightened me. We saw a lot of soldiers walking around. We could have been stopped and questioned at any time. I learned recently that most of the villagers knew who we were but never disclosed our identity until after the war.

Rita was young, so she didn’t understand. Therefore, at first, we had to stay in the house most of the time until I learned my new name and story. In the beginning the only time we went out was to go to church on Sundays….

The Spronks were deeply religious. So we too were brought up by the Spronks to be very religious. We read the Bible every night and went to church every Sunday. We began to forget our Jewish religion. In the beginning I knew that Rita and I were Jewish, and I knew that Jews were being hidden. By the end of the war, I remembered nothing about my Jewish upbringing. In preparation for Sunday church, on a Saturday night before bed, we would get a bath in a big wooden tub in the barn attached to the house. The water was heated, and we used the same water to wash ourselves. I remember that once we got lice in our long hair. I remember so well because they cut our hair. They put a paper on the floor, combing out as many lice as they could. Then they covered our hair in powder and then put a kerchief around our head. I found out much later that the powder was DDT.

After church one Sunday, Tannie and Oom took us on the back of their bikes to visit Tannie’s widowed sister, the Widow Blaauw, who lived on another farm. There I found my former kindergarten teacher from Amersfoort, Eva Schnell, and her husband Alfred. That was so very exciting! Someone who knew us. Every Sunday after church, we went to see them. Mrs. Schnell was teaching us to read and write. Then she and her husband disappeared; I never saw them again.

I learned what had happened to them much later, long after the war was over. The Widow Blaauw, Eva, and Alfred were betrayed to the Moffe (Germans). The Dutch were given money for uncovering hidden Jews, so there was literally a price on our heads. One day there was a razzia (search and round-up); German soldiers came to the Widow Blaauw’s farm and went right to the haystack, which was under a metal roof to keep the hay dry. The Germans found Eva and Alfred in a room under the haystack. Because the widow was hiding Jews, they told her that they were taking her son Jan. She said, “No, take me. This is my farm. I am the one hiding them.” They took her son anyway.

The German soldiers took my teacher Eva and her husband, Alfred, to Zwolle for interrogation. The plan was to keep them overnight and then take them to Westerbork in the Netherlands, a German transit camp. From Westerbork, Jews were transported to Sobibor Death Camp. However, that night a pair of Dutch Nazis (NSB) came into that facility taking the couple and four men into a park. They told the Jews to dig six holes. My teacher, with her hands on her hips, protested: “The Germans told us they would be taking us to Westerbork!” She had no idea about Westerbork. The Dutch SS immediately shot her, and she fell on top of the men who were digging holes—their graves. The rest were then shot. The next day the German Nazis could not find the six to transport them to Westerbork. They investigated and found out what had happened the night before. Therefore they had the Dutch Nazis dig up the bodies so they could be accounted for. They then sent their bodies on a train to Westerbork with other detainees, where they were buried in a mass grave.

After the war, one of the Dutch NSB had told the story about what had happened that night when he was arrested.

On October 4, 2001 a monument was unveiled to the six murdered on October 3, 1944. The monument, a small column of dolomite, is located in “Het Engelse Werk (The English Work),” the park in Zwolle where they were shot. The text on the pedestal reads as follows:

Shot on 3 OKTOBER 1944

CORNELIS BAKKER 15-05-1922

ALBERT BROUWER 09-07-1919

HANS MARIUS KOOPAL 15-08-1920

JACOB KOORN 04-11-1922

ALFRED SCHNELL 10-06-1900

EVA SCHNELL-JOLOWICZ 19-11-1913

Tannie’s niece, Bea Kramer, told me that the son, Jan Blaauw, had been spared. He worked in a milk factory, pasteurizing milk. The director of the factory intervened, saving him; he had him released from internment in Zwolle.

It was extremely dangerous to hide Jews. When caught, both the non-Jew and the Jew usually were murdered.

EKATERINA DANOVA

Context: Evading the Nazis

Source: Ekaterina Danova. “A Ghetto in the Cupboard.” In Julie Meadows and Elaine Davidoff (Eds.). Memory Guide My Hand: An Anthology of Life Stories by Members of the Melbourne Jewish Community from the Former Soviet Union. Caulfield South (Victoria): Makor Jewish Community Library, 2008, pp. 19–28. Used by permission.

The German invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa, took place on June 22, 1941. After a series of stunning reverses in the months that followed, the Red Army was able eventually to hold the line, and the Nazi offensive stalled outside Moscow before the year was out. Along the way, however, much territory was lost, and a vast number of towns and cities were occupied by the invader. One of these was Simferopol, in the Crimea. Here, a young girl, Ekaterina Danova, hid in a cupboard in order to avoid being picked up by the Nazis. Her ordeal, as she relates, lasted for two-and-a-half years, until the tide of war began to shift and she was able to come out. Managing to reach the forest, she joined a partisan unit and lived to return to the house where she had obtained her original refuge. The rest of her testimony is a poignant statement of the aftermath of the war and her salvation.

Throughout my life—which I can now say has been a long one—I have often had to fill in all manner of forms and write descriptions of myself. Over the years, these multi-paged questionnaires have grown thinner and the last time I fitted myself onto one of these pages was back in 1969 for Leningrad Television. What happened half a century ago is described in simple words: “In 1941 my parents were shot by German fascists and I was adopted as a daughter by the Danovs, spending time with a partisan squad.”

At different times, bureaucrats have drawn different conclusions from these snapshots of my life. In 1953, when I was recommended for postgraduate study by the Science Council of the LGU (Leningrad State University), I wasn’t accepted because I was Jewish. Yet much later, as a Russian, I was confirmed as the chief editor of Leningrad Television.

My children knew even less about my life than the above description—they just knew the part about the partisan squad. Insofar as none of us ever put together documentation about our time with the partisans, that chapter of my life has not been of much interest to my family, which, to my joy, has ended up being uncommonly harmonious and strong.

My sons consider their happiest time to be that spent visiting their grandmother Katya in the Crimea, in her basic little house on the outskirts of Simferopol. That was her own little house, and not the one she, Ekaterina Trofimovna Kolesnikova, her husband, six-year old son and paralysed mother-in-law were living in when the German occupation began. Back then they rented an apartment in a house with a large courtyard, as was the norm in the south. The water supply and communal toilet were all situated in that fine courtyard, and each resident knew everyone else’s business since they saw each other every day. You couldn’t have called the apartment their “home”; it was just one small room, and an even smaller kitchen with an oven, and a door which opened right onto the yard.

I’m recalling this not to demonstrate how meagre the life of the Soviet intelligentsia was back then, particularly those working the land, but so that you might understand how difficult, or even impossible, it would have been to hide any living creature there, especially a child.

The Germans entered Simferopol on 1 November 1941 without any resistance, just after the town had suffered two days in the hands of local marauders. The remaining Jews were quickly placed under a system of control: they couldn’t appear on the street without a six-pointed star on their clothes, otherwise they could be shot for any sort of offence, or if they simply did “certain things.”

“Certain things” was so broad a term that my parents preferred staying at home. No one felt safe, even at home—a soldier could burst into the home of a Jude with impunity, to steal or just to throw his weight around. There were so many of these raids during the next month and a half that on the threshold of winter we found ourselves without food or anything to sell. Nobody even wanted to entertain the thought that soon food might no longer be necessary. Perhaps I was the only one who didn’t understand, suffering as I was from a lack of outside exercise and friendship.

Still, everyone was shaken by the new order for all Jews to assemble with their essential items in the student quarter. In the student quarter we saw many old and helpless people who hadn’t been evacuated to the East in time; everyone was either standing, sitting or lying down. They were led away in groups and on 16 December it was our turn. Many dragged out the time on the way there, hoping for some miracle. Eventually we reached the place, by which time the shooting was already proceeding at full speed, nine kilometres down the Feodosisky Highway.

Even though Simferopol was the capital of the Crimean USSR, you could walk from one end to the other at a pinch. It’s a stone’s throw from the students’ quarters to the Feodosisky highway, but at that time it felt as though we had to walk for an eternity. Dad carried his newborn niece in his arms. His sister had many children, all boys up till then, but a long-awaited daughter had been born, only to die on the spot. I don’t even remember whether she had been given a name.

Mum led me along by the arm. Her sister Eva hadn’t turned up at the assembly point, and much later I was told that she had been spotted among the partisans. Obviously, she died during one of the German sweeps of the Crimean woods.

Local women, who had been driven out of the nearby houses by the Germans, were working on widening and deepening the anti-tank ditches set aside supposedly for the defence of the city. The shooting was taking place in front of these women and they were ordered to dig more if the capacity of the ditch was insufficient. I know all this now through various accounts, but back then I was literally only four steps from death (as the words of the famous song goes) in that huge common grave. For me those four steps, alas, weren’t a metaphor—it actually happened.

Only later, after turning that day over and over again in my mind, did I fully comprehend everything that happened. In the end there was more than enough time for contemplation. When our column drew level with the crowd of women watching, Mum suddenly pushed me into them, as if discarding me. Who could guess what moved her then—one last desperate impulse or a flash of blinding hope? Perhaps it was Mum’s reliance on a one-in-a-million chance to save her child. All I heard was a wild cry behind me, some swearing in German, and then the sound of footsteps as we ran off as fast as we could.

That street, Ishunskaya, no longer exists and the tank ditch is overgrown with grass and poppies. (The poet, Voznesensky, describes its gruesome postwar fate in his poem “The Ditch”). What happened next? “Some woman” and I rushed into an unfamiliar courtyard, then into a house, and suddenly the door of a dress cupboard slammed behind me. It all went too quickly for me to have time to understand anything.

Understanding came later as I endured the stuffiness—until I worked out how to break a hole in the back panel—of the old single-winged cupboard and the rheumatic pain in my writhing child’s body and the incessant but quiet sobbing.

From that moment on we were all terror-stricken. I suppose in that instant my female savior had not even thought about what dangers she would be exposing her family to, or that in saving a stranger’s child she might be condemning her own. The Germans often made announcements and then actually proved their words were matched to their actions: for any Jew hidden, every member of the family hiding them would be executed. They had already hanged some of Simferopol’s imprudent and kind-hearted citizens from the lampposts in the main streets.

But she wouldn’t have it any other way. Much later, in a moment of special tenderness, she, a non-believer, told me that Providence had sent me to her and that it had been much harder for her to give life to me than to her own son. This last statement was the utter truth. Her momentary outburst of philanthropy passed and then came the time for unbelievable, daily—even hourly—feats of emotional and physical strength. My “ghetto in the cupboard” lasted for two and a half years!

It started with the whole family, stunned and frightened to death, having to speak in whispers. Six-year-old Volodya, under the pretext of some illness, was not allowed outside until the summer; he had to learn to keep quiet about the “girl in the cupboard.” “She must be from Sevastopol, and the Germans kill people from there.” Alas, this was all too true.

It’s hard to understand how this woman endured it all, how she lived, constantly fearful of arousing suspicion amongst her neighbours through a careless gesture or word, conscious of her responsibility to her husband and relatives, and depressed and anguished by fear.

There was also the problem of how to feed a family with an extra mouth—there was nothing left with which to barter for food. But perhaps one kind deed leads to another.

Whether that is true or not, Ekaterina Trofimovna and her husband joined the anti-fascist underground movement. In the book In the Crimean Underground by Kozlov, she appears under the nickname of “mother” and Lugovoy, the commissar of the northern alliance of Crimean partisans, mentions Danova in his book Blood Brothers.

She and her husband collected medical supplies and clothes for the partisans, but the main thing they did was to take part in organizing the escape of Soviet prisoners of war from a camp on River Street. I have a clear memory of a pilot—or rather the sight of the terrible scarring from his torture and injuries—washing himself at our well, having sought out Ekaterina Trifomovna right after the war to thank her for having saved him.

In March 1944 the arrests of members of the underground began, with those who survived fleeing into the woods to the partisans. This was the most dangerous of all undertakings—to exit unnoticed beyond the city limits, rendezvous with a connecting person, then travel fifty kilometres at night through the ploughed spring fields which intersected with the surrounding road, to finally reach safe cover in the woods before daybreak. For me, who for years had not known fresh air and hence had almost forgotten how to walk, this was another difficult physical trial. It turns out that when you fall flat on the ground it gives you new strength, and if, moreover, the barrel of a machine gun is pointed at your chest (those knowing the place of rendezvous were killed) then miraculously you find your second wind.

Exhausted, Ekaterina Trofimovna dragged her children along behind her; me more often than not. This was the second time she saved my life, since on the very night that we literally crawled into the forest—our new home—the Simferopol Gestapo arrived at our house. One of the underground members, captured earlier, had been unable to endure the interrogations….

We made it to the partisan squad before the liberation of Simferopol, which happened in April 1944, and entered the city along with the army. It seemed that now we would finally be able to live in peace. But new woes awaited us.

It wasn’t enough that we found our humble house ransacked, and the clothes we’d had (I’d long since outgrown mine) lying charred in the fires. The most terrible and unjust of all was the subsequent mass deportations of Tatars, Greeks and, later, Armenians, from the Crimea. Ekaterina Trofimovna, a Russian, was married to an Armenian! Those in mixed marriages were allowed to choose and she chose to stay behind with us, her husband and her children.

I was the deciding factor in the argument at home. Neither Ekaterina nor her husband could contemplate condemning me once again to persecution on the basis of nationality, now coming from our own people. So I never saw Sergei Danov again. All I have left of him is the surname that I share with my brother, and the memory of this good, kind man. Ekaterina Trofimovna, left as she was with two children, couldn’t, of course, have a personal life—she raised us on her own and as far as I remember was constantly working.

My partisan ribbon easily opened the door for me into seventh year at school, although prior to the war I had only finished third year. But my fellow classmates, who had returned from evacuation in the East, helped me catch up and I finished tenth year with a gold medal award.

Then there was Leningrad University, where, by the way, I wasn’t accepted into the journalism department on account of having spent time in occupied territory. Rather I was accepted into the Russian Language Department. Later, I worked with my husband in the far north, before returning to Leningrad, where I eventually did become a journalist.

And through all these years, Grandma Katya, as her grandsons—my children—came to call her, shared our joys and difficulties. I always considered her to be my mother and didn’t want anyone to think otherwise. I dare to hope that I was a good daughter to her. In any case, her letters to me attest to this, especially the ones written in her later years. She never wanted to leave her beloved Crimea for good. By then a pensioner, she grew flowers and roses, but she did spend the winters with us. In fact, she never lived in a flat of her own, with heat, running water or an inside toilet.

My Simferopol friends, émigrés to Israel, saw trees planted in Jerusalem in honour of those people who had saved Jewish children. They wrote to me about it. In the Spring of 1991, I sent a letter to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, hoping that by the fiftieth anniversary of this Russian woman’s heroic deeds, my people, from my historic homeland, might pass on a word of thanks to her and perhaps help her somehow in the difficult, last years of her life.

Indeed, events in our country at that time promised her all manner of new hardship. While the verification and questioning of witnesses dragged on in Israel, the break-up of the former Soviet Union meant that we ended up living in two different countries, with all the consequences of that division. True, some friends from before the war managed, after a struggle, to finally obtain documents for her stating that she had been a member of the underground and a war veteran; all this was done to help increase her small pension. Despite the food coupons in circulation in St Petersburg and Crimea, we managed to warmly mark her eighty-fifth birthday.

But she could no longer spend the winters with us as she used to—she was afraid of the political instability. Three months after her birthday, on 10 March 1993, she was gone. She had been lifting a heavy bucket of coal to stoke the oven. The doctor said the last question on her mind was whether I knew and if I was coming to her. I was held up. Due to a lack of fuel, there were no flights to Ukraine.

Then finally, a letter came from Yad Vashem: “We inform you that a medal and a ‘Righteous Person of peace’ award of honour go to your adoptive mother, Ekaterina Trofimovna Kolesnikova, and in the very near future these decorations will be sent to the Israeli Consulate in Moscow.”

Now my children know the whole story—I am writing it down for the first time especially for this book of memoirs. Somehow the bitter feeling that everything happened too late, that I was too slow, remains with me….

All that remains to be said is that a long time after the end of the war a miracle occurred: I received one last message in the form of a note from my birth mother. It was on a sheet of paper from a student’s exercise book and written with a pencil she’d obtained God-knows-how. In it she is thinking only about me, telling me not to cry, not to believe the ‘rumours’ or fall ill, and asking me to love the people who saved me. This meant that she must have been snatched from me but not shot along with the others. She must have suffered alone with the Gestapo, probably tortured and humiliated before she died!

Until my last year in Ukraine I took flowers, grown by Ekaterina Trofimovna, to the Monument to Those Who Died at the Hands of the German Fascist Occupiers. The monument is situated on the Feodosisky Highway at the beginning of that tank ditch, not far from a traffic-police post positioned there to prevent any further violations of our lives.

Now the names of my parents—Maria Lvovna and Solomon Solomonovich Feldman—are in the Hall of Memory at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. In the Simferopol Cemetery in Crimea there is also a memorial to my second mother, while in Jerusalem her name is inscribed on a marble tablet.

JOZEPH DE HAAN

Context: Western Europe

Source: Jozeph de Haan. My Recollections of Holland 1935–1945. Caulfield South (Victoria): Makor Jewish Community Library, 2009, pp. 10–17. Used by permission.

In this testimony, Jozeph de Haan begins by informing his readers that from mid-1942 he was left alone, but that he was invited by a colleague of his father, Mauritz Trompetter, to come and live in a room in Trompetter’s family apartment. When the Trompetters soon decide to go into hiding, however, Jozeph decides not to follow them, but, rather, remain in the apartment alone. The story that then unfolds shows us a young man who is taken under the wing of the Dutch resistance, removing him from the dangers of hiding in the city and taking him to the countryside in Friesland. In the account that then follows, Jozeph recounts a broad variety of adventures in which his life and safety were often threatened, but through which he continually emerged unscathed.

By mid-1942 the situation was becoming hopeless. The razzias (raids, round-ups) conducted by the Grune Polizei (under Nazi rule German police wore green uniforms) were becoming more frequent. Huge areas were blocked off and hundreds of Jewish people rounded up and deported. After my father and stepmother were taken from our home in the Blasiusstraat, I continued to stay on at home alone.

It was during this time that a colleague of my father, Mauritz Trompetter, heard that my parents had been taken by the Germans. He immediately asked me to come and stay in his second floor apartment at number 34, Krugerstraat, which I did. Several weeks passed by before Mauritz, his wife and their son, Gerrie, decided to go into hiding in the northern province of Friesland.

For many Jewish people going into hiding seemed the only way to avoid being rounded-up and deported, but it was not an easy thing to do. It was a matter of having complete trust in people who were often total strangers. Thank God, there were still some very decent God-fearing Dutch people willing to help their Jewish countrymen. It was certainly not without great risk because everything was punishable with the bullet. Nevertheless, these courageous people did help whenever they could.

I was given the option of going into hiding with the Trompetter family but I was too scared to venture out into the streets and declined their offer. The family left everything behind; a lifetime of possessions, taking only a small suitcase with them for their trip into the unknown. As I closed the house door behind them, I hoped this was only a bad nightmare I could be awakened from in the morning. The reality was far bleaker.

I was now in the Trompetters’ home in Krugerstraat. I continued to sleep there for many nights and did not go into the street. How I survived those lonely days is hard for me to remember now. I do remember thinking about the family often and hoping they had reached safety. I wondered where they could be, but of course there was no news from them at that stage. Mr. and Mrs. Soeters and their three children lived on the first floor of the apartment complex at number 34. Mrs. Soeters was a member of the Salvation Army and a wonderfully brave Christian woman who was not in the least intimidated by the Germans. This was later proved when the German Jewish couple she was hiding in her house were found when her house was raided. Naturally, they were all taken prisoner, including Mrs. Soeters. The Jewish couple perished, but Mrs. Soeters’ faith triumphed and they let her go the next day. I think they were really frightened of her for she knew her bible and used it to her advantage.

For several weeks after that incident Mrs. Soeters told me she suffered from depression. On hearing the Trompetters had left she insisted I come down to sleep in her apartment one floor below. Again I was faced with a dilemma. The Germans were aware she had hidden Jews before. Would they come looking again or would they think she may have learned her lesson? I finally accepted her offer and this wonderful lady looked after me for several weeks. However, I was always very worried in case the Gestapo paid us a return visit. To me, her courage stands out like a lighthouse in the night and I remember her with admiration.

Approximately two months went by when one Tuesday the doorbell rang and two gentlemen from the underground, or resistance movement, arrived to collect some clothes for the Trompetter family who were hiding in a very small place near Birdaard in north-east Friesland. Apparently the family were now enjoying some kind of very limited freedom. During my conversation with these men I asked if I could go back with them to Friesland. They promised to fetch me on Thursday afternoon.

The two days of waiting were agonising and the tension indescribable. Firstly, I was not sure if they would come, and secondly, my false identity card (given to me by a friend of Mrs. Soeters’ son, Cor) seemed rather amateurish. Looking down at the roughly stuck together card I read that my name was now Willem Walvis. Luckily I never needed to show this card to any German official because I am sure the deception would have been obvious to a trained eye.

True to their word the two men arrived on that Thursday afternoon. I left the relative safety and warmth of the Soeters’ home where I had sheltered in one room for about two months. We had arranged that one fellow walked about one hundred meters in front of me and the other man followed far behind me. I walked without the yellow Star of David which I had taken off my clothing.

We arrived at the Muiderpoort station and as arranged, boarded a railway carriage bound for Enkhuizen. I clearly remember sitting opposite my saviours and not talking at all. Instead, I tried to read a small book brought along for the purpose. I can assure the reader that I never got further than the first page.

After what seemed like an eternity we arrived at Enkhuizen, a small town that lies on the Western side of the Ijsselmeer. From there we crossed this stretch of enclosed water by ferry to Stavoren in the province of Friesland. The men from the resistance movement had organized the train and ferry tickets so I did not have to interact with any officials on my journey north. However, to my dismay the boat was packed with German soldiers and some civilians. I knew the ordinary German soldier was not out hunting for me. After a while I started to read and felt slightly better.

After docking at Stavoren we boarded another train for our trip to Leeuwarden City. Previously I had been briefed about the Gestapo control at Leeuwarden railway station. I was terrified at having to pass by these officials at such close proximity. I felt my heart pounding as I walked through the small iron turnstile at the exit where I had to present my railway ticket. My steps felt heavy but to my great relief I was soon outside the station. I followed the men from the resistance and climbed into a taxi (running on coal) and we continued our journey north.

A long trip followed. By now it was getting dark. We were driving through small places that were totally unfamiliar to me. The men spoke in their own language (Fries), a language I could not understand at all. It sounded like Greek to me!

At last we arrived at our destination but where that was I did not know. I was ushered into a small room where I met a farmer and his wife, so I presumed. They offered me some coffee and having not eaten all day I was indeed ravenously hungry and happy for the bread that was also offered. After the two chaps from the organization left the farmer and his wife showed me where I could sleep, for which I was most grateful. Very soon I fell into a deep and exhausted sleep.

The next morning an elderly Jewish couple joined me. They too came from Amsterdam and we exchanged information. Later they were placed in hiding somewhere else. I stayed with this farmer for approximately six weeks and in that time began to understand a bit of their language. I found out that the town I was in was called Rensumageest.

I was soon transferred to a place in Utsigh near Genum, where I spent some time with a farmer called Vermeulan and his wife. If my memory does not fail me, her name was Griet. I recall they had a daughter with blond hair who was going to be married.

To reach Utsigh I was given a bicycle and told to follow another fellow from the resistance movement who was also on a bicycle. Looking at the map later, I realized how far we had cycled from Rensumageest to reach Utsigh. It was a huge trip on a bicycle with no lights to guide me. I had to follow this fellow in front of me and he went hell for leather. I lost him several times along the way, but thank God he waited for me to catch up. It was one of those dark nights with no moon to guide us or any street lights to help us navigate.

Eventually we reached our place of destination and again I met new people who would place themselves in great danger to help me. Meeting different people was now a little easier as I had started to grasp a bit more of the Friesian language.

Whilst staying with the Vermeulens I can recall that one morning a cyclist approached the farm having come from far away. This was an unusual occurrence in such a tiny village. I watched from behind a curtain of the farmhouse, and as the man got nearer I recognized that much to my delight the cyclist was none other than my father’s colleague Mauritz Trompetter! He had heard through the grapevine that I was hiding in Utsigh with the Vermeulens!

I was delighted to be reunited with a person from my past but at the same time terrified for his safety, as he had to cycle all the way back to Birdaard, which was a great distance indeed. His reply was, “Don’t worry, it’s very safe. Here we are as free as birds!” I was amazed and scared at the lack of security, that someone in the underground organization should have simply told him where I was hiding! Clearly all was still well on the Friesian front.

But that feeling of freedom was soon to end. It was clearly the lull before the storm. Early one morning late in the summer of 1943 (I know all this because the cows were still grazing in the meadows and milking always took place at the same time, around 4 am), the Germans struck like thieves in the night. They came in their trucks, rolling along the small country roads with their headlights switched off.

At that time of the morning the flat Friesian countryside was always very quiet. Hardly anybody ever travelled then, except for farmhands going about their early morning routines. It was just after 4.00 am and the farmhands were about to start milking in the meadow opposite the farmhouse where I was hiding. They rushed over to the farm and knocked loudly on the window, alerting the farmer that they had seen Germans in the village of Genum, the nearest village to us, and warning me to get out fast.

I had been sleeping upstairs when the farmhands knocked on the window below. In an instant I was wide awake. I jumped into my boots and trousers, grabbed my jacket and bolted out the back door of the farmhouse. As the night air filled my lungs, I froze in my tracks. It was as if a dark blanket had been thrown over my head. Complete darkness surrounded me. I felt the back door behind me. All I could do was to drop to the ground and crawl on my haunches towards the small canal running behind the farmhouse.

Eventually I felt the water of the canal against my fingers. I knew the only way to get across the two metre wide stretch of water was via a wooden plank that lay across the canal. I crawled around in the darkness until I eventually found the plank, which I crossed on my hands and knees. Once on the other side I ran as far as I could away from the farm.

By now it was getting somewhat lighter or perhaps my eyes were getting used to the darkness. Suddenly in the distance I noticed some cows being milked by the two farmhands who had knocked on the window. Unfortunately, I never found out their names to properly thank them for what they did for me that night.

Again my life had been spared. Within thirty minutes the Germans reached the farmhouse where I had been hiding and demanded to know where I, Jozeph de Haan, was. They knew my name, a fact I only learned after the war. I also subsequently learned that the leader of the underground movement in charge of Jewish placements in Friesland was killed by his own people. He was a traitor and informed the Germans of the whereabouts of the approximately fifteen Jewish people hidden in the area. Unfortunately the Trompetter family must have been caught during that raid as they never returned to Amsterdam after the war. After making several enquiries I heard that they had indeed been taken the very same night I had managed to escape the enemy’s clutches.

At that time there must have been several hundred Jewish people in hiding throughout the province of Friesland. From my personal experience I think Friesland should be acknowledged as perhaps the bravest province in the country, for saving the lives of many Jewish people in desperate need of food and shelter. Shelter was the difference between life and death. I cannot speak for any other part of the Netherlands, but in Friesland there were many brave and heroic God-fearing people in small villages and towns doing their bit to save the persecuted and putting their own lives at risk to do so.

After my escape from the Vermeulens’ farmhouse I managed to stay ahead of the Germans. A friend of mine from Amsterdam, Appie Rijksman, also managed to escape in the nick of time from his hiding place with the Folkertsma family in the town of Genum when the Germans burst into the farmhouse. Like mine, his escape was also a miracle and he joined me a few hours later somewhere in the middle of nowhere. We teamed up and gave one another moral support.

Soon a local farmer, Klaas Dreijer, found us and directed us to a barn far in the outback which became our temporary home and a good roof over our heads. Appie and I made use of a long pole Klaas gave us to jump over the many canals that crisscrossed the meadows along the way. Klaas, whom we later found out was a major underground resistance worker, provided us with everything to last the six or seven weeks we spent in the forlorn barn. It was only ever used during the autumn and winter months by the farmers. If there was a sudden change in the weather they could take animals there to shelter during a storm.

The farmers in the area were fantastic. Small children, always the same ones, brought us food. Sometimes we had so much food we told the kids to please tell their Mamas not to send us anything for a few days. I can never thank those farmers enough for what they did for us during that time.

When it was time for us to leave the barn, again Klaas Dreijer came to the rescue. He found us a temporary place of safety near Holward where another farmer was willing to risk his life and take us both in. I remember the three of us walked there in pounding rain. Once more we felt most indebted to Klaas for finding us another safe haven.

Unfortunately I lost touch with Klaas and his wife after they immigrated to Canada after the end of the war. I have tried several times over the last forty years to find him but to no avail. I am not sure if he or his wife is still alive today.

From the farm where Klaas took us we could see the island of Ameland. I remember it was a cold wet winter’s night and after warm coffee and something to eat, the farmer bade Klaas farewell and took us to a small separate building, away from the main farm building. It was an old hay barn with a hay loft at the top. The farmer (unfortunately I do not know his name) was well prepared for us and had made makeshift sleeping accommodation available in between bales of straw, high up in the loft. To get up there we climbed through the old chimney, stepping left and right on the protruding stones and landing in the middle of bales of hay.

It was nice and warm and soon we were lulled into a deep sleep in our new surroundings by the droning sounds of the wind charger right above our heads, a device that supplied electricity to the farm. The next morning the farmer told us we must stay in the barn at all times. Naturally we agreed to this request as we had no desire to wander around the place. It must have been winter for it was bitterly cold. Many times we climbed back upstairs through the chimney to sleep and get warm.

Food was brought to us by one of the farmer’s children, a boy who must have been about six or seven years old and spoke fluent Friesian. With some suspicion Appie and I began to chat to him about the lovely food his Mama had made for us. Then we hesitantly asked him whether he liked kugel and pears, a special Jewish dish prepared in most Jewish households on Friday evenings. He replied, “Oh yes! That’s lovely!” Of course we never let on that we were Jewish and actually shed a tear or two, for that boy instinctively knew what we had meant and spent many hours in our company….

We knew our hiding place near Holward was temporary and eventually the day arrived for us to leave. Once again our rescuer Klaas secured a place for me and a different hideout for Appie. I was to go to Heskampen, a farm owned by Jan Rosier and his family, and Appie was placed with another Folkertsma family in Genum. They may have been relatives of the first family where he was hidden. We kept in contact with one another for most of the time and on rare occasions got together for a chat.

Jan Rosier owned the largest farm in the Blija area. I kept myself well hidden and never ventured out during the day whilst staying at the Rosier family farm. Only after dark, at around 9.00 pm, would I stroll around the farmhouse for some much needed fresh air, together with Sieb and Johannes, the farmer’s sons. I slept in a well-concealed hiding place behind Johannes’s bed. Every evening I removed the wooden partition separating his bed from mine and secured myself into this small cavity by locking the wooden plank from the inside. I slept on a mattress practically in the eaves of the sloping roof. This was the safest place for me in case trouble came knocking, which did happen on two occasions while I was with the Rosier family.

One of my close encounters occurred one morning when two German soldiers, both elderly men from a garrison in a larger village, cycled along the farm road leading to the house. The German Alsatian belonging to Jan Rosier was my hero because he barked like crazy and would have bitten the soldiers if it were not for Johannes calling the dog to back off. The Rosier farm was the largest in the area and the German soldiers were also running out of food. So they scrounged whatever they could get from the local farmers.

Jan Rosier was a real Friesian and detested the Germans. He was not going to give them anything! As for me, well I was sitting in my hiding place not knowing what was going on downstairs. I heard later that Jan had made out as though he did not understand a thing they were saying and they left empty handed. Jan’s philosophy was that if you gave once they would come back for more. There were only two such incidents and I survived both….

[D]uring the spring of 1944 I tried my hand at spinning wool on a wheel. I needed to keep busy as I had to stay inside. During this time I made at least one hundred balls of the best handmade wool and I was able to supply all of the family…. I stayed inside throughout the autumn and winter of 1944 while the boys went skating on the small canals that had frozen over, wearing their new jumpers….

Having some work to do certainly helped me during this difficult time.

Eventually 14 April 1945 arrived and I was still living with the Rosiers. At first we heard many rumours of the events that were unfolding, but then news broke out that the Canadians had taken Dokkum to the north-east and that the fighting was practically over. Johannes and I took to the tandem bicycle and pedaled at great speed to the village. That was a day I never will forget because on the road to Dokkum we came across hundreds of German soldiers who had surrendered to the Allies. We stopped and all I could do was stare at them. I had to pinch myself to believe it was true.

Standing there it dawned on me that I was free at last. Johannes turned to me and shaking me out of my trance said, “Come on Willem, let’s go home!” I have no words to describe the grin on his face and the emotions boiling up inside me. The realization of freedom sank in during the trip back to the Heskampen, which had been my home for nearly sixteen months.

TOMMY DICK

Context: Central Europe

Source: Tommy Dick. Getting Out Alive. Toronto: ©Azrieli Foundation, 2007, pp. 4–8. Used by permission.

The Nazi invasion of Hungary on March 19, 1944 brought the Holocaust to that country almost immediately, with the occupiers utilizing preexisting Hungarian antisemitic legislation and records in order to maximize the process of Jewish registration prior to arrest and deportation. Tommy Dick, who relates these initial measures, found himself increasingly subjected to tighter and tighter controls over his previously held freedoms. As he explains, once he was called up for compulsory labor service—a euphemism for slave labor—he tried to find ways to make the experience bearable. His one consolation was that if he was working in a labor battalion at least he would not be deported to certain (and immediate) death. This was his only solace, however; absent this from the equation and, he writes, “it was awful.”

Before the war, we experienced discrimination, but life was tolerable. My father was the director of a large brick factory. My mother’s four sisters were all married to professional people and her father was an adviser to the government on fiscal and financial matters. I understood that during World War I—when Jewishness was still viewed as a matter of religion and not as a matter of race—my maternal grandfather became Lutheran partly because he had aspirations to be minister of finance.

With the outbreak of World War II, discrimination against Jews intensified. If one’s parents were born Jewish, one was classified as a Jew. Universities had quotas placed on Jews to make sure they never represented more than a small fraction of the student body. This effectively barred them from getting a higher education and entering into professions. Jews were deemed too unreliable to be drafted into the army, but they were drafted into labour battalions and sent to the Eastern front to do dangerous hard labour. Many Jews were driven on to minefields to test the ground before soldiers set foot on the area. Laws were passed to protect the “purity” of the Aryan race, making mixed marriages illegal. A Jewish man could be convicted of fornicating with an Aryan woman and would be imprisoned for years.

When I was in high school, students had to engage in elementary military training twice a week. Part of the training consisted of handling a gun, taking it apart, cleaning it and shooting with dummy bullets. As my parents had been born Jewish, I was deemed unreliable and had to train separately from the rest without a gun. Not that I liked guns, but the segregation was humiliating. Still, except that some kids were of the unfortunate age to be drafted into military labour battalions, life was stressful but bearable. Hungary was an ally of Germany but was, at least nominally, an independent country.

Then, on March 19, 1944, the country was occupied by the German army.

Now, years, later, I can still recall the horror, the fear and my feeling of total helplessness during those first days of occupation. I remember how surprised we were to learn that the German occupiers considered the elimination of Jews—they called it the “Final Solution”—their number one priority. The German army had been in retreat since the battle of Stalingrad, which took place between August 21, 1942, and February 2, 1943. By the spring of 1944, the Germans were fighting for their survival, and yet they began to arrest prominent and not-so-prominent Jews. One wondered if they did not have strategically more important tasks. They must have had lists of Jewish people and addresses, obviously prepared with the help of Hungarian collaborators. With ruthless efficiency, they sought out Jews. No one knew the criteria that placed someone on the list. For Jews there was no escape from that terror. My father had a bag of necessities packed in case there was a knock on our front door.

Days after the occupation, billboards appeared on the streets declaring that Jews (defined as anyone with two Jewish-born grandparents) must wear a yellow Star of David sewn onto outer clothing while out in public. A curfew was ordered along with many other restrictions, all under the threat of arrest. New orders were posted daily. One listed all the locations of empty stores where Jews had to deliver their radios at designated times. The dilemma we faced is vivid in my memory. On the one hand, there was the humiliation of seeing an endless queue of compliant Jews lining up around the block to hand in their radios; on the other, the question had to be asked: Was it worth risking arrest or having my father taken away for hanging on to a radio? To understand the fear one must also consider the hostility of the vast majority of Hungarians toward Jews. No one could be trusted as most Hungarians were collaborating with the Germans. It must have been easy to be defiant in Denmark where the king had demonstrated his support for Jews. This seemed to encourage the population to follow his example and resist. But nothing like that happened in Hungary. In fact, a large segment of the population actively supported the repressive measures against Jews, while others remained passive. Many couldn’t care less. In many cases, I suspect there was a selfish element in this support as it was known that when Jewish families were deported from other German occupied countries, their homes were taken over and the contents, furnishings and other assets were easily looted by collaborators. So why would they not support the system? Why would they not behave like vultures?

I shall not forget the sad sight of my parents’ friends who came to our apartment every day wearing the humiliating yellow star on their coats to bring us news of the arrests of friends and relatives. Soldiers would stop one on the street and demand documents. They were looking for escapees from auxiliary military units or for “parasites”—people who were not working.

I had a paper from one of my father’s friends stating that I was employed by his company. The paper boosted my confidence, but I don’t know if it would have stood the test if questioned. Luckily, I never had to find out. The soldiers conducting the raids had absolute authority and we had absolutely no rights. They could arrest someone because they did not like his or her looks. There was no remedy. One would simply disappear, so there was an impulse to stay at home, not venture out, not tempt fate, not stretch one’s luck. Life during those very uncertain times had many facets. We vacillated between great caution and a devil-may-care attitude. Stay at home to avoid getting caught in a raid, or enjoy today because there might not be a tomorrow.

There was an equally compelling urge for hedonism and to use up what little time there was left to enjoy life to its fullest. Of course for a nineteen-year-old boy there is no greater enjoyment than sex. Luckily for me and for my friends, the nineteen-year-old girls in our social circles were of the same view. So we went out and went at it with gusto. I am sure that the parents of these society girls knew about their daughters’ affairs, but they did not interfere. They too must have known this might be the end of the line, so they let them enjoy it if they could.

Those of us who were not arrested and whose parents were still at home were able to adjust to life’s uncertainties in Budapest. But early in May, distressing news started to trickle in from around the country. Jews in the cities, towns and villages were being rounded up and held in barracks and sports arenas under deplorable conditions. The deportations had started. We knew about concentration camps, although we did not know about the gas chambers and ovens. The news from the outside made it evident that sooner or later it would be our turn. My life caved in on May 20, 1944, when notices appeared on the street ordering Jewish males of my age group to report to designated labour camps on June 5. We were told what clothing and equipment to bring and that the camps would be directed and staffed by the Hungarian army. We were also told that military discipline and law would apply. This meant that if one tried to escape, one could be court-marshalled and shot as a deserter.

This was scary stuff. I had never been away from home except to summer camp and I knew this would be no summer camp. Where would we be sent? What would be the conditions in the camp? What kind of labour would we have to perform and how punitive would it be? Would the soldiers guarding us be humane or sadistic? I asked these questions, but expected no answers. I wondered if there was any advantage to becoming a forced labourer. Well, maybe. My friends and I reasoned that it was inevitable that after the deportation of all the Jews from the countryside was completed, they would turn to Budapest to finish off their deadly task. Perhaps from that point of view, the labour camp would temporarily provide a somewhat safer haven as the inmates might not be in their homes to be deported.

Other than that, it was awful.

MARIAN DOMANSKI

Context: Evading Persecution

Source: Marian Domanski. Fleeing from the Hunter. Toronto: ©Azrieli Foundation, 2012, pp. 44–47. Used by permission.

While some Jews fleeing the Nazis managed to find a ready hiding place in their town or village, others were not so fortunate, and often had to roam far and wide before locating a safe refuge. Marian Domanski was one such person. Arriving in a small village in Poland, he managed to find sanctuary among a farming community, where he became part of the local scene tending livestock. Unfortunately, his time in hiding here did not last long; as he writes toward the end of his account, local administrators received orders that villagers with horse-drawn carts were to be pressed into service so as to transport Jews to train stations—with deportation to death camps their final destination.

The liquidation of the ghettos, which had been rumoured among the farmers when I was in the village of Kozaki, turned out to be true, and almost everywhere the news of mass killings now became common knowledge. It was strange, because in the little town I came to next, in spite of all the rumours, the Jews didn’t know of the liquidations, or maybe they knew, but didn’t want to believe it.

But there was a different atmosphere in the air. While I was looking for work, sometimes the villagers’ remarks put me on my guard, and I would realize that they were suspicious of me. I knew I would be in serious danger if they discovered my background. I was afraid to approach the village administrators to seek a proper night’s accommodation and also didn’t dare ask any of the farmers for food. Fortunately, at that time of summer, the gardens were full of vegetables, so I ate carrots and turnips that I picked from gardens. I slept in haystacks and dressed in a homespun, village-made coat jacket that I had received somewhere during my service. I had cracked heels from walking barefoot, and autumn was approaching.

I continued roaming from village to village, losing my sense of direction and circling among the Ukrainian villages that were located in that part of Poland. I hoped to find a farmer who needed my services—it was the only work I could do to survive—but I would need real luck at that time of the summer to find such an opportunity. In spite of all the difficulties, I stayed in the countryside and explored villages where, by instinct, I felt my survival was possible. I wandered to many places, sometimes returning to a village where I had been before because someone had informed me that a farmer there was looking for a herdsman. During my wanderings, I came upon a village named Sokoły, where a sign indicated the direction to the town of Persow, five kilometres away.

Instead of looking for a job in Sokoły, I decided to go to Persow.

The evening had already set in, and as I passed through the village centre, I walked past a group of women. It was common in those villages for women to gather together in the evenings and exchange information while their husbands talked in another group close by. One of the women asked me where I was going. Feigning confidence, I replied, “To see my uncle in Persow.” She shot back, “What’s your uncle’s name?” She caught me off guard. I blurted out “Pinkowski,” a name I had heard elsewhere. She called out to a group of men standing nearby, “Hey, Franiuk, in that Persow town, is there a man by the name of Pinkowski?” “No!” came the answer, but I stubbornly insisted that my uncle did live there. With that, I strode off in the direction of Persow, leaving the interrogators behind. I didn’t realize that in that little town, located not more than five kilometres away and no bigger than the village I had just left, people knew each other. And so I went to Persow and headed for my imaginary Uncle Pinkowski, the name I soon came to adopt.

When I arrived in the town of Persow, I was surprised at how small it was. There weren’t any sidewalks and the road was just dirt, pressed down by use. On both sides of the dirt road stood single houses with no barns attached. There was only one main road, with one or two shops, and a few more houses were scattered around.

On arrival in a new place it was my habit to explore what kind of people lived there. This time, I was more concerned about a roof over my head and therefore I didn’t follow my usual custom, but knocked on a door straight away. It was too good to be true—the people were not only pleasant, but also Jewish. It turned out that nearly the whole town was Jewish and because it was small—similar to Dubeczno—there was no ghetto there. It didn’t mean, however, that the Germans had forgotten them. Close by, the Sobibor death camp was already working at full capacity. Perhaps the town was too small for the Germans to be bothered with yet, or perhaps it was their policy to leave Jews alone in certain places, to allay suspicion until their liquidation was about to be completed.

But now I stood before a kindly Jewish tailor who invited me to stay the night at his home. In the course of our conversation, the family learned about my difficulties and my attempts at finding work. The tailor told me not to worry. “I have three children and will welcome you as my fourth,” he said. I felt grateful and secure. At last I had found someone who was prepared to take care of me.

As a tailor, my host had customers among the local farmers. After several days, he called me to his workroom and introduced me to a man who wished to hire me to look after his cows for the fall season. At the end of the season, I would come back to my newly-adopted family. To my great surprise, the man sitting in the workroom was Franiuk, from the village of Sokoły, who had said that in Persow there was no family named Pinkowski. So it turned out that, contrary to my intentions, the farmer for whom I was to work knew that I was a Jew. When riding with him in his horse-drawn cart, he instructed me not to tell anyone where he had brought me from or of my heritage. He then made a few suggestions, one of them being that the name Czesiek (short for Czesław) would sound more authentic than Grzegorz (Gregory), the name I had been known by in the village of Barczewo. From then on, I became known as Czesław Pinkowski. It felt strange and ironic to be with a farmer who was aware of my identity. All summer I had been running away from farmers who suspected my heritage, and now I was conspiring with one in the hope that no one else would learn the truth.

The next day, I led Franiuk’s cows to the pasture, where I met other boys looking after cows. I introduced myself as Czesław Pinkowski and from that day on I tried to blend in and be part of the community. I was the only non-local among them. Unlike other villages, in Sokoły there were no hired servants except for me; every boy was looking after his own family’s cows. But the boys treated me like one of the crowd; they of course didn’t know my heritage, and were very friendly toward me. I was part of the group and even dressed like them, with bare feet and tanned skin from being outdoors all the time. I even spoke like them. They were Ukrainian and, since I had spoken Ukrainian before in Kozaki and Barczewo, I had the opportunity to expand my knowledge of the language and become more fluent.

The boys were industrious and I soon learned from them how to weave and shape baskets. We collected materials on our way to the meadows. White willow trees grew by the roadside and by the drainage ditches. At the other end of the village was a forest of mixed trees and among them were slim junipers that were useful for basket-making. I would proudly bring some new baskets to Franiuk from time to time. Time passed and the potato harvest had started and rainy days became more frequent. With a sack over my head for protection against the rain and a whip in my hand, I looked after Franiuk’s cows and in exchange I enjoyed a relatively comfortable life with the friendship of Franiuk, his wife and their two children, and the village boys.

One day in the forest, while herding the cows on the other side of the village, I discovered an ideal spot to build a hiding place. Jurek, the boy from Warsaw, and I used to discuss such plans when we were together in Kozaki. But a truly safe hiding place was only a dream. The good times in Sokoły didn’t last—the Germans took care of that. In the autumn of 1942, the Nazis proceeded with their plan to eliminate all the remaining Jews in Poland, particularly those still living in small towns surrounded by villages. The time for the liquidation in our area arrived in October and there were soon no more opportunities for Jews to run away before the transports to the death camps began. All of the village administrators received orders from the municipalities to recruit villagers with horse-drawn carts to transport Jews from all the small towns and villages to the railway stations. There, the Jews were to be loaded onto freight trains and transported to killing centres.

NATHAN DUNKELMAN

Context: Eastern Europe

Source: Phyllis Rozencwijc Dunkelman and Maryanne McLoughlin. In Fire & In Flowers: The Holocaust Memoirs of Nathan and Phyllis Dunkelman. Margate (NJ): ComteQ Publishing, 2014, pp. 9–22. Used by permission.

Nathan Dunkelman and his family lived in the Jewish district of Łódź. In this account, readers are provided with a portrait of life in the Łódź ghetto. The account is told in the third person, with Nathan’s own voice muted. Nonetheless, we see how this one person perceived the developments around him, and, through this, a short history of the Łódź ghetto is provided. Nathan’s account is highly detailed and is rich in its narrative style, which extends through the summer of 1944 and the liquidation of the ghetto. It became the last major ghetto surviving in Nazi Europe.

Nathan and his family soon saw what the Germans were capable of. His father lost his business. Markets were closed to Jews. So his father could not sell the dishware and porcelain. Soon they were enclosed in a ghetto where there were few opportunities.

In 1940, the Nazis created a separate district for the Jews in northern Łódź, in the Old Town of Łódź and in the adjacent Baluty Quarter, one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Łódź. These were the most run down and impoverished parts of the city. The article “The Establishment of the Litzmannstadt [Łódź] Ghetto” explains that the decree, issued by the Chief of Police Johann Schäfer, announcing the “opening of a separated district for Jews in Łódź” appeared on February 8, 1940, in the newspaper Lodscher Zeitung. The decree indicated the borders of the ghetto. Non-Jews who had lived in the ghetto area were forced out. A stockade and barbed wire enclosed the ghetto. After Pesach (Passover), April 23–29, 1940, the ghetto was sealed off from the rest of the city on April 30, 1940. According to the article “Litzmannstadt Ghetto: Introduction” over 180,000 people were packed into an area of 4.13 square kilometers.

The ghetto was like a city, with many streets. Three bridges, guarded by Schupo, or Schutzpolizei, crossed over to the other sections of the ghetto. In the middle were the “Aryans” or non-Jews. The Jews of Łódź, including some Jewish refugees, were moved into the homes on these streets, crowded into apartments and houses. Nathan’s street became a ghetto street, so their home where they had lived for twenty-nine years, was in the ghetto. Their apartment was in a three story building with quite a few apartments. In the family apartment were his father, mother, aunt, and five sons. The Germans did not move anyone else into the apartment.

In 1940, Nathan’s father, Yacub, became seriously ill with an infection; a carbuncle, a cluster of boils, had become badly infected, spreading over his entire back, and had to be operated on. What his father didn’t know was that he “had sugar” or diabetes. There was no medication in the ghetto for this. Nathan’s father died during surgery. He was only thirty-nine years old.

During this time, horrible things were going on. People were living on top of other people. When Nathan was twelve years old, and he was confined to the Łódź Ghetto, his schooling ended. There was only underground schooling in the ghetto, and Nathan could not go to the underground schools because he had to work. Nathan said that his mind was not on schooling but on surviving. With their father and grandfather dead, Nathan, thirteen years old, and his older brother, Osher, fourteen years old, had to support the family. They worked for the Sanitation Committee clearing out outhouses. They had to put in a certain number of hours each day because there were so many yards to clean up. This work was very hard.

Luckily his mother, Sara, did not have to go out to work. His mother had very high blood pressure and edema (retaining fluid). They told her not to drink anything. Nathan cooked her food without water until it was pasty. This is what she ate. The only treatment that was efficacious at that time in Europe was leech therapy. The saliva of leeches contains enzymes that can help lower blood pressure. But Nathan and his mother had no access to leeches, so his mother had to stay in bed most of the time.

Because they were sanitation workers, Nathan and Osher had a special ration. Food was rationed in the ghetto from June 2, 1940….

Most people were given ration cards for one pound of bread per person for a week.

In other ghettos, such as Warsaw, food, medicine, and such were smuggled in from outside the ghetto. However, in Łódź this was difficult if not impossible because the Jews were dependent on the Germans for food, medicine, and other necessities. The only legal currency in the ghetto were specially created ghetto marks, the so-called “rumki” or “chaimki” named after the head of the Ältesttenrat (Council of Elders), Chaim Rumkowski. Starving Jews traded their remaining possessions and currency for the ghetto marks at the Bank for the Purchase of Valuable Objects and Clothing, a bank founded by Rumkowski. With this currency they bought what they could.

Every week Nathan’s mother went down to the food distribution center where she was given something to cook. The family got more than the others because of the brothers’ demanding work. After a day’s work, Nathan and Osher sat in the house. They were young but exhausted by the work. They went to bed early and slept. There wasn’t much to do in the ghetto and besides they were tired.

In addition to special rations, Nathan and Osher were given tickets for Jewish theatre that was performed in the ghetto. This was a privilege extended to sanitary workers and a treat for the brothers.

When he was thirteen years old in 1940, Nathan should have had his Bar Mitzvah. However it was too hard to make one in the ghetto, especially without his father. People prayed in their houses and yards; they did not go to synagogue. Although it was his religious duty at thirteen years of age, Nathan was not able to fulfill the duty of “laying on” the tefillin until after the war. He did pray, asking G-d many times how it was possible that the good Jews who believed in him were being persecuted and murdered in the ghetto.

Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, a controversial figure, was the chairman of the Ältestenrat (Council of Elders) in the Łódź ghetto. Many loathed him. Others were grateful to him. Nathan said he didn’t know Rumkowski; he never had a close connection to him. Nathan had only seen Rumkowski from a distance; Rumkowski, his white hair billowing, was riding in a carriage protected by two Jewish policemen. Nathan said that Rumkowski was a good old man and intelligent. Rumkowski believed that if the Łódź Jews became indispensable to the war effort, the Germans would leave them in peace. Therefore Rumkowski petitioned the Nazis, asking them to deliver raw materials to the ghetto where workers would transform these raw materials into finished products, such as military uniforms, shoes, and weapons. Orders placed by private individuals were also filled….

Rumkowski believed in survival through work; he set up over 120 factories and found the thousands of workers needed to operate them. For a long time the German occupiers needed the Łódź ghetto, and that is the reason it continued to exist. The Łódź Ghetto lasted longer than any other ghetto, except Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia, a special case.

Nathan says that Rumkowski was controversial because he was asked to do the impossible. Rumkowski was the leader of the ghetto, and people believed he had the responsibility to protect them from harm and supply them with basic necessities such as heat, work, food, housing, and health and welfare services—for 230,000 people. Yet he was also the one asked to supply the Gestapo with whatever they wanted, including people. They would come to him and say, “We need 50,000 Jews.” Rumkowski tried to deal with the Gestapo, saying he could give them 10,000 or 20,000, whatever. He made these deals and saved people’s lives for a time. According to Nathan, some people said he was an evil man; others, that he was a good man. Nathan thinks that Rumkowski had no choice but did the best he could do, considering he was forced to make “choiceless choices.” Ultimately he had to deliver what the Germans wanted….

But from the end of 1942 until 1944, the selections were halted because the Germans needed the products produced in the Łódź ghetto factories.

Many people hid from these selections, not coming out until the selections were over. They hid in cellars and attics, outhouses and cemeteries, wherever people thought would be safe. After two or three days, up to a week, people hid and then came out until the next selection. Some people managed to escape the ghetto. This was extremely difficult because there was not a sewer system in Łódź as there was in the Warsaw Ghetto. Moreover, the Jews did not work outside but inside the ghetto. The escapees went over to the Polish side of Łódź. Some survived; some did not. Nathan met some of the survivors after the war. They had given away whatever they had, money and jewelry, whatever they had. This was the price for a life.

Nathan’s family was not wealthy. But he remembers exactly that in 1940—and he does not know what happened to precipitate this—his father and mother gave the children some money to hide on their bodies; in case it was needed, they would have this money. Then they came to the ghetto, and the money was used little-by-little for buying food.

Jews from Łódź were not the only people in the ghetto. Twenty thousand Jews from outlying areas and also from other countries such as Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia were sent to the Łódź Ghetto in the fall of 1941. Nathan remembers seeing Jews that had come from Austria, Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Luxembourg. They were well-dressed, well-educated, nice people, mostly elderly. These Western European Jews were used to better lives than the Polish Jews. Nathan said they could not stand the hunger and the cold. When he was walking in the ghetto streets, he saw their swollen corpse-like bodies. Many of the Western Europeans had died like flies. Most of these newcomers never adjusted to ghetto life. … They were sent seventy kilometers from Łódź to Chelmno death camp and murdered in the gas vans sometime in April and May of 1942.

Nathan said that thousands of “gypsies” (Roma) were also sent to the Łódź Ghetto from Burgenland, a multi-ethnic Austrian state, bordering Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia….

In December 1941, all the Roma were transported to Chelmno death camp, just days after it opened, where they were murdered in the gas vans. Nathan and his family knew nothing about Chelmno. They knew nothing about what was going on outside the ghetto, nor did they know the course of the war. Nathan said, “Maybe others did, but none of my family knew what was going on—even to the last minute.”

The worst selection was the Gehsperre Aktion (curfew action) carried out in September of 1942. On September 4, Rumkowski made a speech, called the “Give Me Your Children Speech.” In this speech, addressed to the mothers of the Łódź Ghetto, Rumkowski begged them to give him their children. The mothers refused….

During the Gehsperre Aktion, ghetto residents were forced to remain in their homes. Jewish policemen, supervised by the German police, went into homes, one by one, searched them, brutally dragging away children, the handicapped, ill and elderly, and transporting them to Chelmno death camp where they were murdered. (Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration camp had not yet been built.) About 16,000 Łódź Jews were murdered, including 5,800 children under ten years old, elderly over sixty-five, and the infirm, as well as those in the hospitals. The Nazis wanted no one in the Łódź Ghetto who could not work. Nathan did not know, however, at the time where they were being taken.

Nathan’s grandfather was one of those taken away during this selection. His grandfather was a pious Jew who had believed in G-d all his life. His mission in life was to study. His grandfather had many old books bound in leather. People would come and say that they would like to buy one of these books. His grandfather always said, “No. I will never sell these because they belong to my grandchildren.” These books like everything else were destroyed when the ghetto was destroyed by fire.

Life in the ghetto continued, but it wasn’t much of a life. Working conditions were cruel. There was hardship and hunger. People worked to pay for their rations. People were given a ration of a loaf of bread for a week and ate that in a day or two. If they had money to buy extra food, they ate that in the next two or three days and then starved themselves until the week was up when they received another food ration. First people became like skeletons. Next they swelled up from edema and died in the streets.

Nathan and his brother brought home enough food for the first five or six days for their family. It was not a lot of food, but they survived. Whatever money they had, they spent.

The ghetto was horrible—worse, Nathan says, than the concentration camp. Thousands of people died of starvation, disease, and cold.

People prayed every day, three times a day. Yet although they prayed, they believed G-d had forgotten them.

By June of 1944, the Germans knew that the Soviet Red Army was advancing closer to Poland. Therefore, they had to liquidate the ghetto as quickly as possible. The liquidation was accomplished between June 23 and August 29. Nathan remembers that in the summer Hans Biebow, the German Chief of the Ghetto Administration, who had played a major part in the selection process, called the Jews together at the clothing factory. He spoke to them. “Mein Juden, you will all go to the Reich, to Germany, to work. We need you there. Take your pots and pans. Take your family. Take everything you possess. You are going to the Reich to work.” …

The Łódź Jews did not know that this was the end. Although perhaps some few knew, Nathan’s mother, Sara, Nathan, and his brothers didn’t know. They believed they were going to work in the “old” Reich.

The Germans wanted to burn everything, so there would be no evidence. Every day another shipment of Jews was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp. Nathan and his brothers were assigned to the ghetto clean up, so they were among the last ones to leave. His mother was with them until the last minute.

That summer of 1944, Nathan became very ill. He had typhoid—diarrhea with blood—and lost weight. He was sick for two or three weeks when their summons to the transport came. People called them “wedding invitations.” People were never told in advance what would happen or when. Within minutes the SS wanted them ready for the trains. Called in August 1944, Nathan and the rest of his family were ready.

HORST PETER EISFELDER

Context: Evading Persecution

Source: Horst Peter Eisfelder. Chinese Exile: My Years in Shanghai and Nanking. Caulfield South (Victoria): Makor Jewish Community Library, 2003, pp. 5–18. Used by permission.

In this account Peter Eisfelder, a young German Jew, recounts the efforts his parents made to secure a safe passage out of Germany from an early date in the Nazi period. It is an excellent review of the struggle facing many German Jews throughout the 1930s, with various options tried and found wanting. With options for the United States, Costa Rica, and Australia falling through, one last chance was the Chinese city of Shanghai—a place in which the immigration regulations were more relaxed than they were practically everywhere else around the world. Eisfelder’s testimony is rich in detail, conveying a story that is little-known outside of a narrow readership.

My parents, Ludwig Leopold (Louis) and Hedwig Eisfelder, foresaw the inevitable outcome of Hitler’s policies and tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to leave Germany from the very early days of the Nazi ascendancy. They both turned forty years of age shortly after Hitler came to power in 1933.

The first and most obvious choice for many people during those days was to migrate to the USA, but at that time America was experiencing the depths of the Great Economic Depression. Entry could only be gained if one could produce an “Affidavit”—evidence that a person within the United States was willing to declare, under oath, that they had sufficient financial assets to guarantee that “the new arrival” would not burden the country’s social services for two years.

One could well have assumed that my family’s solution to the problem was simple, given my father’s considerably older brother Hugo lived in New York and was a wealthy man. He had moved to America before the turn of the twentieth century and it was said that in the mid-1920s he had bought out (or was bought out) by his business partner for something like a million dollars, a staggering sum in those far-off days. Sure, he too lost a great deal during the stock market crash of 1929, but there was more than enough left to ensure him a comfortable retirement. Hugo, however, made it absolutely clear to my father that whilst he was prepared to render some financial aid, namely exactly US $1000, such assistance would only be given upon our arrival in any country other than the United States! (the reasons behind this are a long story in itself).

Consequently, my father applied to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) for assistance. HIAS was an old-established institution with offices around the globe, including Berlin, who declared themselves willing and able to help us reach the Argentine, where they operated several Jewish farming communities. As a result, the four members of my family learnt Spanish, but after several years of evening classes, it became evident that nothing would come of the frequent promises made by the HIAS staff. As things became increasingly uncomfortable in Hitler’s Third Reich, new plans were made, this time to reach Costa Rica, a seemingly quiet and attractive country. Again, however, nothing eventuated as neither the Argentine nor Costa Rica was issuing entry visas.

In an endeavor to get as far away as possible from the looming prospect of war in Europe, Australia looked like a promising alternative. Rumour had it that a landing permit could be gained with evidence of good health and at least £200 ($400). Although a princely sum in those days, Australian officials deemed it sufficient capital for a family to establish itself in business and prevent any financial burden on the nation.

Our efforts to leave Germany at that time were managed by the Hilfsverein der Juden in Deutschland (Aid Union of German Jews). They informed my parents that apart from the necessary £200, which we could raise thanks to Uncle Hugo’s promise of money, evidence was also required of our ability to conduct some trade, profession or craft. As both my parents were keen cooks, good at baking and producing the most fanciful of cakes, they proposed to open a cake shop upon arrival in Adelaide. Our family’s hopes were set on Adelaide as a new home “because it was neither too large nor too small.” In order to convince the Hilfsverein of their ability to produce cakes of a high standard, my parents were asked to work for one day at Dobrin, Berlin’s leading Jewish cake shop and caterer, to its management’s satisfaction. While my parents performed to everyone’s approval, the firm’s apprentice, young Richard Stern, also watched them. Many years later in Melbourne, Richard and I were to become very close friends.

With all the experts now certain we would have no difficulty in gaining an entry permit for Australia, preparations were set in motion to leave the land of our birth, where our ancestors had lived and toiled for untold generations, and for which my father had fought in the bitter battles of the First World War. We decided to apply for passports to facilitate a quick departure once we received the Australian landing permit. It was a risky decision during those days of Nazi madness when passports issued to Jews usually expired within six months. Once the passports were issued, we would have to leave the country before their expiry date, or risk imprisonment in a concentration camp and face almost certain death. Consequently, after several months of anxiously awaiting news from Australia, all of us were greatly disappointed and despairing when the telegram arrived from Canberra saying: “His Majesty’s Government regrets that it is unable to grant your request for an entry permit.” Hoping against hope that we had misunderstood the telegram’s content, my uncle Alfred, a linguistic expert, was called in to confirm the news.

Now we had to act quickly. There was very little time left before our passports expired and with every door shut, Shanghai remained the only choice. When my father mentioned this to his Jewish employer, he responded: “Since when have you become an adventurer?” His boss thought it was safer to take one’s chances in Germany than risk the unknown quantity of Shanghai. He was not alone in this view. No one seemed to know much, if anything, about the place, not even its exact location. Judging by my school atlas, Shanghai seemed to be on the coast just as its Chinese name implied. Shang “upon” and Hai (the) “sea.” So it transpired that swimsuits were bought for all of the family in anticipation of glorious beaches that didn’t exist—a further miscalculation on our part, as Shanghai is quite a long way from the ocean. The good people at the Hilfsverein tried to be helpful. Through their contacts around the globe, they had answers to every query. When we asked about our destination, their answer was very definite: “It is colder in winter and warmer in summer.” Thus, it seemed, exhausted their knowledge of Shanghai.

Exactly a year earlier Shanghai had been the scene of heavy fighting between Japanese invaders and the Chinese who frantically tried to fight them off. The fighting resulted in the death of several thousand innocent civilians. Many sought refuge in the neutral territories of Shanghai’s International Settlement and French Concession, but even these regions suffered enormous damage to lives and property as the result of misaimed bombs.

For all our desperate planning, heading into the war zone of Shanghai now seemed like leaping from the frying pan into the fire. Yet left with little choice, we took up the challenge and obtained tickets from the Italian shipping line Lloyd Triestino for passage from Trieste to Shanghai on the passenger line Conte Verde. Our departure was booked for 30 October 1938.

As my bar mitzvah had been planned for late November, it was hurriedly brought forward to be celebrated ten days before our departure from Berlin. After my performance at Synagogue, the family gathered at our apartment to celebrate the event. Our guests found the table spread with delicious, fancy cakes prepared by my parents just for the occasion. Sadly, it would be the last time many of my relatives would be together. Only three relatives would follow us to Shanghai and only two survived. I met with those two in New York some thirty-eight years later. All my other relatives fell victim to the Holocaust.

We left Berlin on 26 October 1938, travelling by train via Vienna, Zagreb in Yugoslavia and on to Trieste. On reaching the German border, we were subjected to a rigorous inspection by customs. No one was allowed to leave the country with any valuables or German currency. Only foreign currency to the value of ten German marks or just over US$2 per person was allowed to be taken out. During inspection of our belongings, one of the customs officers tore open a packet of Persil washing powder, suspecting hidden jewellery.

Covered from head to foot with the stuff, the officer became furious and barked out: “Has anyone still got German currency?” My brother Erwin, almost two years my senior, piped up and said most innocently, “Yes, I still have two Pfenniger (pennies).” Even though this did not even amount to a fraction of a US cent, it made the officer even angrier. “Out with you, everyone out!” he shouted. My mother and our travel companions, a lady acquaintance and her twelve-year-old daughter were consequently marched off and subjected to intimate body searches. We were released only at the very last moment, as the train was about to move on and out of Hitler’s “Thousand Year Reich.”

Unlike so many others, we were not penniless when we arrived in Trieste. A distant relative living in Italy had mailed an envelope containing 1000 Italian lire in notes to our hotel. I don’t know the equivalent value in American dollars, but it was certainly enough to allow us a few carefree days in the city.

We boarded the Conte Verde on 30 October for a voyage that would prove memorable for many reasons—more than the fact that I was often seasick and celebrated my thirteenth birthday at sea. We had many adventures on that journey, much of which I have written about in another narrative. I can still vividly recollect our arrival at the docks the evening we sailed. None of us Eisfelders had ever seen an ocean liner before and on reaching the waterfront we were duly impressed, perhaps in awe, of the huge Conte Verde brightly illuminated against the dark sky. Even though it was close to midnight before we settled into our four-berth “Tourist Class” cabin, a splendid repast was awaiting us in the dining room. Indeed, that’s how it was for the entire four-week voyage; food was plentiful and very, very good, but regretfully I was mostly too seasick to enjoy it….

While there were about another hundred and fifty German-speaking Jewish refugees on board, few of them were children. I found it difficult to communicate with some of them as they spoke dialects I could not understand. Most of the time at sea I was confined to my bed and felt miserable.

Whenever the liner reached port, I was quick to recover and take the opportunity to see a fair bit of the world en route, although the boat never stayed in a port for more than a few hours. I have vague recollections of wandering the streets of Venice, of being taken around Brindisi by horse drawn coach and seeing Port Said at night. I recall witnessing a magnificent sunset over the Egyptian Desert as we moved through the Red Sea, of visiting Aden and viewing Bombay at night. I saw Colombo by taxi, monkeys in Singapore’s Botanical Garden, marveling at the display of neon lights all over Manila that even outlined the city’s churches. I even recall enjoying coffee and cakes at a Hong Kong hotel restaurant. Of course the Italian lire we were given in Trieste held no value ashore, but we managed well with a sum of English sterling my mother had earned baby-sitting a young child travelling first class to India.

During our voyage news reached us of the horrors taking place in Europe. News gleaned by fellow passengers from English language newspapers in Bombay told us of the notorious Krystallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) on 9 November 1938, and of the horror of Nazi mobs burning synagogues all over Germany, taking thousands of Jews into concentration camps and killing a good many in the process.

When, on the morning of Thursday 24 November, as the Conte Verde steamed up the Whangpoo River, we gained our first glimpse of our future hometown, were we surprised! We had a vague notion of what Chinese architecture looked like, taken from such reliable sources as the “Willow Pattern” tea set. What we expected to see were small huts with swept up roofs, bamboo or mud-brick walls. What we saw instead looked like a miniature version of Manhattan—skyscrapers larger than any we had seen in Europe! It seemed unbelievable that this remote corner of the globe had been touched by an American influence yet to reach Europe. We were pleasantly surprised to see such evidence of Western civilization.

After the Conte Verde berthed in Shanghai, several representatives of the International Committee, a local aid committee, met the ship to greet the Jewish refugee migrants. The committee was generally referred to as the “Komor Committee” after its chief executive Paul Komor. He was a Hungarian national and not Jewish. It seems that Mr. Komor also had some close links to the German Consulate in Shanghai.

In anticipation of our arrival, the committee had already arranged accommodation. Each family was duly handed a slip of paper with the address of their new home. We were also instructed to report to the committee rooms the next day for information regarding our future activities and advice about jobs, careers and schooling.

Disembarking along the Shanghai and Hongkew Wharf, we were then carried by small tender (ferry) a couple of kilometers upstream to the customs shed. By the time we had cleared customs it was late in the afternoon and, being a winter’s day, it was also quite dark. On leaving the shed we found ourselves in front of the main customs house, a very imposing building many stories high. From its large clock tower, bells chimed hourly, the peel heard far and wide. Along the street even larger and more impressive buildings towered, headquarters of banks, newspapers, the twenty-story Cathay Hotel (now called Peace Hotel) and equally tall Broadway Mansions (now Shanghai Mansions).

Despite careful planning, most of our luggage failed to arrive at Trieste before we left for Shanghai. With Germany having occupied the Sudetenland at that time, German authorities redirected many trains, emptying their contents to make room for troops and guns. Consequently, as we now boarded a sleek taxicab and gave the Chinese driver the slip of paper bearing our new address, we held all our worldly possessions in our hands, in just a few small suitcases….

To me, a strange town always looks distinctly different the first time I look at it. The many new sights held an atmosphere of anticipation and anxiety for me until I began to find my bearings and become more familiar with my new surroundings.

As our taxi made its way past the big buildings of the “Bund” (an Indian term meaning embankment), Shanghai’s best-known street along the waterfront, we pondered the magnificent accommodation we were being taken to. As the driver crossed Garden Bridge, a large bridge spanning the Soochow Creek, the cab was forced to slow to a halt in front of a small sentry box positioned halfway across. A dwarfish figure of a Japanese soldier appeared from the sentry box and barked: “Pass neezzanee (show your passes),” causing the Chinese driver to bow as low as he could while holding up some kind of document. The soldier peered at us foreigners and, with a growl in his voice, indicated our vehicle could proceed.

It seemed we had now entered that part of the International Settlement north of Soochow Creek, a creek perhaps twice as wide as the Yarra River downtown in Melbourne. This section of the International Settlement formed the Japanese defence sector and had been used by the Japanese as a base for their 1937 invasion of China. During the fighting in August and September 1937, as China tried to expel the Japanese from this bridgehead, large sections of this part of the International Settlement were laid waste. Although foreign-owned wharves and warehouses behind high walls along the riverfront had largely been spared, very little else remained. However, there was an isolated house here and there, and the occasional cluster of houses only slightly damaged and made habitable again. As we now drove on into the night along unlit streets, all we could make out of this desolate expanse were shells of burnt-out homes, shops and the skeletons of factories. We saw very few people.

Less than a kilometer down the road we came upon another bridge spanning a smaller creek and manned with yet another Japanese soldier wishing to inspect the driver’s pass. As we proceeded, we passed a column of Japanese soldiers marching in the opposite direction. What struck us with awe was the fact that many of them were wearing a mask over their nose and mouth. In our innocent ignorance we saw this as a muzzle of some kind, possibly inflicted as a punishment. Only later did we learn that this was a widely practiced health measure designed to prevent the spread of infections such as the common cold.

As we drew closer to our destination, the driver indicated that he could not find the address, ‘125/3 Wayside Road’ that we had given him. Due to the fighting, burning and looting some twelve months earlier, few street signs or street lights remained to guide us, and houses rarely displayed numbers. In short, we found ourselves amid a wilderness of ruins, in a strange city in an even stranger land, lacking a common language with the driver and in almost pitch darkness. In spite of our predicament, I had great confidence that my parents would find a way out.

Suddenly out of this darkness a towering figure loomed, turbaned, with a flowing black beard, dressed in a uniform and carrying a huge electric torch. He was an Indian Sikh and member of an elite unit of the International Settlement’s Police Force. His unit was housed in barracks undamaged by war, a magnificent multi-storey apartment house not far from where we were stranded. He was both courteous and helpful, quickly locating our new home in a little lane off the main street.

As we drew up alongside the house, we saw a small Russian Church to our right and to our left, a fairly respectable three-storey house similar to many found in London. An elderly Russian lady, who had obviously been expecting us, greeted us at the door with a flood of Russian words. Like so many of her compatriots who had fled ‘Mother Russia’ around 1917, she considered her sojourn here in China a purely temporary arrangement. She, and thousands like her, lived in the few remaining houses of Hongkew, as this part of town was called, ready to leave at short notice and return to a Russian ruled by a Tsar and mad monks. Speaking only Russian and dutiful churchgoers, their homes were decorated with pictures of the Tsar and his family and the Imperial Russian flag occupied the place of honour. Their boys wore the uniforms of Tsarist military cadets, indicating their readiness to fight and shed blood for the restoration of the despotic regime.

Our new landlady led us upstairs to a room on the second floor that was to be our home. It was sparsely furnished but still roomy, about 4 m by 7 m and had large windows. It also had a fully enclosed verandah, virtually another room, perhaps 4 m by 2 m in size. It was late evening when we arrived and what was perhaps more important than our immediate surroundings was the thought of food. We had eaten our last meal on board the Conte Verde very early that morning and we had nothing edible, nor any crockery, cutlery or kitchenware of any kind in our small suitcases. Still, rescue it seemed was not too far away.

From the room below we heard what sounded like the old German Imperial Anthem, Heil Dir im Siegerkranz. As our landlady led us downstairs, we discovered it was only the tune we recognized; it was identical to the melody of the former Austrian anthem being played on a creaky gramophone by the Schönfeld family in the room below. Mr Schönfeld had fought in the Austrian Army during the First World War and was taken prisoner by the Russians. He subsequently spent many years in their country and acquired a fluent knowledge of their language. Mr Schönfeld had two sons about the same age as my brother Erwin and me. Both became residents of Melbourne after the war, the older son writing under the pen name of “Robert Amos,” author of many radio and TV plays.

Mr. Schönfeld escorted us to a small Russian general store in Wayside Road, which in later years became part of the commercial hub of the Ghetto. We purchased soap, towels and a few other odds and ends, before proceeding on, under Mr. Schönfeld’s guidance, to a Russian restaurant known as The Olympic. It was nestled among a long line of more or less roofless and floorless shops. Here our spirits were revived by a plate of borsht, a traditional Russian soup made from redbeets, potatoes, cabbage, meat and a final addition of fresh cream. This was followed by a big tureen filled with frankfurters floating in pink water and a generous helping of potato salad. To quench our thirst we drank kwass, a Russian lemonade supposedly made from fermenting bread. In hindsight though, I am certain that what we actually drank was just plain lemonade (or “7 Up” as it is called in the USA), made from water, carbon dioxide, sugar and citric acid. Having missed out on many meals on board ship, I greatly enjoyed this modest feast.

On returning to our quarters, we finally began to take in the scene around us. It was cold and wintry, a situation made even more difficult as we had no bedding or much in the way of spare clothing. We covered ourselves with everything we had, from overcoats to raincoats, and managed to settle down for the first night in our new home. Yes indeed, as they had told us in Berlin, Shanghai was colder in winter and warmer in summer! In time we would experience summer shade temperatures in excess of 39° C with very high humidity as the rule rather than the exception. But for now, winter brought the mercury down to hover around freezing point, snow would fall and sometimes remain on the ground long enough to form a white mantle. Having so little to rug ourselves up in, and no means of heating our room, our first few nights in Shanghai fell well short of the tropical beaches we had expected to find.

ELKA EKSTEIN

Context: Evading Persecution

Source: Elka Ekstein. Chutzpe un Draystkayt: A Teenager with Chutzpah and Tenacity in the Holocaust. Caulfield South (Victoria): Makor Jewish Community Library, 2006, pp. 24–28. Used by permission.

Having survived the final liquidation of the Bialystok ghetto in August 1943, Elka Ekstein and her friends hid in a bunker in the city, from which they managed to hold body and soul together in trying circumstances. Living between an existence in hiding and outside forays to obtain food and water, the group was finally found and arrested by the Germans in November 1943. In this account Elka shows how she managed to survive despite having contracted typhus, and that, in an astonishing turn of fortune, she was sent to a work camp rather than being murdered on the spot at the time of her arrest.

The second selection in the Bialystok Ghetto, the selection that was to leave the area Judenrein or “cleansed of Jews,” began at 4:00 am on 16 August 1943. That’s when the Germans entered the ghetto, occupied the factories and set up their headquarters in the Jewish Council building.

Sonia and I and Sonia’s friend from Grodno, Nehu Galante, were up and getting ready to go to work when we heard that the gates of the ghetto were already closed and they would not let the outside workers leave. The Germans made loud announcements that everyone was to gather on the square in order to be deported to Lublin for work. We could bring with us one package weighing no more than five kilograms.

On that morning a group of young Jews retaliated. They had stored arms and were determined to fight back. I can’t remember now whether or not I knew there was going to be an uprising. We heard the sounds of so much shooting, but the Germans threw a grenade into the wooden house where the young ones were hiding and burned it down with most of the rebels still inside. Those who ran away were shot immediately. I was on the square by that time looking for a place to hide and saw that house burn down.

The ghetto was being liquidated and there were no more hiding places. Apparently 40,000 Jews were taken away during that Aktion, most of them going to Treblinka, the last transport of Jews to be taken there. On 18 August the buildings of Treblinka were all demolished and new grass grown over the site so there was no sign that the place had ever existed.

An official from the Judenrat was standing on Kupiecka Street with a few Nazis and they were calling out the names of families who were to be allowed to continue working in the factories. We realized then that some Jews were going to be left in the ghetto and began to think again about hiding.

Sonia, Neha and I stood on the square beside a big white brick building. I think it was on Jurowiecka Street. Haike Niselkovski, another friend of Sonia’s, lived there. We saw people running into that house, which gave us the feeling that there was a bunker in there. This house was not far from the wooden house that had been burned down.

A boy from Grodno, a neighbor of ours, was standing on the square with me. He wanted to come with us but I couldn’t make more trouble for the people in the house and just drifted away from him. I never saw him again.

We followed the people into the bunker, a disguised room right up beside the wall of the building. It was behind a wardrobe and a small table stood nearby. At first the people inside didn’t want to let us in and said there was no more room for us. I told them that if they didn’t let us in I would inform the Nazis and we would all die. So they let us in.

There were quite a few of us in that hidden room, including the three Golding sisters, Dora, Sara and Chayele, who had a son my age and also an older daughter who ran away from the house. We never heard of her again. There was also another Chaya, Chaya Sojka and her sister-in-law, Liza. Liza was married to Chaya Sojka’s brother. Several of the women’s husbands were there and a couple of other men whose names I don’t remember. Haike Niselkowski, Neha Galante, Sonia and I hid with them….

During the first six weeks no one went outside for food. We lived on mouldy bread and corn. Our natural functions were dealt with right on the floor and we took it outside at night.

There was an underground bunker in the same building and we moved between that and the hidden room. The entrance to the underground bunker was under a piece of tin laid in front of ovens so that fire would not burn the floor.

We all stayed in hiding in that building for three months after Judenrein, risking our lives to go out into the empty ghetto to bring back water and any food we could find in the empty houses. We took whatever we could find, even if it was mouldy and rotten. We even managed to find a few vegetables still growing in the gardens, though with the winter coming on there soon wasn’t much left. I remember getting some tomatoes. While out foraging during the night we sometimes ran into other Jews who were also still in hiding and getting water from a pipe.

During this period I contracted typhus, which lasted for several weeks. I was burning with fever and couldn’t eat.

We went out at night according to a roster and one night it was my turn. However I was still very sick and Chaya’s son had already died in the bunker from the typhus. So on this night, when we had been in hiding for three months, Naha Galante said to me: “Elkele, I’ll replace you tonight and you swap for me another time.” Like Sonia, she was ten years older than me.

Naha stepped outside and they caught her. We heard the shouts and then the shot when they killed her. It should have been me. I felt as though my mother was praying for me and looking after me. This happened on the evening of 4 November 1943. We were in the hidden room at the time and were frightened that the Gestapo had seen where Naha had stepped out from, so we left that room and moved into the underground bunker.

During that night the men went out of the bunker to do some cooking in the attic and one of them returned with a pot in his hands at around 6.00 am when it was just turning light. The Poles had been watching the house very closely since the Germans had shot Naha and this man was seen. The Germans immediately began shooting. They stormed into the house and found our entry into the bunker because the women had not managed to disguise it perfectly. Meanwhile, some of the men managed to run away. That was on 5 November 1943.

We were marched out of the house and taken to the local jail, where we stood for a whole day. Slowly a crowd of several hundred Jews gathered, as quite a few bunkers were hidden away in the ghetto. Some Poles were even keener than the Germans to get rid of the Jews and eagerly ran around hunting us out to hand over. Anyone who tried to make a run for it was shot. All the children who were found that day were put onto a truck standing nearby. We knew they were going straight to the crematorium.

I was miserable with fever and could barely walk. I was so frightened, but my will was stronger than anything else. Another selection was held right there in front of the jail. Someone had a pair of high heeled shoes they told me to put on and I rubbed my cheeks with some red colour from the bricks, so that I would not look like such a child. After the children left, the rest of us were sent either to the right or the left. Fortunately, Sonia and I were both sent to the right side, so we were still together.

We were held in that prison from 5 November until 22 November 1943, about three weeks.

On 22 November the murderer of the Bialystok Ghetto, Kommandant Fridel, greeted us in the prison yard and made a speech in which he declared we were lucky. The first group they found in the bunkers had been shot, but we were going to a work camp.

ARNOLD ERLANGER

Context: Concentration Camps and Prisons

Source: Arnold Erlanger. Choose Life. Caulfield South (Victoria): Makor Jewish Community Library, 2003, pp. 62–75. Used by permission.

Arnold Erlanger was a German Jewish refugee living in the Netherlands when, on August 27, 1942, he was called up for labor service. This was the start of a period which, as he writes, saw his “journey through hell.” This account relates Erlanger’s sojourn across a number of Nazi concentration camps in the Netherlands, until he was transferred by boxcar to Auschwitz. Surviving the initial “selection” between those who were to die and those who were to work as slave labor, he was sent to Auschwitz III, known as Monowitz—there to work in the industrial complex at Buna, managed by the I.G. Farben cartel. While a brutal environment, it was nonetheless a place where Erlanger managed to find sufficient space to be able to hold body and soul together for one more day. …

On 27th August 1942, without any warning, I received a notice to report to the De Zomp Labour Camp in Ruulo by 1st September. We were told that we would be working for the Heidemaatschappij, a forest company run by the Dutch government, near Ruurlo. As far as I can remember, I was the first one to receive that notice. We thought it would be a great opportunity to remain in Holland and work for the Dutch government instead of being transported to the east. As there were no ghettos in Holland, it seemed too difficult for the Germans to collect the Jews who were spread over the many small villages. It did not take us long to discover that the call-up to work in the Netherlands was just another Nazi ploy to round up Jews.

On our arrival in Ruurlo, the Dutch Federal Police (Marechausee) tried to instill some optimism in us. “It will not be long. Keep your spirits up and it will be all over in a few weeks!” they repeated. Ruurlo was not one of the worst labour camps in the Netherlands. Every two weeks, we were allowed to write to our families. We were not allowed to speak to any of the guards but had to salute them. After two weeks our Commandant was replaced by his deputy. When we asked what had happened to the Commandant, he replied: “The Commandant is in the concentration camp at Ommen learning how to treat Jews.”

In the middle of Ruurlo, opposite the hotel Avenarius, lived Mrs Weijler-Kropfeld. We passed her house every morning at seven o’clock. It was still quite dark and our capo Hess, a German Jew, and another inmate, entered her shed and deposited the mail we had written and at the same time, collected any mail and parcels sent to us by family or friends. We took these into the forest where we worked and the Dutch supervisor from the Heidemaatschappij looked the other way, as we devoured the news and the meagre food.

In the last weeks of September 1942, the Commandant returned from Ommen. He had been taught very well and he very quickly showed us what he had learned. During that week, we were betrayed and the Commandant found out that we had been collecting mail and food parcels. This was strictly prohibited. One day, the man who knew Mrs Weijler and regularly collected the mail, was ill. I took his place and together with Mr. Suesskind, gathered whatever was waiting for us. Before we were able to rejoin the group, the Commandant appeared and screamed the usual Nazi Sau Juden (swine-Jews) and ordered us to return to the camp. He told capo, Hess, Suesskind and me, that we would be sent to the Erika Concentration Camp in Ommen. The following night, Hess escaped.

On 1st October, Suesskind and I were transported by train via Zwolle, to Camp Erika in Ommen, under the supervision of two policemen from the Marechausee. The policemen made us understand that if we wanted to escape, they would look the other way, on the condition that they would not be blamed. My Dutch was not good enough to take such a risk. If caught, the treatment would definitely be worse than anything I imagined at that time. Then I did not know that there could be anything more terrible than Ommen.

I had no friends in the Ruurlo Camp and the only person I became close to was Hans Andriesse from Den Hague. I soon learned that the complete Ruurlo Camp was emptied a few days later and all inmates were sent to the transit camp at Westerbork. The arrival at Ommen was the start of my journey through hell.

Erika Camp in Ommen

On the evening of 3rd October 1942, Suesskind and I were taken to the oval in Camp Omment to face our initiation ceremony. All the prisoners stood around the oval under the guard of the SS and the Commandant. The center of the oval was covered with loose sand.

“Come and play some enjoyable games,” said the SS officer as he pointed a finger toward Suesskind and me. We were ordered to press one finger from our right hand into the sand and one finger from the other hand into one ear and keep turning our body around the finger in the sand. The Germans called it “grammophonplatten-drehen” which means “gramophone records turning.” The Commandant in Ruurlo had already told us about this game. The intention was that after a few turns, you would feel dizzy and fall to the ground. This is exactly what happened. The game expanded and I had to crawl using my elbows and not my knees, whilst Suesskind stood on my back. Then he had to crawl and I had to stand on his back. Whilst I was lying on the ground, I was kicked by a SS man who broke one of my ribs. The loose sand covered my face and penetrated my eyes. My face swelled and I could barely open my eyes. I am unsure of how long this ceremony lasted, but I still remember that it was the evening of Simchat Torah, the Jewish Festival of the Torah.

After returning to our barracks, one of the SS guards approached my bunk. He could see that I was suffering and unable to work the following day. He quietly talked to me. He told me that every morning, the Commandant walked through the barracks to ensure that everyone went to work. I can still recall the exact words of that SS man: “Tell the Commandant that you had only arrived in the camp yesterday and that during the night, you had to go to the outside toilets. As it was very dark, you walked into one of the light poles and that was the reason for your swollen face. If you don’t tell him that, you know exactly what will happen next time you go to work.” I knew exactly what he had in mind. I would probably not return alive.

The following morning, as the Commandant approached, I told him exactly what I had to say, remembering only too well what the SS guard said. I was unable to work for five days and was left in the barracks.

The camp in Ommen was one of the smaller KZ (concentration camps) used mostly for anti-Nazis or war criminals. Our work in Ommen consisted of carrying buckets from the toilets to the fields and spreading the manure without gloves.

On 20th October, I and several other Jews were called to the office of the Commandant and told that we would be kept in Westerbork as criminals. This means that we would be kept in Westerbork in a special security barrack and then sent to Auschwitz on the first transport. When the Commandant returned the few personal belongings I had with me on arrival, I wanted to express my appreciation. Unfortunately my conversation skills in Dutch were limited. In Dutch, as in German, you speak to superiors differently than to a friend, unlike the English form “you” which is used for everyone. I unwittingly addressed the Commandant as “je,” which in German is “du” instead of addressing him in the respectful “ze.” He became terribly offended and taking a broom that stood in the corner, hit me over the head screaming: “You schweine Jude. You address me as if I was one of your friends.” The yelling ended when the broom broke. The following day I arrived in Westerbork still believing on our faith. Was it not a miracle that I survived the camp in Ommen?

Westerbork

After my arrival in Westerbork on a penal transport, I learned that several chaverim and chaverot from our Hachshara were already there. The first group came to Westerbork from the Elden Hachshara. They were saved from deportation to the east because they convinced the Nazi commander that they were skilled workers and would be extremely useful. As many more arrived in Westerbork, they joined what was by then called Kvutzat Hachshara. As the camp population grew, it needed a larger, well-trained work force. There was a great shortage of labourers in the Netherlands so the chaverim were all marched off to the farmers in the nearby village of Hooghalen as well as other villages close by.

I was soon able to send my friends a message through one of the inmates from Westerbork. The running of the camp was left to Jews under the leadership of a Mr. Schlesinger. As soon as one of my friends from Enschede learned of my arrival in Westerbork, they immediately smuggled me out of the criminal barrack, the Straf-barracke and hid me in a barrack that was used as a synagogue. This was only necessary on a day a transport was to leave Westerbork, and they were able to do so for three weeks. In the meantime, they added my name to the list of the Kvutzat Hachshara, which made my immediate transport to Auschwitz unlikely.

I was able to make contact with the rabbi of Westerbork, Rabbi Frank. He was the last rabbi in Ichenhausen and we knew each other. I still suffered a lot of pain from my broken rib and the rabbi was able to get me a mustard plaster from the hospital. Within a few days, the pain almost disappeared. Sometimes, when I bent down or made a wrong movement, the shooting pain recurred but on the whole I was much better. Meeting Rabbi Frank in Westerbork was another miracle for me. Unfortunately, he perished in Auschwitz. From the end of October 1942, I was able to go with the other chaverim outside the camp and work on the farms. My name no longer appeared on the list of criminals.

By talking to various inmates, I became aware of the Weinrib list of people who would be candidates for a pogrom. This was a plan to buy visas for entry into Switzerland. The names of all members of the Kvutzat Hachshara were transmitted in the summer of 1943 to Switzerland. My girlfriend, Milly Dzialozinsky was on the list as she had a close connection with someone who established the link with people in Switzerland. Weeks and months went by without any progress towards this exchange, until some of us were placed on the list for transport to the east. My name, together with six others from our Enschede group, was called for transport on 14th September 1943. I tried to have my name removed from the list. I remembered that Mr. Schlesinger was a very distant relative of my father’s. Through one of the contacts in his office, I sent a message that an Erlanger is on the transport to Auschwitz and should be taken off the list. My request fell on deaf ears. We did not know then that the transports from Holland went straight to Auschwitz. Much later in my life, I found out that all the transports between March 1943 and July 1943 had gone to Sobibor. Only two Jews survived in Sobibor, the rest were murdered.

In Westerbork we were herded into train wagons—men, women and children. We took some food with us. There were no washing or other facilities in the wagons. In the four corners stood a large barrel that served as the communal toilet, in full view of everyone. It was impossible for every person to sit down at the same time. The train stopped several times but we could not see where we were going until we had arrived. We assumed that since we were travelling eastward, Auschwitz would be our destination for most of the trains went in that direction….

Auschwitz

The doors of the wagons opened to the usual screaming of Nazis in SS uniforms. “Raus, raus (get out, get out!).” We realized that this must be Auschwitz. The people who died in the wagons during the transport were left on the floor. Several younger men were directed to run to the left, whilst the majority, women, men and children were directed to run to the right. We still had no idea about what was going on. If you were directed to go to the left and wanted to go to the right, to join your wife, child or somebody from your family, you could but those who were directed to the right were not allowed to join us on the left.

About two hundred of us, all young men, were taken to Monowitz, to the labour camp called Buna. The information flow worked remarkably well in camp and we soon learned that those on the right were taken to the crematorium in Birkenau, three kilometers from Auschwitz. The slave labourers were mainly employed by I.G. Farben-Industrie to build and work in a factory making synthetic rubber.

As soon as we arrived in Buna, we were taken to the showers. It was usual for the Nazis to act in such a way, so we were not anxious. We took off our clothing and were told to place them together with our other belongings so that we could find them later. When we came out of the shower at a different spot, we were taken into a storeroom to receive our prisoner’s garb. Our belongings had disappeared. We had to walk towards long tables. Other prisoners were sitting at these tables and waiting for us. They tattooed numbers on our left arm. We were numb but in our minds realized that we were no longer human beings with a name. We had become a number. My number was 150645….

Looking at my prison clothes and the numbers on my arm made me realise that my life was no longer in my hands. I hoped and prayed to survive. Luckily, I remained together with chaver Wolf Wolfs. We were ordered to the same barrack but lost contact with the other four chaverim who had arrived with us. Thus began my life in a concentration camp.

We learned that the head of the barrack is the capo, called Blockaelteste. He was usually a co-prisoner who had been a long-time inmate and often a criminal or political prisoner. He did not have the death sentence hanging over his head like we Jews, but it was used by the Nazis to run the inner workings of the various concentration camps, the KZs.

The days were hard and monotonous. Every morning, we were ordered to the oval and divided into various groups. We marched in formation through the gates, accompanied by an orchestra playing at the entrance to the camp. It also played on our return. We were escorted to work by SS guards. Even though I was an arc-welder, as a new arrival, I was directed to work with a group about half an hour’s march away. Our work consisted of digging trenches and throwing the earth into the trolleys. On the last part of this journey, we were forced to sit on trolleys pulled by a tractor. These resembled trolleys used in mining to move coal. The backs were removed and we had to rush to sit on boards that were put in their place. It was a hurried and dangerous journey resulting in injuries when many fell off. The capo, a non-Jew, treated us in the same manner as the Nazis. It was easy for him to find a reason to punish us as individuals. The guards formed an artificial fence, standing perhaps a few hundred meters from where we were working. No one was allowed to go further than this artificial fence.

This work continued for several weeks. It was strenuous and made more difficult with the autumn weather. In our thin prisoner’s uniform, we were exposed to cold and rainy days. I believe that it was a boring job for the SS guards too but they found ways and means to amuse themselves at our expense. Whenever possible, the Nazis showed their disgust, particularly towards intellectuals. We usually worked with six men on a team filling a trolley. One man in our group was an intellectual. This could be seen in the way he used the spade and moved around. It seemed that one of the guards became bored and without any provocation, lifted his rifle and shot this man in the hand. Naturally, the man screamed and the guard fired another shot that also hit his hand. Due to the excruciating pain, he fell to the ground. The gunman approached and shot him. He then ordered us to carry the dead body several hundred meters away behind the artificial fence. We told him that we couldn’t do this, as he may shoot us. The guard told us that we had to obey him. He would come along and nothing would happen to us. We did as we were told. I realized quite soon that some of the Nazis were so indoctrinated that if they killed one of us, they did not kill a human being, just one of the numbers disappeared.

HANNA GRANEK ERLICH

Context: Concentration Camps and Prisons

Source: Hanna Granek Erlich and Maryann McLoughlin. An Exile from a Paradise: Memories of a Holocaust Survivor from Będzin, Poland. Margate (NJ): ComteQ Publishing, 2014, pp. 29–35. Used by permission.

Gross-Rosen was a concentration camp located in eastern Germany. Like many of the more important camps, it embraced several subcamps used for exploiting slave labor. Hanna Granek Erlich was one of these slave workers. The factory in which she was set to hard labor was a weapons manufacturing plant at Peterswaldau. The conditions, as she outlines, were deplorable; in fact, her account is an excellent depiction of just how repellent these conditions were. Moreover, her period at this location was lengthy, lasting from January 1944 until her liberation by Russian forces on May 5, 1945.

Peterswaldau (Pieszyce) concentration camp, where I was sent in January 1944, was a sub-camp of Gross Rosen Concentration Camp in Lower Silesia, Germany. I was there for about a year. Peterswaldau sub-camp was located in the Owl Mountains (Góry Sowie), now part of Poland, about 30 miles north of Wroclaw (Breslau); it was a small forced labor camp.

At night we slept in an old, dilapidated factory building, at the Diehl Factory where they manufactured weapons (now Diehl Stiftung & Co), mostly time bombs. We slept in a room with over fifty women. We slept downstairs on bunks covered with straw, and over us, upstairs, the men used to sleep. Conditions were dreadful. The hall was filthy. We were full of lice. We had to put some paper between the upper and lower bunks because lice were falling down from the top bunks. I could hear them; they sounded like uncooked rice when they hit the paper. I slept despite the lice because I was tired from working.

I worked seven days a week, from morning to night, in the Diehl Factory office. We didn’t dare make a mistake. We weren’t supposed to make mistakes. We were not allowed to make mistakes. They would beat us or even kill us if we made mistakes. At the munitions factory I heard screaming and saw people being beaten.

It was freezing cold in Peterswaldau. We hid straw in our clothes to help us keep warm. We had only cold water. We could take one shower on Saturday, and then we had to rush because other girls were waiting for us to finish. The bathing facilities were only fit for swine.

The food was disgusting—spinach soup again! The SS women were terrible, but one was especially terrible. She used to scream at us and, worse, beat us with a piece of wood. She was horrible. There was no reason for her to hit us; she hit us only because we were Jews. Once I was hit by an SS male guard, but he was not as brutal as this SS woman. Every morning at roll call, the SS used to count us on the hill, where it was particularly cold. One morning I wasn’t standing straight or something, so the SS walked over to my row and hit me on the face with her hand—that time she used her hand. We called her Tygrysica, female tiger. She was always hitting and screaming. Every day we had to encounter her; we looked out the window and saw her standing and watching us. After liberation, we tried to find her, but we couldn’t. I don’t know if she was caught and tried for her cruelty.

In the morning, a group of girls used to get up very early in order to wash up with cold water. The winters were so cold that we could see the ice on the windows.

We also washed our clothes in cold water: that is, what little clothing we had. We did not have uniforms; we wore our own clothes. The SS had given me a smock to wear as a coat.

Some girls tried to escape. They left but were captured. They had an opportunity to escape because we walked to work every day early in the morning when it was dark, and we came back in the darkness. Two tried to escape under cover of darkness. They were both from Sosnowiec. One day when they were counting us, the SS announced that we were short two people. They said, “If we catch them, you know what will wait for them.” Those girls, who had tried to escape, were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. One survived. How she survived I don’t know….

I saw terrible atrocities in Peterswaldau. One evening they brought in two men from a different camp. The SS told us that the men were sick with typhus. They put those men in burlap bags. The men were alive! In the bags we could see that they were moving. We had to stay up all night to watch the men die.

The Lagerführer was a butcher, a real butcher, so he took his truck and ran over the two people. We didn’t know why they were treating the men this way. But the whole camp had to turn out to see the Lagerführer run over them.

We had to stand a half a night, and the next morning, when they released us, we went to the latrine. In front of the sinks were wooden slats; under these, on the ground, were pools of blood. Later we discovered that one was a son of the Grajower rabbi, from Będzin. I don’t know who the other man was. While we had stood there waiting for the men to die, the SS had given us coffee, a little bit of brown water. It was very cold standing there. When they finally let us go in the morning, we didn’t sleep at all because during the night we were awake, forced to watch, and in the morning we had to go to work.

Most of the time the women’s section was quiet because we were working. Women worked inside the buildings such as in the office and the factory. Some were in the kitchen; some, in the laundry; they were busy there. The men used to go outside to work. Once in a while, when they were counting the people at roll call, we would realize that someone had died.

But I wanted to mention too that at the same camp I had an uncle, Fischel Gelbart, with his son Herschel. I tried to help them, so I used to go into the kitchen when the kitchen girls used to peel the vegetables and the potatoes. The kitchen was in the same building where I worked. I asked them if I could have a few potatoes for my relatives. I went to my uncle’s and my cousin’s work detail and asked the Schreiber, the man who took care of them, to let them cook the potatoes. Neither my uncle nor my cousin survived.

Another way that I could help was with food cards because I had access to those. I had a few friends in the camp: my papa’s good friend and two school friends were there. I used to give them another ration card, so they could have a little extra bit of water and potato or for spinach with sand. Nobody counted the cards, so I “organized” away two or three cards and gave them to my friends. This was very risky. If I had been caught I would have got twenty with an iron stick on my backside.

But I wanted to help wherever I could. With extra food, people could perhaps survive until the war was over. A little extra food gave them a chance….

In February 1944, while we were still at Peterswaldau camp, we were told that a group of girls were being sent to our camp. We were anxious as we waited for them. We were waiting and waiting. The transport came in the middle of the night. We were standing and waiting for them, thinking: “Maybe I’ll see my mother.” They arrived—about 1000 young women. We didn’t see them disembark the train; we saw them only after they had been processed. They came into the building. Their heads were shaved, and they wore striped uniforms. All were Hungarian girls. They told us that they had come from Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. They understood German; they had lived on the border with Austria and Hungary. Some of them spoke Yiddish. We usually spoke Polish at home; however, among other family members, my parents spoke Yiddish, so I understood some Yiddish.

We asked what Auschwitz-Birkenau was like. They reported that there was dirt and hunger and typhus. They told us that people in the camp were all dying. They told us about the terrible smell from the dead. People couldn’t survive the terrible hunger; they were severely malnourished. They saw this from their barracks. They said that there was no hope, none at all for our relatives. They told us that they knew NOTHING, NOTHING. Auschwitz was hunger and brutality and atrocity. They had just thought about how to survive. They weren’t thinking about the war.

The next day these women were sent to work. The Nazis could use everybody to make munitions. We worked as slave laborers in the ammunition factory, assembling fuses for bombs. We made the timing devices for the bombs. The women were treated worse than animals; they were exhausted and hungry. They were punished for the slightest mistake.

We were very close to Bytom (Beuthen) which was not very far from the Będzin border, where the fighting was occurring. Even before the Soviet army arrived, we heard the detonations from the bombing of buildings. Because they were planning to retreat before the Soviet advance, the Germans put all the bomb timing devices in wooden boxes. Next, three days before the Soviets liberated nearby Peterswaldau, the Germans put the wooden boxes into a hole, poured acid on them, and loaded them in too. Then the Germans woke us up in the middle of the night and took us out in trucks. We thought that we were being transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. We thought that would be our end. Instead they told us to throw all the boxes from the trucks.

Then suddenly one day the war was over. The Judenalteste (Jewish unit leader) came and told us, Children, look out the little windows, and you will see a white flag on the post office. Put your best clothes on [as if we had any “best” clothes—most did not]. The war is over!”

We thought that the Germans would dynamite the building with us inside, but the Czechoslovakian men who worked in the factory shouted from upstairs to the few girls downstairs that nobody was left. The Germans had fled. To reassure us, the Czech workers told us not to worry that they would guard the building.

I had worked in Peterswaldau from January 1944 until May 1945, for about fifteen months. I was liberated on May 5, 1945, by the Soviet Red Army.

GARY FABIAN

Context: Central Europe

Source: Gary Fabian. A Look Back Over My Shoulder. Caulfield South (Victoria): Makor Jewish Community Library, 2002, pp. 14–26. Used by permission.

After the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia, the insecurity felt by many Jews often led to a panicked flight away from what was perceived to be a very real danger. Gary Fabian and his mother sought some measure of safety by moving far to the south of Slovakia, and in this account he describes the perils of living one step ahead of the Nazis as well as the journey to get away from them. While trying to retain some semblance of freedom, they found themselves to be in “double jeopardy”; not only were they Jews on the run from the Nazis, they were also German-speaking in a Czech and Slovak environment. Eventually, as we see, his whole extended family took their chances in Prague, there to try to start life anew.

My mother and I travelled by train to the other end of the country, to Trenchin in Slovakia, not far from the Hungarian border, where friends of ours lived. As we did not hold Czech citizenship and travelled on a German passport, the Czech authorities refused permission for us to stay. It was the ultimate irony, experienced by tens of thousands across the face of Europe in those turbulent days. Germany had by this time declared that Jews were no longer citizens of the Third Reich, and just to give it official confirmation, all passports held by Jews were stamped with a large red “J”—denoting “Jew.” As German passport holders, we were in fact stateless, and constantly threatened with expulsion by the Czech authorities.

Literally hundreds of people in this position were taken daily to the nearest border and sent into the strip of territory between countries, known as “no man’s land.” Both countries on either side refused them entry into their territory. In the late 1930s a whole army of “non persons” spent months on end being expelled, illegally re-entering a country, then being arrested and expelled again. They had become the unwanted and innocent pawns in a deadly game of politics in which they were totally powerless.

About a week or so after arriving, we left Trenchin again and travelled back towards the centre of Czechoslovakia. A week later, sitting on grimy trains, being shunted for hours on end to sidings off the main track to allow troop transports to pass, we arrived in Brno, the capital of Moravia. There we finally met up with my father and my maternal grandparents.

We found a room at the house of a Mrs. Pfeffer. The five of us lived in a room that under normal circumstances was barely adequate for one person. This was our temporary “castle,” living in hiding. If the police had discovered we were living there, we would most likely have been arrested on the spot as illegals, taken to the nearest birder and shoved into no man’s land with little or no ceremony.

If there was a knock on the door we would only open it to a pre-arranged signal, living in constant fear of discovery and arrest. After a few weeks, our landlady, fearful of the consequences of being detected with illegals under her roof, asked us to leave. It was practically impossible to find alternative accommodation under the prevailing circumstances. We decided to head toward Prague, the capital, with the hope that in a larger city we could lose ourselves from the eyes of the authorities.

As the general situation throughout worsened and conditions in Germany became more severe every day, a vast number of refugees were moving around Europe. All countries became extremely strict in trying to control the influx of refugees into their territory. Spot checks were set up on highways, at railway and bus stations and any other points of entry. Anyone found without valid documents was arrested and expelled without ceremony or delay.

Our situation was precarious, but we were helped by a stroke of luck. We met up with a former employee, a Czech named Pavel, who was also anxious to avoid drawing himself to the attention of authorities. He had been an active member of the Communist Party for many years, and the political climate of the day was not exactly welcoming to people of his convictions. Things were getting a little uncomfortable for him, and he decided that Prague would provide a better place in which to lose himself at that time.

We still had our car, a Fiat designed for four. The six of us, my parents, grandparents, Pavel and myself, somehow managed to squeeze ourselves into it and we headed off towards Prague. Just a few kilometers short of it we were stopped at a roadblock where the constabulary was carefully checking documents. There was a hurried conference held in the car on what to do. Pavel assured us to leave things to him and all would turn out well. When our turn came at the checkpoint, he coolly handed his documents to the gendarme and a brief exchange took place between them in Czech, a language we did not then speak or understand. At best our Czech was minimal, as German was the official language of that part of Czechoslovakia in which we lived. Pavel’s documents were examined briefly, handed back and we were waved on. Having travelled a few minutes in silence, my father finally asked him what the exchange with the gendarme had been about.

With a grin on his face, Pavel explained, “I told the constable you were relatives from my village and not very bright. It was no good asking you anything as you would not understand anyway.” This produced some merriment, probably more from a feeling of relief than humour. Half an hour later we arrived in Prague. While we had arrived at our destination, in reality our overall situation had not really changed for the better. We still were illegal immigrants without valid documentation. The authorities were becoming increasingly more stringent, arresting and expelling aliens. The army of unwilling nomads roaming the face of Europe in search of a sanctuary grew weekly, or even daily, during the dark months of the later part of 1938.

GARY FABIAN

Context: Salvation

Source: Gary Fabian. A Look Back Over My Shoulder. Caulfield South (Victoria): Makor Jewish Community Library, 2002, pp. 39–43. Used by permission.

At 11 years of age in May 1945, Gary Fabian had by this stage already been a prisoner in the concentration camp/ghetto of Theresienstadt (Terezín) for three years. In this account he provides us with his recollection of the final hours of camp life, prior to the arrival of the Russians as liberators—and what happened next. The account extends Fabian’s story slightly beyond the liberation, as the reality of what he had lived through began to sink in and enable him to reflect on something almost as scary as the past through which he had managed to survive … the future.

As 1944 came to a close and 1945 dawned, rumours kept persisting about Allied advances into Europe. Nothing certain was ever learned, but hope springs eternal. Two people with a sense of humour decided to test the bush telegraph. They passed on the “information” that twenty tanks had entered Prague. Within two hours the rumour came back to them that twenty thousand American tanks stood three kilometers from Prague. It was an interesting exercise in mass hysteria, fueled by optimism and despair.

Suddenly, in March 1945, transports from the east started arriving in the ghetto from concentration camps. These contained human wrecks, which the Germans started clearing out of Poland and East Germany as the Russian army advanced. This was part of their frantic bid to remove the evidence of their atrocities. Many of these people had previously been at Theresienstadt. At this point we all learned the whole horrible truth of what had happened. The majority had been in Auschwitz, and it was our first real confirmation of the mass extermination. True, there had been rumours over the years that filtered back somehow, but very few people were told of these rumours. Of those who heard them, most refused to believe them as it was outside normal human comprehension to accept what was happening.

It became obvious that the Germans planned something diabolical in Theresienstadt as their final act. Strange constructions were being built on the outskirts, and the bush telegraph spoke of gas chambers, large moats that were to be filled with people and flooded, and similar plans in the making. Great unrest swept through the ghetto. A new menace also threatened. The human wrecks coming back from the east brought typhoid with them, and an epidemic broke out which ultimately claimed three thousand victims.

The Germans were engaged in frantically burning records and shipping stores out in the daily convoy of army trucks. Something was in the air. An atmosphere of anticipation, fueled by hope, pervaded the ghetto. Despite the threat of diabolical German plans consistent with the pattern of their behaviour over the past twelve years, it seemed that perhaps some light was appearing at the end of the tunnel. There was hope that the nightmare would soon end.

Spring had come again. It was May 1945, and we had been in Theresienstadt for almost three years now. To an eleven-year-old this is almost a third of a lifetime. I could only vaguely recall life before I came there. One night, on 4 May, a great deal of shooting took place around the ghetto. Everyone was terrified. Was this going to be the Germans’ final act of destruction? So near to the end and all seemed to be lost. It felt as if it went on for hours, but towards dawn it suddenly stopped and all was silent.

Hours passed, but all remained still. A few of the more adventurous souls ventured outside. The Germans had simply vanished, as in a puff of smoke, and not a single one was left. The word spread and people everywhere rushed out to see for themselves. There were knots of excited people all over the place, talking, laughing or just standing around looking up at the morning sky. I was amongst them, standing in the street.

Suddenly we heard a low noise. It sounded like some motorized vehicles in the distance. “My god, the Germans are coming back,” somebody cried out. Great consternation broke out. Before anyone could take action, three tanks came around the corner. They were Russian tanks. It is doubtful if the Red Army ever got a more enthusiastic welcome anywhere in the world than those three tanks on that day.

It was over. The nightmare had finally ended and freedom dawned for the fifteen thousand inmates still left in the ghetto. But the after-effects were still to take their toll, and for some three thousand typhoid victims it was too late. They died in the weeks after the liberation.

Forty-eight hours after the Russian tanks arrived, the International Red Cross moved in and took charge, in conjunction with the Russian army. At that stage, food and medicine was brought in, as well as doctors and nurses. Some amazing scenes were to be witnessed. Many of the inmates spilled into the adjoining countryside, taking hold of property the Germans had abandoned. Horses were brought in and one fellow, when asked what he would do with the horse, scratched his head and said, “I don’t know, it’s spoils of war.”

The reality of what had happened started to sink in. Many were the only survivors of their whole family and did not really know where to go. It was difficult, often impossible to return to normality after the events of the previous six years. While we did not know what had happened to my grandparents, in our hearts we knew that the chance of their survival was almost nil, but we still hoped we were wrong….

We stayed on in Theresienstadt until late July, and then returned to Bodenbach, called Podmokly in Czech, the town we had hastily left in 1938. The family business, confiscated by the Germans and run as a German enterprise, now became booty of war and the Czech government nationalized it. While our family applied for compensation, our claim was lost somewhere in the system and never came to anything. Our family, however, could be described as fortunate. Both my parents and I had survived, but my grandparents on my mother’s side and my grandmother on my father’s side had perished. We decided Europe no longer had any attraction to us. It was time to seek a new world, a world where greater opportunity could be found, without living with the ghosts of events that lurked in every corner of Europe.

IDA WEISBAUM FEINBERG

Context: Concentration Camps and Prisons

Source: Ida Weisbaum Feinberg and Maryann McLoughlin. If the Dawn Is Late in Coming: Surviving Vilna and Vaivara. Margate (NJ): ComteQ Publishing, 2008, pp. 30–39. Used by permission.

A ghetto was established by the Nazis at Vilna after their occupation of Lithuania on June 25, 1941. The Vilna ghetto was known for its brutality and high mortality rate, as starvation, disease, shootings, and deportations to concentration camps and extermination camps steadily took a horrendous toll on the population. In 1943 Ida, her husband Sender, and her father were deported from the ghetto to the Vaivara concentration camp, the largest Nazi camp in Estonia. Ida survived, despite typhus, malnourishment, hard labor, and a death march. Her memoir is one of the few we have of Holocaust survivors sent to Vaivara. Here, she describes what life was like at Vaivara, up to and including her liberation in 1944.

Upon arrival in Estonia, I discovered the destination of the train that had deported us. We were sent, as were tens of thousands of Jews from other countries, to forced labor camps in Estonia as part of the Nazi resettlement plan. The main holding camp was Vaivara, a concentration and transit camp in northeast Estonia, located near the Soviet/Estonian border….

In 1943, I arrived in Estonia and was sent to Vaivara…. My father and Sender had also been deported, but they were not deported in the same cattle car as I. We had arrived from Vilna after a journey of several days, a journey that seemed much longer because of the over-crowded cars, the stench, and the lack of water.

At Vaivara, the cattle cars were unloaded, and we lined up. I saw that the camp was surrounded by barbed wire as well as by a kind of moat—a ditch full of water encircled the camp. I looked for Sender and my father among the others. However, I did not see them. I felt very much alone.

After selection in Vaivara, the women who had been selected for work were taken to a building, stripped, and put on tables. They shaved us all over. Some young girls cried and cried. I said to them, in Yiddish, “Don’t cry! As long as you have a head, you’ll have hair. Don’t give them the satisfaction of seeing you crying.” At this time they gave me a striped uniform and my number, 1055 or 1059, on a shmatteh … that I pinned to my clothing.

They then put us in wooden huts with thin walls that were not insulated against the heat and cold. These huts, the so-called barracks, were divided into three sections with seventy or eighty prisoners in each section—each hut was very over-crowded. In my barrack, there was a small stove but it didn’t heat well; therefore I was very cold—freezing. We slept in three-tiered bunk beds, ten in a row. I wore a blanket in the morning to wrap around me when I went to roll call in the brutally cold early morning air.

Each day we had roll call at 5:00 AM. We waited a long time while they counted us before we could go to work. In the morning we had a watery drink they called coffee. In the afternoon we were given watery soup to drink and a small piece of moldy bread to eat. I was desperately hungry. I “organized” potatoes from the fields so I wouldn’t starve. I hid them in my clothing when I returned to the camp. I used to roast them in the small stove in our barrack.

Water was scarce. There were no washing facilities. In the beginning there were just holes to be used as toilets. Later there were boards with holes in them—inadequate because there were many prisoners. I washed in snow or with a little of the drinking water they gave us. I tried to keep myself clean because I was afraid that I would catch diseases if I didn’t.

Despite my efforts at cleanliness, I caught typhus. Many people in Vaivara died from typhus carried by lice. These were big lice—all over everyone, thousands of them. I was very ill, but some kind person in my barrack helped me, giving me warm water to drink. Therefore, somehow I survived this deadly disease. I also survived a big selection in which three hundred people who had typhus were taken away to be murdered.

Later there were selections every two weeks, when about 500 prisoners were murdered—often taken to the forest and shot by the German or Estonian SS.

Their bodies were carried away and burned by Jewish men, Sonderkommandos (special Kommando or work duty, dealing with corpses). They were forced to do this. Most Sonderkommando only lasted three or four months, and then they were killed, so they would not tell about what they had seen.

The Germans forced me to do many different kinds of work: I worked in the woods, chopping wood; I cleaned police stations for the Germans; and I worked on the railroad, laying down new railroad ties. All of this was back-breaking work, especially to malnourished people; the SS wanted to work us to death.

We were guarded by a few older German civilians, who could speak Polish. They were good to us, sometimes giving us salt or whatever food they could hide for us.

In July and August of 1944 the Soviet Army advanced north through Nazi-occupied Estonia toward Vaivara.

I saw neither my father nor my husband in Vaivara Concentration Camp. However, over a year after my arrival in Vaivara, when I was sent to a sub camp to work, I saw my father. He was working at different jobs, in the woods or on the railroad. I was so happy to see him and to know that he was still alive. I had hoped to see that Sender may also have survived. Then, I heard, they had taken my father away to the woods and murdered him. They gave me his shoes to hurt me so that I would know he was dead. I was terribly upset….

Ahead of the advancing Soviet army, the SS began to evacuate Vaivara Concentration Camp and its sub-camps in late August 1944. In Western Europe, the Allied armies began liberating other concentration camps in April of 1945…. Many prisoners from Vaivara were sent west by the sea to Stutthof Concentration Camp, a camp about 22 miles east of Danzig. Others were sent on death marches along the Baltic coast.

I was sent on a death march to the south, wearing wooden clogs, which were almost impossible to walk in. The weather was already quite frigid. I was freezing. I said to the Germans walking with us, “Kill me here.” But they didn’t. Other women on the death march encouraged me, coaxing me, “Come with us. We’ll help each other.” So they shlepped me with them.

One night we stopped at a cement factory to rest. People from the village came to look at us. They didn’t know what was going on. In Polish I said to them, “I am a Jew.” They may already have known this because the SS had painted a red cross on the back of my coat—to mark me as a Jew. In addition, I wore my number on a shmatteh pinned to my coat. One Pole said to me, “I live across the road. I’ll walk across. You follow me because, otherwise, they will kill you tomorrow.” Four of us escaped like that. (Two of us are still alive.)

I stayed with these Poles for six weeks. They were refugees from other areas of Poland, sent by the Germans to do slave labor. These kind Poles gave me food. In the daytime they hid me and watched for the Germans. At night I slept in a bed with pillows! Other places in the village were hiding the other girls.

When the Germans left the area, the Russians, advancing from the east, arrived near the cement factory. So I was liberated and had to then think what I would do. I decided to go back to Vilna to try to find Sender. I met a Polish woman, also a refugee, who helped me because I was weak and malnourished. She took me on a train. I got off at a small train station, at a suburb to the west of Vilna. When I got off the train and walked into the station, I met this Holocaust survivor group there. I knew some of the people in this group. They were trying to decide where they would go.

I stayed in this village with the other survivors for a while. Then I began walking east towards Vilna to see if I could find anyone alive. I still had a little hope that Sender had survived—but only a glimmer of hope.

JOHN FREUND

Context: Central Europe

Source: John Freund. Spring’s End. Toronto: ©Azrieli Foundation, 2014, pp. 15–21. Used by permission.

A young Jewish boy living in Czechoslovakia, John Freund and his family were citizens of the territory overrun by Nazi Germany in March 1939. The changes wrought by this development were immediate, but to a 9-year-old boy their impact was somewhat muted. As shown in this testimony, the resilience of children provided John and his friends with the opportunity to recalibrate their lives in such a way as to maximize their childhood pleasures while they were able to do so—in an environment of increasing gloom. It is a memoir of light in an ever-darkening world, in which the innocence of children offered hope to those around them—and provided each with the support they needed in order to prevail over the system that would have destroyed them.

I was nine years old in 1939 when the German army rolled across the Austrian border into our town. It was a grim day. The scenery was full of armoured trucks, tanks, soldiers in dark green uniforms and the occasional low-flying airplane. With them, the Germans brought their dreadful Nazi ideology. They were led by their leader, Adolf Hitler, perhaps the greatest criminal political leader of all time.

When the Germans came, most people stayed indoors, but there were some who welcomed them. These were people who hated the Jews. These people were envious of those with more than they and now it was their turn to show their true colours. Nobody knew what would happen. The war had not yet started; the Czech army was ordered not to resist the invaders. The Germans took over quickly and people were arrested on the first day of the invasion. Soon, orders began appearing on bulletin boards and in newspapers.

We Jews were hit the hardest. Signs that read “Jews not permitted” appeared in cinemas, coffee houses, streetcars, public buildings, public parks and elsewhere. Schools were ordered not to allow us in and public swimming areas became prohibited to us. Once, as I walked near my home alone, I noticed my Grade 3 teacher across the street. He crossed toward me and, as we passed, he shook my hand and quickly said. “Be brave.” He took a great risk, as even talking to a Jew was regarded as a crime.

Discussion among the adults at home was often in German—perhaps so that we children could not understand. At night, we would listen to the news from England on our shortwave radio, as Czech radio was now in the hands of the Germans. At this time, there were pessimists and there were optimists. The pessimists thought that in one to two years all would be back to normal, while the optimists thought weeks. In the end, the war lasted six years and, for us, things never got back to normal.

I could no longer play with my non-Jewish friends. My friendship with Zdenĕk and other non-Jewish boys came to an end. There were about three hundred Jewish families in town, and I did not know many of them. Some were professionals like us—doctors and lawyers. Others were small storekeepers and several were wealthy manufacturers. I became good friends with a group of four boys who were all my age. In our group, there were two Rudis, one Henry, one Paul and me. Before the war, Henry and one of the Rudis were rich. The other Rudi and Paul were poor. After the Germans took everything from us, we were all poor. We were required to wear a yellow Star of David on our outer garments, over our lapels. Our parents warned us to stay away from certain parts of town where it was known that there were hooligans and Nazis. I do not think that we were subjected to too much abuse at that time. Did all this drive us to despair? No way. Life went on. We wore our Stars of David, but not in shame.

In our town there were about two hundred Jewish youngsters and about one hundred of us were between the ages of ten and eighteen. Excluded from the general community, we formed our own. My schooling moved from the schoolhouse to our living room. Groups of children met and were instructed by young Jewish teachers. Schooling was improvised; the older boys and girls taught the early grades. I was ten years old when I had my first Latin lessons. I still remember “amo, amas, amat” and my introduction to algebra. We read about animals and distant lands. We sang songs in Hebrew which, for me, was a strange language that until that point had been used only in prayer. We dreamed about the faraway land of Palestine where Jews were making a fresh start. Occasionally, a father of a friend would be arrested and would disappear. We had to give away our car. Father was forced to close down his medical office and we had to live off his savings.

Another Jewish family lived in our building. They were simple, poor people who lived next door to the butcher’s store. Their place was warm and smelled of cooked meat. I don’t remember their names, but their daughter Anna and I became friends. I often visited their warm apartment, where we sat around, talked and played cards. In time, we were ordered to give up half of our apartment. We lost two of our four rooms to some insurance office. Our maid, Maria, had to leave us, but she would often come to visit.

Some friends succeeded in leaving the country. They went to Palestine, England, Canada and the United States. It became more and more difficult to get permission to leave. My father was among the optimists and thought all would soon return to normal. He and his friends liked to joke about Hitler and the Nazis. Unfortunately, the whole thing was far from a joke.

Among the more pleasant memories from this time—1940 to 1941—were the summer days spent along the River Vltava. Although we were banned from public swimming, we were allowed to swim along a narrow strip of land by the road. This strip was a half-hour walk from town, or a ten-minute ride by bicycle, and was near a railway bridge. It was called U Vorisku, named after the Voriseks family who owned and leased us the patch between the fields and the river. We bicycled, jogged, walked or ran the U Vorisku. It soon became a hub of activity. Swimming past the shoreline was treacherous, especially for younger children. The older boys had a tiny boat that was used to rescue the daredevils who tried. The water in the river was filthy, with pieces of raw sewage floating on the surface; one never put one’s face into the water. Yet it was a place where we could cool off and have fun.

We were permitted to set up benches and changing rooms along the river. We had space for four ping-pong tables and when everything was cleared we even had room for a small soccer field. Someone brought a soccer ball and volleyball net. We played soccer along the narrow field and when the ball ended up in the river—as it often did—it took several minutes to retrieve it. I was ten and would always play soccer with the older boys. I played the defence position. I was small, tough and daring, and stopped every attack on my team’s goalie.

My real success, however, was in ping-pong. We had two tables situated underneath a shelter behind the changing cabin. I played as often as I could. There was a tournament toward the end of the summer of 1941. We were divided into three age groups: under ten, ten-to-fourteen, and fifteen and older. I had early success, eliminating most of my opponents quickly. In the semifinals and the finals, I won every game. At an evening ceremony, I was awarded a brand-new white cork racquet and a plaque with my name engraved on it. There was dancing and singing. That evening, I felt that everyone liked me. These youngsters were my friends. They were the Harrys, Jirkas, Pavels, Karels, Rudlas, Lilkas, Ritas, Ankas, Suzans, Lidias and Cecilias. There were Poppers, Kopperls, Kohns, Herzes, Holzers, Frishes, Stadlers and Levys. There were even more, but I have forgotten most of the names. We were young, enthusiastic and mischievous, but we were always good to one another. Great warmth was established among us young people and we developed a deep love and respect for each other.

The two summers of 1940 and 1941 were among my happiest. Some days we worked on the Voriseks’ farm, helping with the harvesting. I held a large canvas bag under a chute and filled it with oats or wheat. For our work, we received a large slice of fresh white bread, thickly covered with goose liver and fat.

We all had daytime duties. The older boys and girls were learning trades. Under orders from the Nazis, the Jewish community had to submit information about our properties and compile lists of our addresses, so the younger children, like myself, delivered this information in sealed envelopes. The moment we finished our duties, we would rush to our favourite spot along the river. We played team sports and our friendships intensified. Every moment in the sun was cherished and when it rained we would huddle under trees. In addition to athletics and games, we would sing. Sometimes there were fights, usually ending with someone coming home with a black eye.

When the days began to shorten and the cool air returned, we knew our beautiful summer was coming to an end. Several of the older boys decided that we must not hibernate but continue with our friendships. They started a handmade magazine named Klepy (Gossip). It was typed and illustrated and only one copy of each issue was printed. One issue had a picture of me kicking a ball on the front cover. The first issue merely gossiped about our summer activities at the river. However, subsequent issues had stories and jokes. Contributions by the readers were sought and published. All readers were given a chance to read the single printed copy and were asked to comment on the issue. There were twenty issues of Klepy. Here is an example from an early issue:

What is the goal and purpose of our Klepy? First of all, to prove that a healthy spirit and sense of humour is within us and that we are not diminished by the difficulties of our days. We are capable, in moments of rest from our labour, to occupy our minds with worthwhile thoughts and humour.

During this time, two boys were afflicted with epilepsy. The worst case was Fricek K. He was new to Budĕjovice, having come from the Sudetenland a few years earlier. Fricek was always with his cousin Erich. They were both ten years old. Fricek had frequent epileptic fits, sometimes as often as every half hour. He would fall to the ground, lie on his back, and emit terrifying shrieks. When this would happen, his cousin Erich would open Fricek’s mouth, which was full of froth, and pull out his tongue, caressing his forehead. The sick boy would shake wildly for three to four minutes and then appear to be in a deep sleep for a few minutes. After that, he would get up, looking weak and dizzy. This frightening event occurred many times each day.

Another person who had the same affliction was an older man we called Mr. Papa. He was a confectionery vendor. He had a wagon with candies, apples and chocolate bars. He could always be found in the shade under the large railway bridge. I used to buy a chocolate rum ball from him whenever I could afford it. His epilepsy was quite different. His attacks came only once every two weeks. When they occurred, he would fall on his back, breathing heavily, and lie in this state for almost a full hour. There was nobody qualified to do anything for him, other than give him a glass of water when he finally came to. After an attack, he would not show up to work for a few days. But when he did come back, it was always with a fresh supply of apples, chocolate bars and candy.

The summer of 1940 passed and we had only our memories to keep us warm. We looked forward to next summer—until it came. During the summer of 1941, our lives were in imminent danger. These threats were not from our fellow citizens, but from the mad dictator in Berlin. As the days became shorter and cooler, we cherished each day and prayed that the summer of 1941 would never end. For many, this would be their last summer.

Around this time, we, the Jews of Budĕjovice, started to take some interest in religion again. Our beautiful, tall synagogue had two steeples and many beautiful entrances and was located in a fine part of the city. It was built in the late 1800s. The Germans could not stand competition from another God, so they blew up the synagogue—completely wiping out any trace of the original building. Without the synagogue, services were held in a large, decorated warehouse. Our rabbi, Rudolf Ferda, inspired the participation of the children, and soon Friday night services were full of boys and girls. A chorus of ten- to twelve-year-old girls and boys was organized and their beautiful voices made many at the services tremble with joy. The boys learned to pray and, both in fun and seriousness, imitated our cantor by holding services at home. Rabbi Ferda was a good man. His long sermons always included the theme that Jewish history winds itself like a red thread through the ages. He spoke in Czech with a German accent, and sometimes we could not keep from bursting into laughter. However, when he ordered us out of the sermons, we were really sorry.

A special relationship developed among the young Jews who were shunned by the general community and vilified in newspapers and on radio. We found new strength and helped each other through the hard times. When a very poor family came to town with many children, room was quickly found to help them. Our family took in a little girl who lived with us for a while.

My father was no longer permitted to practise medicine and spent the summer days working in a friend’s garden. He loved it. We worried about what would happen when our savings were gone. We got used to eating less and eating cheaper food: bread without butter, potatoes and, only rarely, meat.

The summer of 1941 came to an end. We still went to U Vorisku in the fall and sometimes in the winter, where we would walk around and look forward to the next summer. But this was not to be. In April 1942, the whole Jewish community (just under a thousand people) were taken from their homes and resettled in the ghetto Terezín (Theresienstadt, in German).

HANS FRIEND

Context: Before the War

Source: Hans Friend. “The Night of the Crystals (Die Krystallnacht): The Brother’s Story.” In Julie Meadows (Ed.). Memory Guide My Hand: An Anthology of Autobiographical Writing by Members of the Melbourne Jewish Community. Caulfield South (Victoria): Makor Jewish Community Library, 1998, pp. 50–52. Used by permission.

The testimony that follows is best read alongside that of Marianne Roth, also in this volume. Hans and Marianne, a brother and sister, were living in Berlin before the outbreak of war. When Marianne wrote her recollection of the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 9–10, 1938, Hans decided it was necessary for him to also put pen to paper—if only to give his perspective of the events of that night. It is a testimony that offers a different view of the pogrom, in that Hans was able to view the events from a different vantage point than did his sister. The account is an excellent example of how in the study of history the perception of eyewitnesses is crucial, and that in order to arrive at understanding as many viewpoints as possible need to be considered.

My sister showed me her written account of the Night of the Crystals and I was amazed how my memory of that fateful night differed from hers; sometimes she recalls events of the past which I never knew of or completely “forgot”—or suppressed!

Yes, I do remember one morning when our parents forbade us to go out into the streets of Berlin. Our parents had gone out and my sister and I decided against their wishes, to see for ourselves what was going on. Streets full of broken glass from smashed windows of Jewish shops, a burning synagogue….

I DO REMEMBER. It was in the middle of the night, three or four am, when the phone rang. It was a friend of my father, a headmaster of a secondary school, who said, “Leave your house at once and take your son with you. Nazi ‘stormtroopers’ are on the way to take you to a concentration camp.” My father’s friend had no choice but to become a member of the Nazi party, lest he lose his job or worse, go to prison. I wish I could remember the name of this good German man. He risked his life to save us.

We left our house, leaving behind my mother and sister and walked, all night, the streets of Berlin. We crossed over a fashionable boulevard called “Kurfurstendamm,” a boulevard with many elegant shops, cafes and restaurants. Brown-shirted members of the SA, the Nazi “army,” everywhere, smashing all the windows of Jewish shops and painting anti-Jewish slogans on their walls: “DON’T BUY FROM THE Jews” and “DOWN WITH THE JEWS.” Broken pieces of glass lying everywhere on the streets, looking like crystals of snow reflecting the light in the early hours of this morning.

It was not beautiful snow—but broken bits of glass from shops owned by Jewish “Germans”—shattering the dreams of my father. He was a proud German and at the same time, a religious Jew.

We walked on, casually and slowly, not to make it obvious that we were afraid, that we were Jews; we passed the beautiful synagogue in the Fasanenstrasse—burning. We were told later that the caretaker who lived in it was burnt alive. I reminded my father to phone my uncle to also leave his house and we quickly phoned him from a phone box—just in time. We were told later that the Gestapo (secret police) came soon after; he was safe, for the time being.

As the morning arrived we phoned my mother who had gone to an aunt of mine. We talked in code just in case the Gestapo was listening in. At night we stayed with relatives and friends at “safe houses.” We were told that households with mixed marriage partners, one Jewish the other not, would not be visited. Where we slept I have forgotten, except that we stayed one night at the Urlands in a fashionable suburb of Berlin, a charming couple. Every night we slept somewhere else.

My father looked pale and worried. The only quarrels I remember witnessing between my parents were concerned with leaving Germany. My mother wanted to leave while my father postponed leaving. After 1938 it was not Germany which did not allow Jews to leave without their possessions or money; all other countries would not allow them to enter, except in small numbers.

Fear of unemployment, of refugees becoming a burden to the State—were given as reasons. My father feared that he would not be able to teach mathematics, physics or chemistry in another language or even get a position in another country. Of course, he never dreamed that a cultured country like Germany could ever sink to such unspeakable depths as to murder its citizens.

I loved my father dearly…. He had already suffered greatly under the Nazi regime. He was a Doctor of Mathematics and also taught physics and chemistry in high school. Before the Nazi era he was an adviser and examiner appointed by the Silesian Ministry of Education. He had also studied mineralogy and philosophy.

In 1933 when Hitler came to power, my father was transferred to a little town, and in 1935 was sent to work in a state library—in order not to teach “Aryan students” any more. In 1936 he was pensioned off and taught in a Jewish school in Breslav in an honorary capacity. In 1937 he was appointed assistant headmaster in a Jewish school in Berlin, the school I attended.

After being fugitives for one week, my father went to the police station and gave himself up. Being a man of total integrity and honesty, he could not go on hiding like a criminal. “Go home with your son,” the police officer said, “this aktion (persecution) was organized by the S.A. (Hitler’s army), not the police. We know that you are an honest man and anyway, this aktion only lasted a week. And from now on nothing will happen to you!”

We went home. After one or two days my father suddenly had great stomach pains and was rushed to the Jewish hospital. A stomach ulcer, fully controlled for years, had burst due to the stress and shock of the “CRYSTAL NIGHT.” A few days later he died—a broken man.

He often used to say ironically, “The thanks of the Fatherland are due to you,” the official slogan of the German government after the First World War….

And when thoughts of the Nazi era come to my mind, I push them away and think of something pleasant—I don’t want to cry….

The irony of it all: because my father had died in December 1938, I, a half-orphan, was allowed to get onto a children’s transport in May 1939 that took me by train and boat together with other orphans to London and freedom. When saying goodbye to my mother at the railway station, I did not realise that I would never see her again.

My children have heard little of what I experienced in Nazi Germany. It’s called the “conspiracy of silence” by those who survived and felt guilty having survived. It took me over fifty years to actually write on paper the happenings of this one week.

GEORGE GINZBURG

Context: Western Europe

Source: George Ginzburg. A Will to Live: A Story about Hope and the Strength of the Human Spirit. Caulfield South (Victoria): Makor Jewish Community Library, 2003, pp. 92–100. Used by permission.

The Mechelen transit camp, known as Malines in French, was the major assembly point for the Jews of Belgium prior to them being sent on to the death camps in Poland. In this account of what life was like at Mechelen, George Ginzburg provides a detailed record of the daily record and how it was that he managed both to survive and also to undergo the experience of being on one of the deportation trains that left the camp. Eventually, after several days, he arrived at what he refers to as the Anus Mundi—the asshole of the world—Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The main assembly transit camp was in Maline (Mechelen in Flemish), a town between Brussels and Antwerp. It was an ancient army headquarters, known as Dossin Barracks of St. Georges. Its cobble-stone-paved parade ground could accommodate well over a thousand people. Two senior officers, Kommandants Frank and Rudolph Stackman ran the camp. Here the Gestapo assembled thousands of foreign and Belgian Jews, many of whom had escaped from Nazi Germany years before hoping to find a safe haven in Belgium. The men, women and children came straight from their homes dressed in their best clothes, assembled in the courtyard, clutching their most valued possessions.

As well as the transit camp, Belgium also possessed a concentration camp called Breendonk. It was strictly for political prisoners, mostly Belgian Patriots. The SS Sturmbannführer Phillip Schmidt ruled Breendonk. He was in charge of the whole operation, a drunkard, infamous for his sadism and cruelty. The camp was modelled on Germany’s camps, Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Esterwege, Buchenwald and the like. New arrivals to the St Gilles Prison spread the word that anyone taken to those concentration camps would never leave; inmates died from hunger, exhaustion, maltreatment or executions.

The scene that confronted me at Maline (Mechelen) was difficult to fathom. We were thrust onto a large parade ground among hundreds of men, women and children. The SS Kommandants stood at the front, each flanked by a German shepherd, whip by his side and a cigarette dangling from the mouth as he said,

“Welcome to Umsatzlager (Transit camp) Mechelen,” he smiled. “My name is Obersturmführer SD Frank. My colleague here is SS Kommandant Steckman. I don’t bite, only my dog Fritzl bites, but then, only Jews. Ha! Ha!” Frank’s laughter pierced our hearts.

We were registered and shown to our living quarters by an “orderly,” one of the inmates of the camp. I saw a kitchen full of provisions. It was stocked with food brought in by prisoners from their homes. It was confiscated, put into a large food store and sorted by a group of ten or so women. There were fruits and conserves, meat and sardines, poultry and sausages, bread and jams, coffee and sugar, rice, flour and plenty of drinks. There was shelf upon shelf of food, including many items we had not seen in recent years. Such foodstuffs were only available on the black market.

SS Obersturmführer Frank was a blond, smartly groomed man in his early thirties, a real ladies’ man, always polite and smiling but very firm. Many women flirted with him, putting on their charm in return for little favours, sometimes with the full encouragement of their husbands. It sickened me to witness the passive approval of husbands and boyfriends. We all slept together in a large dormitory-like hall. There was no privacy. Often husbands and wives went missing at night. Everybody had to look after himself. Throughout the day music blasted through loudspeakers, only interrupted by announcements or the calling-up of individuals.

Fresh bread was delivered daily to the food store by our own camp truck with a Flemish driver called Janeke. I often volunteered to load the truck at a bakery in the Maline township; life was a little easier this way and there were also some side benefits. Janeke carried a pistol and there was also a guard sitting in the back of the truck. I was often tempted to jump, but if unlucky, I would have received a bullet in my back.

Life in the transit camp became more pleasant when I befriended an attractive woman who was much older than I. She became my sleeping partner, both literally and sexually; she would keep me warm under the blanket in that big hall. I felt alive again, I felt like a man, at least for a short time, and time with her allowed me to forget my suffering.

At times my mind wandered and I asked myself, “What are my parents doing in Berlin at the moment? Which of my friends remain? Where is Walter now?”

We were given small privileges and I phoned my uncle twice but was only able to speak with my aunt. All phone calls were monitored so I had to be careful what I said. I asked her to phone Berlin and find out if my parents were okay but not to tell them about me; I didn’t want them to worry any more than they already did. She asked me if I needed anything for the trip to the labour camp. I thanked her politely and told her that I would contact her again, and I enquired about my baby cousin Marie Louise, asking her to pass on a big kiss.

I volunteered to be an orderly but was given work as an interpreter. I spoke German, French and Russian fluently and was often called on to interpret between the camp internees and the German authorities. More and more people arrived almost daily and despite the fact that at least one transport left every week from Maline Railway Station, the camp was still badly overcrowded. Moving amongst the crowds, I exchanged news with anyone I could on people I had seen or knew to be alive. On occasion I talked with people who knew of the fate of my friend Leon. I had not seen him since the Gestapo grabbed us. They told me that Leon had died from the beatings inflicted on him during Gestapo interrogation. I thought about my own ordeal—why had I survived?

The transports became routine. The luggage, numbered and marked, went separately to the station. Eventually my name appeared on the next transport to Germany or Poland. I was asked if I wanted to be a transport leader and take responsibility, maintain order and protect the children and the elderly. I accepted the role, knowing it would not be easy, especially with the children and the sick. However, I wanted to help those in need. We prepared to depart the following day, 12 September 1942.

We walked slowly to the train station. It was the tenth transport leaving Maline that day—our number totaled 1048 men, women and children. As we walked, we carried what we could hold: handbags and rucksacks filled with food. We knew Poland, or East Germany or wherever we were going, would be freezing cold: women wore their furs and the men dressed in their winter coats. Several fully armed Grüne Sicherheits Polizei (Green Security Police) escorted us.

Waiting for us at the station was a long cattle train, with open sliding doors, straw-covered floors and small windows secured with barbed wire. At least there would be some light and air. We were told to tolerate these conditions because of the war and because all passenger trains were being used by the German armed forces. However, as soon as we reached the German border, we would be transferred to more comfortable trains.

The last two wagons were filled with suitcases, which we helped to load. All cases were well marked and painted with Belgian names and addresses. I noticed that some of the boxcars were marked with the letter “K” for the Polish town Katowice while other wagons were marked with the word “Juden.” Some bore the word “Birkenau,” but none of us had ever heard of it. While we waited on the platform, we received hot Ersatzkaffee and bread with jam. Everyone filled his or her bottle with drinking water. Two orderlies and I helped to fill bottles and distribute food. Everybody was asking us where we were going, but we had no answers.

We were ordered into the train. For each wagon there was a list of 70 to 90 people. They were so cramped; there was no room to sit. Families stuck together and I appointed one responsible person as supervisor per wagon so he could report any serious problems to me. The only way we could communicate was via the German police guards, and only during train stops.

Hygienic toilet buckets with chloride powder, toilet paper, period binds and aspirin were placed in every wagon. One doctor, some bandages and medication were required for every three wagons. Tears were flowing and people kissed and hugged. The guards closed the doors, bolting them on the outside with iron bars. On the front of the train hung two German swastika flags and the canvas banner, Räder rollen für den Sieg (Wheels rolling to victory). Armed guards then took their places on the wagon rooftops, in their boxcars and hanging on the outside steps.

The whistle blew and the train pulled out of Maline Station. Nobody waved goodbye; the station was empty. Inside our wagon, people stood quietly, contemplating the future. I still felt optimistic. Surely God would bestow His mercy on us. We knew that the war must end one day and we would be telling our stories to our children; but nobody ever imagined what those stories would be.

We settled. Most of the people in our wagon fell asleep. Some moaned and groaned; it was difficult to breathe while others smoked. Fears pervaded conversations. What were the Germans capable of? Would the Germans keep their word and transfer us to a passenger train? Germans had a reputation for keeping their word—the Nazis were supposed to be the party of decent people. But then, as Hitler made clear in Mein Kampf, they also wanted to destroy the Jews and any other opposition. I stopped thinking about all of this and tried to focus on the current situation.

We were moving quickly through the Belgian countryside and took turns to look out of the small windows in each corner of the wagon. Some of us gathered in a corner and sang French, Hebrew and Yiddish songs. Others were talking to their children or rocking then to sleep; some were hugging and kissing; each found his own way to comfort his fears and grief. Sometimes passing through a small country station, children and women waved us by. The train did not stop. Through our window I could see the guards lying flat on the rooftops, their automatic rifles in their hands.

Finally, after many long hours, our train came to a stop at a small station. SS guards were waiting for us on the platform. I looked out and noticed many twenty-five litre army containers with Ersatzkaffee (artificial coffee) and tea ready for distribution. As the train stopped, SS soldiers screamed for every second wagon door to open. I heard the bolts shift and the doors rolled open. “Nobody comes out until told. Whoever jumps out, will be shot on the spot. Children, women or men, do you understand?” There was absolute silence. Then came the order, “All official orderlies and train Führers (train leaders) out on the platform in front of your wagons.” This meant me. Shielding my eyes, I moved out into the bright sunlight. Children with their mothers came out first. An SS officer shouted, “There is coffee, tea and cold fresh water. Take bottles and cups with you.” I helped organize the distribution of drinks.

Out they came. Tired, jaded and pale, no make-up and hair uncombed, in fur coats and jewellery. Many wore coloured scarves around their heads. Women were begging for milk for their babies; they were given one small tin of powdered milk per wagon. The elderly had to be supported. I was busy helping them in the queue and pouring their drinks. Once they had taken a drink, they had to move quickly back into the wagon. The famous Scheisskübel (shit buckets) on the train had to be replaced by empty ones. This was the most awful job I had ever been given. Often I spilled some of the contents. The stench brought me close to vomiting. I regretted volunteering for the position of leader, but thankfully I had some help from other young men.

As everybody returned to the wagons, the counting began. When the doors were locked, those in the other wagons were allowed out. After an hour the whole procedure was completed and we started rolling again.

It was hard to breathe. Not enough fresh air came in through those little windows and the smell of human bodies and cigarette smoke was foul. On many occasions, I asked people to refrain from smoking but it was all in vain. Many were very nervous and the smoking calmed them. Besides, I was a smoker myself at the time and depended on handouts, so I didn’t push the issue. There was a lot of coughing, vomiting, crying and groaning throughout the night. Despite this, exhaustion led me to sleep for a few hours. The train with its human cargo continued rolling throughout the night. There were no more stops.

In the morning, the sun streamed through the small openings and we all tried to get a breath of fresh air and a glimpse of the German countryside. Heading towards Frankfurt over the Rhine, the train stopped many times, sometimes for hours, to give way to military trains laden with soldiers, trucks and tanks, heading for the Russian Front. The odour from human perspiration and waste, cigarette and cigar smoke combined with the lack of fresh air was becoming overpowering. Most of us were nauseous and it was almost unbearable. Water became a critical problem, particularly for the elderly, babies and children. Mothers needed water to mix the powdered milk for their children.

The atmosphere was becoming increasingly desperate and whenever I requested water from the Germans, they would say, “Später, später, bald (Later, later, soon).” We bypassed the cities, only travelling through little country towns until we arrived in Dresden.

We were so grateful to be out of the train. My helpers and I pumped water continuously from the railway wells until our arms hurt, but we were determined to fill as many buckets and bottles as possible with fresh water. During that time, some German peasants approached the railway station with fresh fruit, drinks and sandwiches. They tried to push this food for children through the windows, only to be moved along harshly by the guards. We had three very sick people on our train who needed immediate medical treatment but not nearly enough was available. We were told that many German soldiers in Russia also needed medication, and they came first. The sick would have to wait until we arrived at our destination where they would get the attention they needed.

I grew agitated and thought of escaping. But how could I? If only I could lift the floorboards of the wagon! I could see the rails through the slits in the floorboards, which were mostly old and rotten and held together by big steel bolts. Desperately I tried to break or lift them with a scout’s knife but only broke the blade. If only I had a crowbar! I even tried to burn the boards from the inside but they would not burn; they were too moist. Some of my co-passengers started abusing and screaming at me, afraid of trouble. I soon gave up on the idea and tried to think of other possibilities. From past experience, I knew that the best approach would be to keep my eyes and ears open and to exercise patience.

It must have been our third or fourth day on the cattle train when it rolled into Upper Silesia in Poland. I could see people standing alongside the track waiting for us to pass. They gave us all sorts of signs that were difficult to understand. It seemed that they wanted us to throw our money and watches through the windows. When we did not comply, they made signs with their hands, which could only be interpreted one way; we would have our throats cut. We tried not to make too much of this, especially as we could not understand the Polish dialect.

We saw Catholic nuns standing on railway platforms, offering us drinks for the children. They were stretching out their hands and begging us in broken French, German and Polish to pass the babies to them through the windows. We could not believe what we were hearing, nor did we grasp the enormity of our situation. Later, I was told that some mothers did actually hand their babies over to the nuns. They were mostly from Poland and already were aware of their fate. Those of us from Germany still believed that we were going to work for the German war industry.

It was barely dawn when our train came to a halt. We could see open fields and a huge brick gateway with no signs or names anywhere. I knew we had recently passed Breslau and Katowice and that these were occupied territories in Poland, now incorporated into the Third Reich. We sat for thirty minutes, then the train started to roll again, but only for a few minutes before stopping again. We heard orders shouted. Floodlights lit a ramp revealing numerous SS soldiers and high-ranking officers with dogs and whips. Further along stood others in striped prison uniforms. We had arrived at the terminus, Auschwitz-Birkenau. Anus Mundi.

PAULETTE GOLDBERG-SZABASON

Context: Western Europe

Source: Paulette Goldberg-Szabason. Just Think It Never Happened. Caulfield South (Victoria): Makor Jewish Community Library, 2002, pp. 22–29, 31–35. Used by permission.

Moving from place to place in France during the war, Paulette Goldberg-Szabason was a child during the Holocaust. In this account, she provides a listing of some of the locations where she and her sister sojourned while being looked after by the OSE—the Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants, or Children’s Aid Society) a French Jewish humanitarian organization that assisted hundreds of Jewish refugee children during World War II. As a child she did not recall the time of passing from war to liberation, though certain events stood out toward the end of the war that remained in her memory. This is an excellent account of what it was to be a child in occupied and unoccupied France during the years of the Holocaust.

In the next few years, we kept on moving from place to place. I checked the names of those places with OSE records, but I could only verify that my sister and I were there, not exactly when the following stories happened. We were in Toulouse, Meripeix, Pau Gelos, Chateau de Chabbes in Creuse and Chattilon sur Indre, but not necessarily in that order.

Toulouse

We were taken to an OSE children’s home in Toulouse. I had big sores on my head and body, probably infected bites from lice. They cleaned us up and shaved my head. My room was occupied only by girls. I was sick and in bed for most of my time there. I slept in a cot.

One night the building was bombed. Everybody ran outside, but I was carried down the stairs by someone. We stood in our nighties and watched half the chateau burning. I was not afraid and enjoyed feeling warm from the fire. Next day, we could see there was a terrible mess and we were taken down to a cellar where underground passages led to other buildings in the grounds.

I remember one girl, taller than me, who was in Toulouse when we got there. Her arm had been blown off during a bombing, not the one from the night before. She said they had pulled her skin and tied the ends together with strings. It was horrible. She was in so much pain and the wound kept seeping with infection. She asked the other children to wipe it for her. The adults kept promising to take her to a hospital, but when she begged them, they always said tomorrow. After a while, she disappeared, and I assumed that she must have gone to hospital, but these days I wonder if she died. We moved again. We had so many changes, that moving meant nothing to me. I never let myself become attached to anything or anyone.

Pau

When we were moving from place to place, my sister reassumed responsibility for me. She went where people directed her to go and I followed blindly, not knowing what I was doing or where I was going. We arrived at the train station at Pau and walked down a road, passing farm after farm. We asked every farmer on the way for direction and each time, they said to keep going. We thought we would never find the farm of Jeanne-Marie Dubois. We walked for many hours and my feet hurt.

We eventually arrived and saw Madame Dubois looking out for us from a first-floor window. She waved as we came towards the house. It seemed like a warm welcome, but we were in for a hard time there. We were always kept very hungry at that house, although she herself seemed to have plenty to eat. I remember going out very early in the morning to pick up snails. I would bring them to Madame Dubois and she would wash them outside and bring them inside to cook them live in boiling water. We all ate them, and they tasted beautiful, like chicken. I remember stealing potatoes from the ground in her garden and eating them raw, and being constantly on the lookout for scraps.

I remember one episode when I was walking with a few children down a path. We were always looking for food and were so happy when we found apples on an overhanging branch of a tree. Suddenly, we were being chased. I screamed for the others to wait, but they ran off, and as I was the youngest and the slowest, I got caught. A man grabbed my hand, took my apple away, and told me severely, never to steal again. I have dreamt about this moment throughout my life: running and running and getting caught, my hand frozen like a lump.

I was allowed to go to school each day to get a plate of soup. My sister was not given the same privilege. It was only for the littlest children. I remember lining up for the soup, and the nuns walking me back to the farm from where we were living. They were very nice to me. I don’t know what went wrong, but suddenly we weren’t allowed to stay inside Madame Dubois’ house any more. For some time—days or weeks—we slept in the chook and rabbit shed. There was not enough room to lie down properly, and it was freezing cold. I ate fruit kernels and carrot and potato peelings, anything they threw out to the chooks. One night, we were taken away.

Someone must have reported the situation. I have since found out that the OSE had their people come around to check on our well-being and to pay our hosts for our keep but I can’t recall having had contact with any other adults in that place.

Chabannes

This was how we got to Chateau Chabannes. We got a train to a station nearest to the Chateau and started walking. We were hungry, tired and cold and my sister made me walk and walk. I dragged my heels and resented her making me, when I was so tired. She never seemed to be tired, just determined to get us to the next place as soon as possible. Again, she kept asking farmers which way to go and they pointed in the direction we were going. We walked for half a day.

We stayed a short time at Chabannes, probably only a couple of weeks. It was a children’s home in one of those large chateaux. I remember hardly anything about it, only a large empty ballroom with murals on the walls, where we were given a hot drink in the company of other children. Leaving Chabannes brings back a terrifying memory. The people looking after us woke my sister and me up very early in the morning. It was still dark outside. We had to be very quiet. They gave us each a hot cocoa and I was put into some clean clothes and a new pair of shoes. The skirt was long and the shoes, two sizes too big. We were put onto a wagon, hidden under a lot of hay and told not to move or do anything to alert people to our presence. Two farmers sat in front, and the wagon moved out of the grounds, pulled by two cows. I could hear the clatter of the wooden wheels on the stony path. The farmers were stopped by some men (were they German soldiers or some check-point manned by French police?) who speared the hay with big forks. I curled up very small, scared to breathe. Only when the noise of wheels could be heard turning again did I feel relieved. I will never forget this.

After a while, I fell asleep as we travelled to the train station for our next destination. I found out only four years ago that the Germans were beginning to take the children away from these homes, so the OSE was spiriting them away, a few at a time.

Mirepeix

Madame Forgue was a widow and always dressed in black. I did not know it at the time, but her husband had just died early in 1944, some months before we arrived. Her first name was Esther, an unusual name for a Frenchwoman, but she was not Jewish. In fact, she was a pious Catholic. I arrived at her house with a head full of lice and sores. She shaved me. I was always being shaved. I also had to let her know if there were worms in my stools. There were, but I always used to cut them into pieces with a wooden stick so that she would not see them. I didn’t want to be different from the others. No one else was asked if they had worms in their stools. I always seemed to be the sick one. I remember having a swollen stomach, but I didn’t think it was a sign of sickness.

The house was in a hamlet that consisted of a few farms and orchards, a church, a school and a marketplace. Madame Forgue’s property must have been a farm when her husband was alive, but now she only kept her large kitchen-garden going. There was a huge barn, still filled with hay, but there were no cattle. The toilet was way down near the back fence next to a cemetery, and you could see big statues and crosses above the stone wall. I played hide and seek in the cemetery with the local children. I was the littlest, and the older kids teased me that the ghosts were after me. I felt scared, but did not run away from the game, because I wanted the company of the other children.

There were big crosses above our beds, and at night, Madame Forgue told me to pray, especially for my parents to be well. There was another boy, George, living in the house at the time. He was a few years older than me. He wanted to be a priest when he grew up and I learned to pray on my hands and knees from him. A number of times, George forced me and another little girl to go into the barn with him, where he would sexually abuse us with a stick. It hurt a lot. Fortunately, he was caught hurting the other child, and the abuse stopped.

I attended school, but don’t remember learning anything. I just sat and fantasized. I was in my own world, but what it consisted of, I can’t remember. I enjoyed being on my own and walking to and from school. I always stopped at the river and stared into the water or threw stones to watch the ripples. The sight and sound of it was very peaceful and soothing. I often passed the women washing their clothes in the river. They were cheerful and friendly and always greeted me as I walked by and encouraged me to stay and chat for a while.

One day, I was undressed and examined at school by some visiting doctors and they thought something was really wrong. I left the room, talking silently to my stomach. I told it, “There’s nothing wrong with you because you aren’t hurting.” The OSE archives tell that I was very sick and spent some time in hospital then. But the memory of it is blurry. I remember doctors and nurses, the ward with rows of beds and sleeping most of the time.

Chatillion-Sur-Indre

This was the last place where we were hidden and the memories are good and bad.

My sister and I took a long train journey and eventually came to a station called Chatillion-Sur-Indre. The train stopped and the guard called for everyone to get out, so it must have been the end of the line. It was dark and there were other children also coming off the train. People were waiting in the shadows to pick the children up. We were all gone from the platform in three or four minutes. A woman came up to us and asked if we had anywhere to sleep that night, and when we said no, took each of us by the hand. I trusted her straight away. She walked us to her home, gave us a wash and put us to sleep in a bed with beautiful white sheets.

Her name was Madame Henriette Gateault. We spent several months with her and this was the happiest period for me throughout the war years.

We had food and warmth, and I felt loved and cared for. She asked me to call her Maman Gateault. I went with her to church and to Mass and learned the practices of the Catholic religion. I remember looking at the image of Jesus and thinking how much pain he was in but I loved the image of the Virgin Mary holding her baby to her in the sunlight. She seemed real to me and it was her I used to pray to. I felt secure and happy … as if I belonged. My sister refused to attend religious services and was never pushed to participate. Only once did Madame Gateault ask her where we came from, if our names were real and our ages. Celine would not tell her anything and was never asked again….

Another memory that haunted me for many years, was when we were reciting the ABC and came to C which stood for “coq”—rooster. I had a panic attack and screamed hysterically. No one could stop me. I was put in the corner but continued crying. I was ordered to stop but I just couldn’t, so I was put out in the corridor. Years later, I realized why I had been affected like this. It was because of the animals we had slept with in Pau. There was a rooster there, I was scared stiff of. It kept menacing me and pecked me a couple of times.

Dinner time with Maman Gateault was always memorable. I would get the crouton (crust) and the heart of the lettuce. Pierre Doliveux was a lovely man and very kind to me, always joking and making me laugh. No one had ever tried to amuse me before. He made me feel special and important. He told me that if I ate the heart of the lettuce, I would become as strong as he was. I would be asked to find the lettuce heart on the platter at mealtimes, and when I had transferred it to my plate, he rolled up some lettuce leaves on his plate and said he’d found another heart. Imagine, a lettuce with two hearts! I was puzzling over this when Maman Gateault would whisper, “Don’t tease the child. You are upsetting her!” I remember, I couldn’t put my arms around Maman Gateault because she was so fat. My hands couldn’t reach around to her back, and she’d laugh when I tried.

Everything was wonderful until the day the Germans marched in without warning. Normally, news spread in advance and by the time the Germans came, the streets were empty. On this occasion, we had not time to go to the shelters. Maman Gateault and Lucienne quickly closed all the shutters. The Germans marched into the square, in their usual way. Then scattered and started shooting at houses and people randomly. Our poor shoe-maker and his whole family were ordered to come out but wouldn’t. As a result, they burnt down the whole building and he and his family were shot because of being Jewish.

Pierre was expected back for lunch and Maman Gateault kept praying that he would stay on his farm. We saw him as he turned the corner through the cracks in the shutters. He was pushing a wheel-barrow full of grass with the scythe on top, the scythe that I was never allowed to touch. Two German soldiers came up to him and started shouting at him. They disappeared in the direction of the square, which was only up the street. Maman Gateault was crying. We were later told that he was interrogated and severely pistol-whipped. He died in hospital from his injuries a little while later. It was on the 15th August 1944. When I went back there nine years ago, I saw the names of those murdered by the Germans on a plaque in the City Square, and his name was amongst them. It was the worst time in the world for that town. There was death all around. I was numb and felt nothing. I didn’t fear death; I knew from an early age that it was coming, if not today, then tomorrow.

The wheel-barrow did a lot of work after the Germans left. I walked to the square and nobody stopped me. They were picking up bodies and silently walking down the street to bury them. I just looked and walked behind them with the other children, like a zombie.

The next time, we were all warned that the Germans were coming and we managed to hide. They didn’t interfere with the population this time. They simply took everything worth taking, even the cattle. When we came out of hiding, our home had been emptied of all the food, linen, blankets and tools. When I returned to Chatillion in 1993, I found out that the Germans had retreated through our village in August 1944 and committed atrocities and looted many farmhouses.

I don’t remember when liberation came, but I remember that suddenly I found the Germans sweeping the school grounds, and some of the children were saying you could spit on them or put your tongue out to them. There was a lot going on without us children knowing it. One day, they marched the town candle-maker down the main street, stripped him down to his waist, with what seemed the entire township walking behind. Then the farmers hung him. They had been given information that he had betrayed people to the Germans.

In November 1945, we were returning from visiting Lucienne in the hospital. She had just given birth to a baby boy. It was a sunny, peaceful afternoon and we were strolling home. I was lagging behind Madam Gateault and my sister, picking flowers from the footpath. Suddenly a black car stopped and two men in dark suits and hats ran out and grabbed us. They said, “Don’t be scared, we are Jewish. We are taking you back.” I could hear Maman Gateault screaming, “These are my children, don’t take them away.” I heard those words for many years to come. She loved me. She was good to me and I was so happy with her.

I hated those two men for so many years. What they did seemed so brutal at the time. I didn’t want to go with them, I didn’t want to be Jewish. Later I discovered that some families who had harboured children refused to part with them. Some did so because they had grown to love them, others because they had baptized them and wanted to “save their souls.” Some even held them to ransom, demanding a large monetary reward. Maman Gateault did not fit any of these categories. We should have been given a chance to say goodbye properly.

JULIUS GOLDFARB

Context: Eastern Europe

Source: Julius Goldfarb (translated by Philip Goldfarb with Maryann McLoughlin). Julius Goldfarb’s Diary, The Desperate Times: 1939–1944. Pomona (NJ): The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, 2008, pp. 23–31. Used by permission.

The life of a Polish Jew during the Holocaust was never intended by the Nazis to last long—certainly not long enough to be able to keep a diary, which was an illegal activity in any case. And yet Julius Goldfarb was one who did so, and in this account we see something of the type of entries he managed to keep. Essentially a record of how people lived their lives in small towns and ghettos in Poland, Goldfarb’s diary entries in the summer and late fall of 1942 offer valuable descriptions from which much understanding can be gleaned of the challenges facing Jews under the most trying of conditions during one of the Holocaust’s bitterest periods.

July 18, 1942 Dębica

I received a card from Dora that things were very bad. The Germans were talking about moving the Jews out from Sedziszów. At the same time, twenty-one kilometers away in Dębica, they were talking about the same thing—moving Jews out. They were taking people from surrounding areas; the whole area was to be resettled. I had a passport (legitymacje-ID cards) stamped by the Germans, protecting me because I did work on the railroad.

In Dębica they collected all the Jews in one safe place, a pasture near the Dębica train station. All had to sit in a circle on the ground; no one at all was allowed to stand up. They were not allowed to move around even to keep warm (it was very cold at night). They were not even allowed to shiver. Around the circle, a whole company of SS and the blue uniformed Polish police were standing. It was pouring rain without stopping. The mothers cuddled their children to their breasts to protect them from the rain and cold. The children were begging, “Mom, give me some bread. Give me some milk.” The people suffered all night sitting on the ground—the rain never ceased.

I decided to go back to Sedziszów to see what was happening there. I wanted to see for myself. I wanted to see my family. I decided to smuggle myself out of the camp. That was easy. The hardest thing was not to be caught outside the camp because that meant death. I hopped on a freight train and rode the 21 kilometers to Sedziszów.

I saw the same sight in Sedziszów as I had seen in Dębica. The Germans took all the people from the town and also from nearby towns, such as Wiele Pole. The people from Wiele Pole had to walk to Sedziszów. People who were beaten and died on the way were thrown on a wagon. The Nazis purposely let someone’s head hang out and rub on one of the back wheels, mutilating the head. They often did this. They wanted everyone to see the cruelty of the Nazis so they would be feared.

They gathered the people from Sedziszów and from the nearby towns in a circle and they were not allowed to move. In the evening, they took the older people in our town to the Jewish cemetery where they had dug a giant pit. The barrels of the German machine guns were pointed at all the poor, old people who had to stand naked, squashed all together. After they began shooting, all the old people started to fall together, forever in a collective grave. Berta Pelenberg, a pregnant woman in her ninth month, was dragged by her long hair to the cemetery where she was murdered. Later the SS tapped young people and told them to cover up that collective grave.

Some took their own lives, rather than be deported to their deaths by the Nazis. Dr. Goldman lived with my best friend, Izzy, and his family. Dr. Goldman’s wife, daughter, Yanka, and son Yurick, as well as Mr. Gold, his wife and daughter were told to go to the Sedziszów Train Station. Yanka Goldman was engaged to a Polish Christian, Pasternak, who wanted her to leave with him, so he could save her. Yanka refused to live without the rest of her family. The family knew what would happen. Dr. Goldman had prepared cyanide pills, so they took these pills before the trains were loaded. (I later saw where their bodies were buried in the cemetery.)

I ran back to the railroad station where the rest of my people were surrounded. I was looking for my family—for my dear wife and mother and all the rest of my family. I could not recognize anyone. It was pouring rain. I was far away from the people, hiding in the grass. I lay in the grass in the rain far away—looking—for almost the whole night. I couldn’t clear my mind; it was as if I were in a trance. I couldn’t get back to reality to believe this whole thing was really happening. Who could have imagined this? They were shooting the people. Why?

As early as 9:00 PM, I heard echoes of shooting. In fact, I confirmed the tragic truth. They had shot everyone. Why? What did the poor people do wrong? I thought and I thought, but I couldn’t get those suffering words out of my mind. However, I could not find the answer! My head was splitting from the pain.

I had to go back to Dębica to the camp barrack for morning roll call. Ironically, after roll call, all the workers were collected and taken to the Dębica train station. All the workers’ faces had turned pale from what they had seen. They went back to Dębica depressed. In Dębica train station, people said to us, “Everybody should hide because they are shooting Jews wherever they see them.”

It happened to us that they called to us on the train tracks and told us to report in. Around the station I saw dead people covered up like in a hill. A lot of other people were standing four in a row near the Gestapo and SS. Later the military was chasing them like cattle to the station where the cattle wagons were waiting—a whole train. They herded the people into cattle wagons. The floors of these wagons were deep with lime. One hundred and twenty people were in each car, thrown one on top of one another. They pushed them in and locked the doors. On each side, at the top, were little slits of windows covered with barbed wire. Inside there was no air to breathe and no water. On the steps of the wagons stood guards with machine guns. They were watching and saying to people, “You are going to another place to work in the Ukrainian fields.” The same lie was repeated at every village and town—that people were leaving to be resettled in the East.

In the territories and in other places when Nazis deported people they generally would send out every one of them. In yet other places they left the people that they needed, such as specialists, to work. For example, in Dębica only a part of the city was settled out. Quite a while passed and no letters or post cards from where they had been taken were received by family. A few post cards had been thrown out from the wagons. If a good person found these on the tracks, he mailed it because it had been addressed.

We found that the trains from the Dębica area were going in the vicinity of the Belzec Death Camp where there was a crematorium. We had no other information from them. We worked on the tracks at the station and were left without homes or families.

We were six friends from Sedziszów where we worked. [Julius was the only survivor.] I talked with them and proposed that we should hold on together and have a collective life like a family. We should embrace each other as family and watch over each other like brothers. We should hold together because we have had a tragedy happen to all of us.

From the day that they sent away the people all had to sleep in the barracks that belonged to the firm Ostbahn [the German company, operating the east railroad, a Polish railway system]. The director of the firm ordered that all Jewish workers had to live outside the city in barracks. The area was fenced in with barbed wire all around so they would not be able to escape. They squeezed in two hundred and fifty persons, all belonged to the company Ostbahn but who had worked in different workshops.

November 15, 1942

For the second time, on November 15, 1942, they started to “resettle” people, sending them to the gas chambers. On a Sunday, all firms had to work. We were standing by the magazine (warehouse). The people who worked there told us that SS and blue Polish police surrounded the whole ghetto. The head of the firm, Mazurkiewicz, told us to pick up our tools and go out to work as always. We were all very anxious. On the same day the workers who lived in the ghetto did not go out to work. We talked about what this meant. Because of what was happening, a German supervisor went to find out what was going on. The German came back with an answer: after this Aktion, our friends would go back to work. We were working on the main track of the station.

While we were out, they chased out all the brothers, sisters, mothers, and children from the ghetto. The same thing happened as the first time when they were shipped out in cattle wagons. On the way many people died. They suffocated to death in these cattle wagons—without air, the floors covered in lime. The lime was very dangerous.

We were looking at this. Can anyone imagine this? They are killing poor, innocent people. They push them in and one grabs the other and follows. They do this to satisfy their sadism. Those killers, part of the Fascist Socialist State, kill as if instinctively. The Germans did not forget about anything. They prepared crematoriums and different places of torture.

At noon, at lunchtime, we had a break to eat something. (At 5:00 AM we had twelve decagrams of bread, raw sugar, and kava [ersatz coffee, watered down coffee]. The bread had to last us the whole day. In the evening we had soup and whatever bread we had left.) We heard a loud whistle, and I became scared. We thought this was a signal that more people would be taken to be “resettled.” However, it was only a locomotive whistle. The train carried people who had been relocated by the Nazis from other ghettos. We were looking out as they passed by; and heard the screaming, “Water. Water. Water.” Three times I heard them yelling for water. I felt the heat radiating from people’s bodies. From the little window in the train I felt the heat and smell coming out, and then screams from the people begging for water. [Because Julius worked on the railroad, he saw these trains.] It was so hot that the people undressed themselves in the train wagons—kids, women, men, the elderly! Even this did not help them. They desperately needed air and water, but although we tried to go around the wagons to help, the guards with machine guns wouldn’t let us. The atmosphere threatened us, and we were very sad and upset. The culture and civilization of the twentieth century was fading before our very eyes as the train moved away in the distance.

We were left with hearts of stone. In our mouths there were no words. All that was left were heavy sighs.

After we finished the work in the evening, we went back to our barracks in Dębica, which was three kilometers from the railroad station. We were all very troubled and depressed. We felt that every day there were fewer and fewer of us. Now there were very few left.

After we slept through the night, we again marched to work. When we were walking on the tracks, we saw a mound near the tracks. Under the mound were dead bodies—those who had died from hunger or who had suffocated to death because they had no air to breathe. The Nazis had thrown these bodies out of the train. The territory they died in had to bury them.

We then found out that a train had come to Dębica [which the Nazis had occupied since September of 1939 and where a ghetto had been established in 1941]. Until 1943 the Jews of Dębica had been deported to Belzec Death Camp. The first time, on June 29, 1943, not all the people had been deported; however, on December 15–16, 1943—for the second time—the Nazis were to deport people [this time to Auchwitz]. Now the ghetto of Dębica would be liquidated. Only a few people, like us, who were necessary, were left. The Gestapo gave us special passports (legitymacje—ID cards) with our photographs and Gestapo stamps; the text of the passports stated that we were living because we were needed to work for the company.

We were brought into the city together with another group of people who also had special passports. We were altogether about 350 workmen, and about 300 other people were hiding in bunkers.

The Gestapo gave a strict order to the Ordinungsdienst [OD], the Jewish police, leaders from the camp: they should search for people hiding in the vicinity of the camp. Many people had escaped from where they were supposed to be, so many so that even in one day they caught sixteen people. These Jews were brought to the cemetery in Dębica, where they were tortured and murdered. They had to strip naked. Then they had to dig their own grave, climb into the grave, and had to lie one next to the other, tied up, and then they were executed. Next machine guns did their duty. Some of them were only slightly wounded; some were not even touched. The OD paid no attention to us while they were covering up the grave.

The next day the OD took fifty-four people from the camp—most of them females and children. These people were so numb and depressed that they no longer cared what would happen to them. They had given up.

Then they let us know that at 9:00 PM in the evening, the Kommandant of the camp and a high chief of the Sicherdienst (SD) [Nazi Party security service and intelligence service] wanted to speak with us. This SD was a terrible person—a sadist. He liked to be honored but he treated people as if they were nothing. If any littlest thing that he did not like was done, he took out his gun and shot the person or persons. He was a tall, heavy man and always had a big cigar in his snout. He always had a revolver in his fist, and he always had a smile on his face.

He came at exactly 9:00 PM and ordered the Kommandant to bring him two ODs. He told the ODs to bring slowly in fifty-four people in a line. With a cigar in his mouth, he shot all fifty-four with a smile on his face. This was a game to him. At the time, during the execution no one had permission to leave the barrack. Even to look out of the window was forbidden. Everybody stayed in his own corner; we were all very scared and very sad. Nobody said a word. We stayed without any protection and without any power. Everybody’s heart was bleeding.

After a while the sound of gun shots was like an orchestra. After he left, I called him a cutthroat and a sadist. Then a wagon with two horses came and they slowly loaded the bodies, one by one. The horses did not even need to be guided to the cemetery.

How could this Nazi stoop so low! He called little kids to himself, “Komm, Komm, Kleine. Hab keine Angst. Willst du Bonbons? Geh Dorthin.” (Come little ones. Don’t be afraid. Do you want candy? Go there.) And when they went there he grabbed a little brother by the hair, lifted him with one hand, held him up, and shot him. He did the same things to many other children. When he left, the SS began their killings. They shipped two wagonloads of people with the horses a third time. The horses took the bodies to a big grave, into which the SS dumped all the bodies.

One person stood up in the grave—an older man who had come from Mjelec. He had two wounds to his head, but he spoke with everyone. He told us he didn’t feel anything. I was part of the group unloading the bodies into the grave, and he spoke to us. He begged us to help him. But the guards were fifty meters away, surrounding the area, and no one could help. The guards were watching the group that was covering the bodies.

One of the soldiers saw this man standing up. He ran over, and he told him to stand in the grave. With a clear mind, the man stood near the grave and begged for mercy, looking right in the soldier’s face. But the soldier shot him anyway.

That whole week in the evenings the orchestra of shots was heard. In our camp in Dębica every day there were all kinds of death sentences—sacrificial victims from the Jewish people. The train police (German—Ranschutz) were always looking for people to murder—the intelligentsia, strong people, people in jail. They also looted them, stealing even their clothing. One day the Ranschutz came with the chief of the Gestapo; they took fifty of our workers—Jews—and put them in cattle cars and they hooked these up to a passenger train. They shipped them off to Tarnów, Poland, about fifty kilometers away [by 1941, a haven for Jews]. They hanged them. After a few weeks they finished everybody off.

The Richter Firm was liquidated. Under the Richter Firm thirty-four of our people were working. One day they went to work. The train police and the soldiers told us to stay away. Afterwards they let us know what had happened. The police were standing under the train bridge (an overpass). They waited there until the thirty-four came back from work. On both sides of the bridge the police and soldiers stood with machine guns. When the men came close they encircled them. The Ranschutz took them at 7:00 PM. The Kommandant of the camp begged them to let the people go because he needed them. But his pleas were for naught. In late evening, around 8:30 PM, we heard shots from the so-called “dead pastures,” where they had shot a lot of Jews. This pasture area was close to our camp. They were killed down to the last person. For what? I am asking, Why?

The camp was in panic. Chaos! People running around not knowing what to do. They ran around, trying to escape. But where? To the city? The chief of the Gestapo had warned us that if one person escaped, he would take five people from the barrack and shoot them. In the camp this brought an even heavier burden.

Within a short period of time, they transferred people to Rzeszów. More than half of our people, this little bit, worked at the same place until the end when they were deported.

In the fall of 1942, on the day of the High Holidays, as always they collected us near the gates and lined us up. They took us four in a row to march to work. When we crossed the gate, we were marching through lines of Gestapo. A taxi cab was waiting there and from the cab an SS leader got out. He rubbed his hands together and ordered them back to the barracks. Meanwhile the Ukrainian Schutzpolizei surrounded us. Then trucks arrived to take us away. They loaded us up and took us to Płaszów Ghetto that they had liquidated. They left in Płaszów thirty-seven people for three weeks. After the work was finished, one person had run away—an OD man. Therefore, Samuel and I became ODs for three days before they left Płaszów. I had to take the place of the man who escaped. They ordered me to do this and I functioned as an OD afterwards too. They took us all to Rzeszów when we left Płaszów.

MARIKA GOLDFAYL

Context: Western Europe

Source: Marika Goldfayl. “The Orphanage.” In Memory Guide My Hand: An Anthology of Autobiographical Writing by Members of the Melbourne Jewish Community, vol. 3. Caulfield South (Victoria): Makor Jewish Community Library, 2004, pp. 113–125. Used by permission.

The majority of Jews in France who were victims of the Holocaust were those referred to as “foreign” Jews—those who had arrived in France as immigrants before the war, or their French-born children. Marika Goldfayl’s father was an immigrant from Hungary who arrived in transit to the United States in 1924 and decided to remain. Although the family he established did well in France, the war and the collaborationist Vichy government combined to render the family vulnerable. By 1942, when Marika was eight years of age, her parents decided that she would be safer if hidden as an orphan in a convent school. The memoir here is a segment from Marika’s personal account of what it was like to be placed in this situation. It is a detailed document of orphanage life, and as a result a valuable depiction of this aspect of the Holocaust.

My father, Alexandre Rosenthal, came to Paris from Hungary in 1924, looking for political stability and work, but mainly hoping it would be a stepping stone to America. However, the quotas were full for years to come. He was twenty and had extended family in Paris. In 1929 he went back home to the large provincial town of Kalocsa to visit his family. It was summer and one day he took off on his bicycle to visit Maria Mandel, a distant relative, a widow. She lived in Simontornya, about sixty kilometers cross-country. There he met her sixteen-year-old daughter, Magda, and fell in love with the shy, pretty girl. He wooed her through letters. In 1930 my mother, now eighteen, was brought to Paris by her mother to be married. They stayed in Paris but, like all foreigners, were unable to get French citizenship.

It was during the depression. They were poor but very much in love, a love that did not diminish with the years. My father was an observant Jew who prayed and laid teffilin every day. My mother worked as a seamstress and my father took whatever work he could find. He had trained as a pleater, but at times, he had to work as a housepainter, locksmith and noodle salesman.

I was born in March 1934, by which time my parents had opened a food store at 65 rue Villier de L’isle Adam, in the 20th Arrondissement. We lived at the back of the shop. The business flourished and the small area around our home was like a village, where everybody knew each other. My parents were a popular young couple, with friends both Jewish and non-Jewish. We soon moved to a small but pretty first-floor apartment a few houses up the street. We had to relinquish ownership to an Aryan in 1941 soon after the Germans invaded France.

I had started going to a state school, but my mother removed me and placed me in a Catholic school, by way of camouflage. After a while, she took me to a village not far from Paris, where she paid a kindly older couple without children to keep me. As the situation worsened, I was deemed too much of a risk to be kept on. I spent a few weeks with family friends in Alsace, but that didn’t work out either.

In 1942 my father decided that our best chance of survival was for the family to split up. Because of his Semitic looks, he thought he would put Maman and me in greater danger of deportation by staying. Papa volunteered to work in Germany, as many men did during the war. It was a gamble for him. He was swarthy and had curly black hair—which was considered a “Jewish appearance.” His reasoning was that if anyone had a doubt as to his origins, they would dismiss the thought, since a Jew trying to evade detection would hardly volunteer to go to Germany. He was right, and he survived.

I was eight years old in the spring of 1942, when I was told by my mother that I had to go to yet another hiding place, an orphanage. Acquaintances of my parents, Monsieur and Madame Massault, had arranged with the Mother Superior of a convent in the quartier San Michel that I should become a boarder in the St Vincent de Paul Orphanage located in the convent, while my mother fended for herself in whichever way she could.

The Messaults worked for a wholesaler at Les Halles wholesale market, where my father used to buy fruit and vegetables for the shop. They were a business connection, no more. They had no friendship links with my family, and yet they took the responsibility, at the risk of their safety and that of their three children, to organize my next hiding place.

Maman took me to the orphanage by metro. We only carried a small suitcase, as it was important to be inconspicuous. We got to the narrow rue de la Parcheminerie in the Latin Quarter, and there it was, the inhospitable building that would be my new home for some time. I noticed an old-fashioned shiny brass bell, the type that is set into the wall and is pulled but makes no sound on the street side. Maman pulled the bell and a thin, small, bent woman, nearly bald, came to the door. We entered through a smaller door cut into the large green metal front gate. There was a smell of cabbage and mustiness. Later, it became for me the ubiquitous smell of the orphanage. The concierge led us into the parloir, a cobble-stoned, enclosed waiting area just inside this green metal porte-cochère.

Inside it was dark, daylight only coming into one side of this forbidding parlour from a glass door. There were two long wooden benches lining the sides of the walls. At the back left-hand corner was a glassed-in, cage-like loge for the concierge, a dark stairwell and the glass door to the courtyard, through which I could see the statue of a saint in a recess in the wall, which was covered with ivy. We were told to be seated and to wait. I was frightened by this forbidding place, knowing that I was going to be left there. Writing this down now, more than sixty years later, my body and emotions easily recall that same feeling. My belly aches and my throat feels tight.

After a while, a nun came in. She was the Mother Superior—a large-bellied woman dressed in the St Vincent de Paul habit of that time, a starched white corner coif and a long blue garb. She walked in front of us, the wings of her headgear gently flapping. She showed us to her office and told us WHAT WOULD BE REQUIRED OF ME. I was to fit in as quickly as possibly or, more correctly, blend in with the rest of the children, attend chapel and mass, learn the prayers and catechism as quickly as I could, mother the bits I initially did not know. Under no circumstances was I to go to confession or take communion. And I should not disclose my real identity to anyone, even the priests, even though I had no false identity papers and my surname remained Rosenthal throughout the war. Mother Superior gave me a pink rosary, which was to be in my pocket at all times, because these beads had been blessed! What did all this mean? Neither Maman nor I understood the meaning of many of those words, but we acquiesced. There was a lot to learn and I learnt it all fast.

I would never set foot in Mother Superior’s office again. After this initial preparation, Maman and I were directed back to the dark parloir. We said goodbye silently. Maman held me tight. I can still remember her familiar smell—Chipre, that old-fashioned sweet perfume. A tall, slim nun came to take me into the cold bosom of the Christian place. Maman walked out through that green metal door. I remember it making a bang and she was gone. Would we ever be together again? Papa had said that we would be, and that I should remember Shema Israel (Hear oh Israel) every day and do this even in a church. “Do not forget that you are Jewish, but tell no one, and we will be together again.” Most of the time I believed him, but often I would sink into fear and despair.

As Maman left, the nun led me away. I reached for her hand but with a light smack on the hand, she told me never to do this again. My initiation into the life of a waif had begun. I was then handed over to a young woman called Mademoiselle Christiane, who took me to the second floor and the attic dormitory where she had a grown-up’s single bed with a curtain around it. There were two large rooms leading one into the other. I was shown to a chipped black iron bed at the end of the second room and told that this was now mine, and I was to make the bed after getting up. At home we had doonas and not blankets, so I looked carefully at how I was to make the bed. Nothing in what I did should indicate that I came from a foreign home.

My personal clothes were to be stored in a large wooden box with all of the other children’s Sunday clothes. I was handed a dress, a navy cape and a long calico pocket. This pocket with a vertical opening was to be tied around my waist under my dress, and to reach for a handkerchief I had to go through the vertical slit in the uniform and find the pocket beneath it. I changed from my grey and black velvet dress and fur coat into these very worn and thin clothes. I was given the number 79 and told to remember it, as it would always be my number. Most of the time, I would be addressed as 79. This first evening and night, I was cold and lonely but I did not cry. Shema Israel—Hear oh Israel, we will be together again.

At the orphanage most of the children had no parents, though a few were visited by their mothers, or other relatives. Some children had some disability like a club-foot or some minor intellectual retardation. The orphanage would have been funded by the social services of the time and by the Church. School was a little distance away from the orphanage. I do not recall any learning other than that which pertained to the catechism and copying from the blackboard.

I was hungry, lonely and in a general state of fear—more for my parents than for myself, as I thought that children would perhaps be spared. Why did I think this after I had seen my best friend Helen and her parents and sister Marie dragged screaming into a police car? They were Polish and were taken in the early days of the deportations. I had seen all this from our first floor window, I hid behind the curtain but I was a witness to their drama, their terror. Of course they never returned.

In July of 1942, I was able to spend the school holidays with my mother and uncle and family in Plessis, on the outskirts of Paris, where they were hiding. A photo taken during that time shows me with skinny limbs and a huge tummy, probably the effects of malnutrition. For a few weeks I was happy. I played and fought with my cousin Andre. Sadly, I had to go back to the orphanage and Maman had to fend for herself back in the apartment until she too had to seek shelter elsewhere. She was offered a non-paying job as a maid to a well-to-do family in the country.

I did not see my mother for a long time after that. Increasingly, I feared the future for me and my parents. I didn’t know where Maman was. I only knew that she had to hide somewhere away from home. I clung to the knowledge that my parents’ love for me was boundless; this was the only thing that gave me strength to cope. Their strength and love was lodged within me when I didn’t know whether they were alive or not, or whether I would be abandoned and become like the other children in the orphanage, grey-faced, emotionless, and alone.

On the first floor of the orphanage was the chapel and a large school-like room where we would sit and do our homework. The girl who made the best religious drawing would receive a holy picture. The other room on this first floor had a chapel where we went every morning during the month of May, the month that celebrates the Holy Virgin. In contrast to the dirt and drabness of the rest of the orphanage, the chapel was the only place to have polished floors and flowers—white lilies on either side of the altar. The nuns looked different in this pious environment; even Sister Marie, who directed our routine, looked serene there. She was a short, dark, perpetually angry Italian woman, and when she got really very cross, her starched coif would slide back somewhat, showing the dark stubble on top of her head. The children sniggered at this. I kept quiet … and another day would pass.

In the orphanage there were no toys or any understanding of children and their need for affection and imagination. There was some playtime, when we went out into the yard, but I was reticent, always aware that I might reveal my identity. At that time, before the notion of weekends was adopted in France, we had Thursdays and Sundays off schools. To occupy us on those long days, we would sit in the school-like room and clean our combs—one ordinary comb and another fine one for lice. This activity would take a whole afternoon because the process was designed to keep us occupied. We were given a small piece of white cotton cloth and by pulling some threads out in one direction of the cloth, it was possible to lodge a comb in it and by moving it up and down, clean it. As we were bathed rarely, both we and our combs were dirty.

I can only remember being bathed twice in the time I spent in the orphanage. The bathing took place in the basement. The bath was half-filled and a number of children would be washed with a cloth, but front and backside were not included in this ablution. The trick was not to be first, as the water was too hot, and not to be last, as the water was too dirty. I learnt to volunteer for the bath after the first couple of girls had gone through. I wasn’t fussed about being dirty. We changed knickers only once a week, but the weekly hankie bothered me a lot. As I tended to have a constant cold, it had to be left at night over the rail at the end of my bed. It had usually somewhat dried by the morning, but it was smelly and stiff from days of snot!

Thursday afternoons we were allowed visitors and I saw my mother once, or perhaps twice. After that, she had to hide away from our home and Paris. I did not know where she was or whether she was alive, deported or in hiding somewhere. I had overheard grown-ups say that it was best if children did not know their parents’ whereabouts. I feared that I would be abandoned in this cold place where I was unloved, hungry and alone. My identity had to be my secret. This was so much in contrast to the open and honest relationship I had with everyone prior to this time of shame—shame of being a Jew.

On Sundays children were allowed to go to their family for lunch and had to be back by 4.30 pm. Monsieur Massault picked me up before lunch most Sundays and I would wear my own clothes. I felt happy and normal but tried not to show it, so as not to bring attention to myself. The interior of the Massault home looked like a typical French provincial house with its solid oak furniture, which had been in their family for a long time. The apartment had a smell of beeswax and food cooked with wine. The food was delicious, and I mostly won the games the Massault children, Simone and Pierre, played with me. I was a little younger than them and they kindly often let me win. There was also a baby, Chantal. The Massault home was warm, friendly and safe. Without their kindness and the weekly supplement of a decent meal, I do not know how I would have survived as well as I did.

The food at the orphanage was bad and severely rationed. It was neither sufficient nor nourishing enough, but I ate what I could. I had developed some stomach problems and was told to avoid vinegar and cabbage. In contrast, the nuns ate well.

Many a time I was on vegetable duty, which consisted of scraping the carrots and rutabaga—a sort of beet used as animal feed and given to cows in winter. I found it inedible but some kids ate it. The only good food was the small portion of wartime bread we got twice a day. I was most hungry before bedtime, and I began hiding a piece of bread in my pocket. I got caught once and after that became more careful about my smuggling activity. We ate out of old and dented metal dishes and then dunked them in a bucket of warm water on the way out of the refectory. These dishes were then stacked up, ready for the next meal.

Cold and hungry at bedtime, I devised a puppet show with my toes. No one could see this and I had a story to tell myself about what it would be like after the war. I think that I usually fell asleep before my story finished.

None of the children who were complete orphans played, learnt or made friends. They were passive and sad. One of the most unfortunate was a girl who wet her bed most nights. In the morning the nun on duty would rub the unfortunate child’s face in her wet bedding. The sheet would then be hung over her bed to dry and the whole dormitory stank of it. At night a bucket was placed in the middle of the room as a toilet. If I had to use it, I would stumble half-asleep toward the bucket and if the thing was full, I would be awakened by the wet and cold feeling on my bottom. Nights were long and cold. At times, we could hear and see through the mansard windows the bombing that never felt far away and frightened us a great deal. The allies were bombing the railway yards and armament factories on the outskirts of Paris, possibly five to seven kilometers away.

Most nights a nun, Seour Cecile, who looked after the infants, would come to the dormitory for evening prayer. She told us that if we slept with our arms crossed on our chest, not only would she give the lucky child a picture of a saint, but also if we died during the night in that position, we would become God’s angels. These pictures were prized and collected by the children and I recall trying to sleep in that position, but I was too busy with my toes’ thespian roles and my rescued piece of bread to keep my arms crossed over the blanket in the cold. Damn the consequences, I was cold and hungry! I followed the path of my own redemption by putting something in my belly and hope in my inner self. The evening prayer included a turgid passage in which we asked for God’s forgiveness for having a body. We would kneel next to our beds, get undressed still on our knees and put on pyjamas, a task that required some agility in that position. I doubt that the nuns ever tried that exercise!

The refectory was a long room with a large framed picture of St Therèse de Lisieux behind glass. I was told to sit with the girls of my group. There were three groups, but I never saw the babies and rarely the older girls. I was one of the moyennes—the in-between age. There may have been twenty or twenty-five of us children sitting on a narrow bench at one long table. The first prayer was said over food. There was a prayer for many activities and the longest one was the bedtime one, said on our bony knees in the cold dormitory. Never mind the meaning, just be like the other children and never cry. A self-taught lesson swiftly learned. This was wartime and I had to survive well, as I thought that my responsibility towards my parents was to remain the child they knew.

One day I was told that the convent had been informed that there would be an inspection by the police, as they were looking for certain children. The word “Jew” was never mentioned but there was no need to say who they were looking for: clearly, it could only be Jewish children. I was told I had to leave and return perhaps after the inspection. The Mother Superior had died some time before this event, and my fear of being abandoned if my parents did not return was appeased. Some nuns must have known I was Jewish and I would not have to stay in this place for ever.

I left for our apartment. My mother had sewn a key and a little money in between the lining and the interlining of my fur coat. I took the metro, got home and found that the door was sealed. That is, the police had come for us and, as we were not home, had put seals all around the front door. The seals were wide, packaging-type tape with swastika stamps all over. With the edge of the key, I cut the tape going as high as I could but I was too short and our concierge, Monsieur Cuvilliez, helped me in the task. He apologized for not taking me in and giving me some food. I didn’t realise to what extent this was dangerous for him. I went inside and hid behind my old ebony piano for some time, as it was across the corner of the room. Was I there just one night? Was it more? I don’t remember, but I do remember the chalk marks on the hessian at the back of the piano. Somehow—I can’t remember how—I ended up back at the orphanage and safety.

I stayed there until the middle of winter 1943, when a man I didn’t know came for me. Carrying my little suitcase, we went by train to what turned out to be his summer property, where his family lived and my mother was hiding as their maid. The man was a Monsieur Bach. He was the assistant CEO in a firm that manufactured submarine equipment, at that stage for the Germans. He never said a word to me from the time he picked me up, other than warning me that if there was an identify check, he would deny knowing me. He didn’t know how well I had trained myself. I would not have revealed his connection to me. Better wet myself if I had to. We walked and walked and in the distance to the right there was a lake with the moonlight reflected in it. In the distance I could see electric light. He said, talking for the second time, that this was his home and I would find my mother there. I did not wet myself … and found absolute happiness when she held me with all the love I needed.

At last I had arrived at the end of my “Calvary.” Anything could happen now, I had found my mother. By the end of summer 1944, Maman and I were back in our flat in Paris. This part of the war had ended. Now we had to wait until Papa came back from Germany. Maman took a job in a local button factory and together we waited for his return. By some miracle, we were reunited as a family on Mother’s Day 3 June 1945 and on 25 November 1946 my little sister Annie was born.

VERA HERMAN GOODKIN

Context: Central Europe

Source: Vera Herman Goodkin. In Sunshine and Shadow: We Remember Them. Margate (NJ): ComteQ Publishing, 2006, pp. 71–79. Used by permission.

A little girl born in 1930, Vera Herman Goodkin was a Czech Jew whose parents initially found it difficult to accept that the German people could become transformed into Nazi antisemites seemingly overnight. After the extension of German rule into the Czech lands in March 1939, however, reality had to be accepted. In this account, Vera offers her recollections of what it was like to live under Nazi rule—not only in Czechoslovakia, but also in the family’s land of refuge, Hungary. She provides a testimony that covers a considerable number of topics, taking readers through January 1944. This was just two months before Germany invaded Hungary and the most intense period of mass killing against a single national Jewish community during the Holocaust.

In 1934, when I was about four years old, I started seeing guests I did not recognize in our home. They were neither relatives nor friends. Most stayed a few days, some a few weeks—only to disappear mysteriously and be replaced by others. A couple of years into this process, in 1936, I was old enough to wonder about the meaning of a conversation I overheard between my mother and my beloved maternal grandmother, Sally Burger, who happened to be visiting. “These German Jews who enjoy your hospitality as they seek a safe haven in England, Canada, Israel, or the United States may be seeing the handwriting on the wall. Don’t you think you and your little family should do the same?” My mother was quite upset as she answered, “This is the Republic of Czechoslovakia, our utopia—nothing bad could happen to us here, in this perfect democracy! The German economy is very bad, and Jews are used as scapegoats.” This view had been shared by the majority of German Jews who had learned to love their country and were reluctant to abandon the cultured lifestyle they had carved out for themselves through the generations, reiterating: “What, the nation of Beethoven, Mozart and Goethe, murderers? Never. If we just endure one more indignity, it will all blow over.”

Well, what grandma intuited did happen in our wonderful utopia, soon after the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia on March 15, 1939. Needless to say, as we fled for our lives and tried to warn our Hungarian brothers and sisters, they said—with just as much conviction as my mother did three years before: “In this country, where Jews are among the greatest patriots and members of the aristocracy? Never!” And, of course, they too were wrong! Had we listened to grandma, she and other members of the family may not have been murdered in Auschwitz.

I have often been asked: “Why did the Jews of Europe LET it happen?” A simple question, in retrospect the answer is that while we had some options, we did not want to believe the dangers—and the world stood idly by. When we finally did believe, it was too late. Ultimately the Nuremberg Laws of 1935—race, citizenship, and marriage laws that discriminated against Jews—stripped Jews, all over Europe of their constitutional rights, their dignity, and, eventually, their sense of humanity.

Volumes have been filled with variations on the dehumanization theme. We were stripped of our human dignity by degrees, with a never-ending series of edicts, harassments, and deprivations. Above all, we had become non-citizens, non-human beings—we could no longer vote or fly the flag; we were barred from parks and movie houses. We were no longer under the protection of the law. We could be beaten, spat on, or killed in broad daylight, and the perpetrators could walk away with impunity. In all Central European countries, the pattern was pretty much the same. After we were no longer allowed to practice a profession, run a business, own property, be admitted to universities or public schools, hospitals or parks, we were even required to surrender our winter outerwear.

Then in the summer of 1939, the professional men in my hometown, including my father, were put on wheelbarrow brigades to ferry large rocks across wooden planks connecting sheer cliffs. These laborers endured humiliation and abuse—aside from the obvious danger to life and limb. Work began at 4:00 AM without a lunchbreak, ending at sundown, and they were not even paid for this labor.

In view of the escalating brutality, in mortal fear of their own and their children’s future, friends of ours made a fateful decision. Parents of two boys aged six and twelve, they heard an SS patrol approaching their hideout and had to make an agonizing decision. Knowing that the twelve year old had the survival skills to try to make it on his own, they hid him, while keeping the six year old with them, thereby opting for life for one of their children and death for the other. Is it any wonder that a member of the Danish clergy, Pastor Ivar Lange, declared: “I would rather die with the Jews than live with the Nazis.”

To make sure that Jews could readily be identified and targeted for ridicule and abuse, a yellow felt star, six inches in diameter, was sewn on the left side of the chest of all adults and children. In Hungary, even infants did not escape this badge of shame that had to be pinned to their carriages and strollers. Failure to display the star prominently was a criminal offence punishable by penalties ranging from fines to sentences of death, depending on judicial whim.

My parents and I were subjected to dehumanization and persecution in many settings between 1939–1945. As a person saved by Raoul Wallenberg, I can emphasize the staggering contrast between a man like Wallenberg and the predominant majority of people in Nazi-dominated countries.

The process of dehumanization began with incredible manifestations and grew like a malignancy toward the ultimate goal of murder. The jovial barber refused to cut my father’s hair. My third-grade classmates started to call me names. Family friends reduced the amount of contact, and, finally, appealed to my parents’ sense of fairness to let them go completely, so they would not be troubled for associating with Jews.

Then came the curfew from sunset to sunrise. All the while, I heard and watched my father get up and go downstairs with a pail of water and a brush before dawn each day to scrub the scurrilous propaganda off his office sign, so that his remaining patients would not be affronted by that obscene graffiti. Soon he was forbidden to practice medicine and drafted into forced labor.

How prophetic were my hysterical screams of fear when I heard the Nazi troops in the town square on March 15, as I lay in bed recovering from a severe cold. “They’re going to kill us!” I cried, and that was exactly what they had in mind, but in slow, painful stages.

In the fall of 1939, I remember being delegated to take a goose to the Shochet (a man in the Jewish community who is authorized to kill animals) for ritual slaughtering (a ceremony strictly forbidden by the authorities) when we still managed to have meat for the holidays, on the theory that no one would suspect a nine-year-old girl of such nefarious activity. Their reasoning was flawless, but even after all these years, I still shudder recalling the fear each time the bird stirred inside the bag and imagining a whole squadron of police descending on me, should it decide to squawk.

One might well ask: “Where did all this cruelty come from in a former ideal democracy?” I guess, I must agree with Voltaire that given a few rabble rousers, the rabble soon surfaces everywhere.

Throughout the fall of 1939, I remember my parents’ frequent mysterious late night trips into Prague to meet with high officials who were afraid to associate with their now disgraced Jewish citizens by daylight. Whatever my parents sought, they were only partially successful. They did obtain permission to ship part of their belongings to storage in the United States. When survival was at stake, efforts to immigrate to the United States failed because of a technicality. The authorities refused to grant us a passport, and my father, a law-abiding citizen, would not leave the country illegally. Imagine that: a law-abiding citizen who has paid his taxes and honored his country, a man who would do nothing illegally, being refused a passport, being harassed, forbidden to practice his profession, and then forced to perform hard labor!

Thus, the last door to freedom was shut tight, and we became hostages. Homeless and virtually penniless, my parents admitted defeat. Shortly thereafter, in late 1939, we became seasoned escapees. With the exception of a few months spent in relative safety with my grandparents, as well as with my Uncles Zoltan and Denes in 1940 and 1941, for the next three and a half years, we huddled in more attics, cellars, and behind more false walls than we could have imagined. We managed, somehow, to keep ourselves one step ahead of the Nazis and their collaborators who were always ready, willing, and able to do the Nazis’ dirty work by delivering three more Jews for bondage and destruction.

In the Spring of 1941, we left Hungary for a hiding place in Losonc (Czech name: Lucˇenec) in Slovakia, the area of the former Czechoslovakia with a large Hungarian-speaking minority. For a few months, in the daytime, the three of us occupied a tiny, windowless space like a walk-in closet in a summer cottage. At night, it became safe for me to sleep in an adjacent closet. Separated from my parents—if only by a thin wall—created tremendous anxiety, so much so that I would knock lightly on the wall at various times throughout the night, listening for the reassuring knock on the other side of the wall before I could fall asleep again. We had minimal contact with our rescuer, a “closet Social Democrat,” my father’s former colleague.

In the fall of 1941, when our rescuer began to feel at risk, we had to find another place—this time in a village east of Losonc, where our accommodations were even more claustrophobic. We hid behind a false wall and our diet was much more sparse. However, we were immensely grateful for the farmer’s kindness and generosity that afforded us an opportunity to survive a bit longer. He, however, was reluctant to continue putting his family in harm’s way. Consequently, we were on our way again in a matter of weeks, passed on from one member of a rescuer network to another. We were truly becoming “wandering Jews,” spending the spring and summer of 1942 in a hideout in the densely wooded Tatra Mountains of Slovakia. With the threat of a cold winter coming, our next destination was the small town of Banská Bystrica where we were living in one rescuer’s attic from December 1942 and another’s cellar from late April until our capture in November 1943.

Having been denounced in our last hiding place in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, in November of 1943, we were visited by four members of the Jewish property confiscation team. The group consisted of one member of the SS, one representative of the Slovak Secret Police, one local collaborator (probably the one who had given us away) and one member of the Jewish community, a young attorney forced to join the unholy trio to draw up papers, making this confiscation legal. We wondered why on earth they had bothered. There was nothing worth confiscating.

Within a few weeks after this visit, after the SS kidnapping of Jewish women between the ages of 18–25, both single and married, for the use of the German troops at the front, the Jewish community of Banská Bystrica was included on the Auschwitz deportation list. We knew that, as aliens, we would be part of the first transport. The situation looked truly hopeless until my mother found out that there was an underground group, akin to the underground railroad for slaves, consisting of some families whose farm properties spanned the Slovak-Hungarian border. Occasionally, members of these families were willing to guide escapees across to Hungary. Although it was common knowledge that almost the entire population of Hungary had already been deported in May and June 1944, there was still one notable exception: the Jewish Community of Budapest. Why? Because the War Refugee Board, the International Red Cross, the Vatican and the Swedish government intervened to stop the deportations of the Budapest Jews. While this last intact Jewish community in Europe was subject to the same edicts and harassment as the rest had been before deportation, they were still on home ground and ALIVE. As a result, getting to Budapest gave those capable of it a ray of hope for survival. We survived one day, one hour, at a time.

Understandably, there was great demand for the services of this underground group. My mother had many doors slammed in her face before she was able to make contact. We were instructed to remove the yellow stars, to be careful not to leave any tell-tale yellow threads behind, to get on a local train without any luggage, and try to look inconspicuous in the hopes of not being asked for identification papers. When we got off the train, we were to follow, at a respectable distance, a tall young man at the end of the platform.

We lucked out: the train trip went off without a hitch. The young man led us to a cottage in the woods consisting of one large room that held three generations of his family and some small farm animals. As we approached, he propped a long ladder against the attic window, motioning us to climb in through the partially opened window. Just before we did so, he whispered: “Please be quiet; my mother-in-law is a Nazi sympathizer. If she knew you were here, you would not be here very long.”

Obviously, we followed his admonition to the letter. We did get a bit stressed out when we realized that we were sharing the attic with the farmer’s rats. I remember removing my head scarf and tying it round my father’s balding head to keep him from being attacked by those creatures. The next night, when the family was asleep, the young farmer propped the ladder against the window, signaling to us that it was time to go. We had heard rain on the roof all day, but we had no idea of its torrential proportions. By the time we reached the bottom of the ladder, we were soaked to the skin. Then the trek began. The young farmer led us into the darkness of a nightmarish November night. The downpour drenched our bodies, and the mud made walking difficult and painful. With each step, we sank ankle-deep into the mud. We literally had to extract each foot from the mud and shake off the excess before taking another step. That labor-intensive process kept us focused on getting ahead one step at a time. Our guide, however, noticed an unaccustomed flicker of light at a distance. Quite logically, he feared we might be apprehended because of a change in the usual guard, and he certainly did not want to be caught with us. His spontaneous decision was to turn on his heels and head home without a word, leaving us to our own devices in the pitch-dark forest in the pouring rain.

I can still remember the crippling exhaustion that overtook me, along with an eerie sense of relief that the journey was over. In my almost thirteen year old mind, I could only picture how wonderful it would be to slump down against one of those giant trees and go to sleep—the rationale being that I may just wake from this nightmare safe and sound. Then, of course, if the experience was real, not waking up may not have been the worst solution. I said so to my mother, but she was not impressed. Giving up my fantasy, I watched in utter amazement as she broke away from us, pursuing our guide at an incredible pace. “You have children of your own,” she cried out, “Are you going to let this one die?” Miraculously, she won.

He motioned to us to follow him to the border. The next night, we made it across the Hungarian border and boarded a train for Budapest where Jews, while harassed, still lived in relative safety. This successful escape bought us two more months, into January 1944, a miracle we could, at the time, appreciate more than the native Jewish population. As alien Jews, we had to appear for daily roll call at a police station. Aware of our poverty and special vulnerability, members of the Jewish community, particularly those fortunate enough to still be in their own homes, tried to help us out with frequent dinner invitations. We were especially befriended by one family. They had two young daughters, and our mothers had become close friends. One Friday evening when we were unable to let them know we would be late for a Sabbath eve dinner because of some extra police harassment, the hostess was quite perturbed, bemoaning the fact that her excellent meal had grown stale. We tried to reassure her that it was still delicious, but she seemed inconsolable. When our reprieve, and theirs, was over, we lost contact with the family. At a random post-war meeting my mother found out that our fate was ultimately much more merciful than theirs. They had been deported to Auschwitz, with only the mother and one daughter surviving. Most poignantly, as soon as mother’s friend saw her, she threw her arms about her and exclaimed: “Oh, Margit, Margit! Now I know why cold potatoes don’t matter!”

SHIRLEY BERGER GOTTESMAN

Context: Extermination Camps and Sites

Source: Shirley Berger Gottesman and Maryann McLoughlin. A Red Polka-Dotted Dress: A Memoir of Kanada II. Margate (NJ): ComteQ Publishing, 2011, pp. 20–25. Used by permission.

Shirley Berger Gottesman’s memoir of Kanada II in Auschwitz, and various other slave labor camps in Germany, is an astonishing testimony that both horrifies and inspires. Originally from Záluž, in Transcarpathian Poland/Ukraine, she lived with her parents and four siblings in a community that included her extended family, grandmother, aunts, and uncles. In April 1944 the family was deported to a ghetto in nearby Munkács, and a short time later they were sent to Auschwitz. Shirley, then sixteen, was assigned to Kanada II, given a uniform (the red polka-dotted dress), and told to sort the possessions brought from the cattle cars. Her barrack was only ten feet away from Crematorium IV. In her memoir (named for the red polka-dotted dress she wore), she describes the horror of what she both lived through and witnessed on a daily basis.

In the morning the Kapos (prisoners in charge of a group of inmates) took us to the big camp in Birkenau where Lagers A, B, and C were located…. They directed us to a barrack full of bunk beds.

Each morning we had to awake early and go outside for Appell (roll call) for a few hours, during which time we were counted. After Appell, they gave us food or something to drink. The food was unbelievably disgusting. We had one bowl for coffee and soup. We had no spoon; therefore we had to drink everything. We always had to share with the women in our row.

Because I had just arrived, I could not grasp what was happening. I was not even hungry. I was in shock.

At Appell we had to stand in alphabetical order. They counted us off—there were so many of us! They wrote down names: our parents’ names and our names. They gave us numbers with the Star of David insignia. My number was A5812. They painted a red line on the back of our grey dresses with enamel paint, so it would not come off. They were very professional and efficient.

The Aryans had green triangles; they worked in the offices. There were other colors as well. Some Russians wore red triangles because they were Communists, political prisoners.

I was assigned to the Effektenlager II (camp of belongings), called Kanada II Kommando (work group). It was called Kanada because many considered Canada a wealthy country and a desired emigration destination.

They took us to Kanada II, or Section BIIg, where the thirty barracks for workers assigned to Kanada II were located—between Crematoria III and IV…. At first, they took us every day from the Birkenau women’s camp to Kanada II—back and forth. Then they emptied two barracks for Kanada II women, so we did not have to go back and forth to the camp. My barrack was ten feet away from Crematorium IV that had a disrobing area, a large gas chamber, and crematorium ovens. Across the street were barracks for “Aryans,” for SS and office workers.

Each barrack had a Kapo, a foreman (Führerarbeiter), and a few helpers. The Kapos watched over us all; the SS over everything. The Kapos were on good terms with the Germans—not a friendship, certainly; however, they would schmooze around a lot of the time. I remember an Austrian from Vienna, an elderly gentleman, an office worker. He was sitting on a windowsill across from our barracks, playing a song on his harmonica: “Vienna. Vienna. You alone, You will always be in my dreams.” I suppose he was homesick for Vienna. I was homesick and lonely. I wanted my mother and aunts.

There were fifteen barracks in the compound. These were for different commodities that we were sorting as well as for the bathhouse and the mechanics and carpenters. Shoes, dishes, and pans were sorted outside in huge piles.

We could go to Barracks 5, 6, 7; that is, we could go where we worked and to the bathhouse. We could go to these as we pleased. If we had to go farther, however, we had to have guards with us.

Very few people in comparison to the numbers in the camp worked in Kanada. There were a lot of Slovaks who had been there a long time. They spoke perfect German because Slovakia was so close to the border. Jewish people tended to learn a number of languages. I remember we were with people from Poland. I spoke Yiddish and Czech, so I learned Polish quickly. The women I worked with were older: I remember Guta, Genya, and Mikla; we worked in groups. I was like a child to them because I was younger.

One had had a child. At the selection, she was told, “Give the girl to her grandfather. That will be easier. You will work and her grandfather will take care of her.”

Both the child and her grandfather were murdered.

We talked about our past and our future hopes. We tried to make the best of our present. Of the future we were frightened, at times.

We were lucky in that we could have showers there. Thousands in Auschwitz-Birkenau did not have that chance; instead, they were murdered in the so-called showers. We also could have all the clean clothes that we wanted. At first we wore grey dresses. However, they decided that they wanted to know who was who. Therefore, each barrack was assigned a different colored dress: the women in my barrack wore red dresses with white polka dots; another barrack had blue dresses with the white polka dots. To me this seemed incongruous—bizarre! To be wearing cheerily colored uniforms, and ten feet away people were being gassed and burned. They still painted the red stripe on the back of our dresses.

In early June 1944, I began working in Kanada II. From the cattle cars everything was brought to Kanada I or II. We were isolated in our section of Kanada, sorting. I saw only what happened near my section. I worked sorting what people had brought in. I sorted these into different piles. Then the trucks came and hauled the bundles away.

When I went to the barracks to work, I looked at what was happening in Crematoria III and IV. Long lines went into the building but never came out. Girls who had already been there for years told us, the more recent arrivals, that everybody not selected for work was gassed and burned.

They said, “It is only a matter of time; we will all go there.”

When later I found my two aunts, Helen and Pepe, still alive in the camp, they said to me: “Imagine, the Blockova (Polish barrack leader), said, ‘You will never see your parents again.’ Imagine how mean she is.”

I said, “No. She is correct. Look over there.”

Helen said, “No!”

I said, “Yes. Believe it.”

Two crematoria were on one side; two on the other side. When we went to work, we had to go between the crematoria. We could see inside. Near the crematoria the grass was nicely kept—green. I saw chimneys. The fumes were terrible, especially in the summer. The odor of burning flesh! Years after, when I smelled burning, I would scream. For example, when my husband was burning trash.

Once I saw a bunch of men with black faces marching from the crematoria; they looked like chimney sweeps. As they marched past me, I offered one a hankie. We could say a word or two, always we mentioned the town where we were from. If the Kapos saw us talking longer, we were beaten. These men, I learned, were the Sonderkommandos, who emptied the gas chambers, pulled the gold teeth of the victims and cut their hair; they also searched the bodies for valuables that they may have hidden. Then they burnt the bodies in the ovens, and when the bodies were consumed by the flames, they removed the ashes. They said that the Sonderkommando who worked inside prayed. I also heard that every three months, they changed the Sonderkommandos. The work was very hard on them; they rapidly deteriorated. Then the older ones were themselves put in the gas chambers. They selected new strong Sonderkommandos from incoming groups.

Daily and nightly I saw lines and lines, ten or fifteen feet away, all marching in a line. They motioned to us. We couldn’t tell them. We motioned back, rubbing our cheeks—we meant by this to wash or to shower….

I never saw anyone I knew in line for the gas chambers and crematorium. Our group had come in one transport. When I went home, people my age, as well as those younger and older, had not come back. Only a dozen or so returned….

The people were usually quiet, walking slowly; rarely did they talk—they were too exhausted. The people had usually traveled for days. They didn’t resist. They had been made to give up life before they were even in the gas chambers. The whole set up, traveling for days and everything! They were debilitated and despondent.

The transports usually arrived at night. People didn’t know where they were going or where they had arrived. The SS sent them through quickly. Once they were inside the building we didn’t hear anything. I heard that they prayed….

It was unbelievable. No one could have imagined that they would do to people what they did. They were so systematic and so organized. Everything was planned to the T. Scientists must have worked on the plan. It was so unbelievable. I can’t even conceive of what they did. Impossible! We were ready for work. We were even ready not to have enough food. We were not ready to be gassed. It is unbelievable to think that some of us could live through this and not lose our sanity.

I. BETTY GREBENSCHIKOFF

Context: Before the War

Source: I. Betty Grebenschikoff. Once My Name Was Sarah: A Memoir. Ventnor (NJ): Original Seven Publishing Company, 1992, pp. 32–37. Used by permission.

Like many Jewish children who witnessed firsthand the German antisemitic pogrom of November 9–10, 1938—the so-called Reich Kristallnacht—Ilse Kohn (Betty Grebenschikoff) was horrified by the violence that was brought against the Jewish community. In one sense, however, this was, as she writes, a “culmination” of the Nazi measures since 1933. Betty’s account relates how it was that her father sought ways to secure safety for her and her sister Edith, in particular by finding a means to send them to Palestine. When this did not eventuate due to their mother’s refusal to part with them, another attempt was made to relocate the whole family to some Latin American country, but this, too, fell through. Finally, after these false starts, the family secured passage on a Japanese ship for Shanghai, there to start a new life that would see them escape Germany just four months before the outbreak of war.

Smoldering anti-semitism in Central Europe finally burst into full bloom, with the encouragement and active participation of the Hitler regime. Restrictions and penalties levied at Jews, so-called Aryanization of Jewish businesses and enterprises in Germany became more and more widespread, culminating with what came to be known as Crystal Night, in November of 1938. Hundreds of Jewish stores, homes and synagogues were destroyed by the Nazis while the police looked the other way. In many cases, the authorities helped in the destruction, as well as taking part in beatings and abuse of Jewish people, who had the misfortune of being out on the streets that night.

Every pane of glass in our synagogue on Levetzostrasse was shattered. We used to go to this temple, with my parents, on the High Holidays and for Friday evening Shabbat services.

After the Kiddush was sung by the Cantor and the congregation, the children were always invited by the Rabbi to gather on the Bimah, where little glasses of grape juice were poured for us. We all stood in a row, drinking our wine, then we went back to sit with our parents, as the service continued.

The building was gutted, the prayer books and torahs with their embroidered velvet covers set on fire. The police, aided by mobs of hooligans, forced Jewish men and women to clean up the debris in the street on their hands and knees. Several weeks later on the way to my grandparents’ house, we walked by some of the looted Jewish shops and synagogues. We could still hear glass crunching beneath our feet.

Old, confident beliefs of security and safety in the civilized world of German life and culture were shattered along with the glass that night. That security proved to be just an illusion, was difficult for German Jews to comprehend at first. But the time had come to face reality. Nothing would ever be the same again.

Beginning on a small scale in 1933, Hitler’s regime of terror escalated over the next few years. The assimilation of the Jews into German sciences, their contributions to musical, educational and cultural pursuits ended in arrests, persecution and death.

By the late thirties, my parents were desperately looking for ways to escape from Germany. Besides trying to get the family to safety, my father also tried to avoid the expected summons by the Gestapo. They were rounding up Jewish males for what was euphemistically known as “Questioning.” Frequently these sessions were followed by imprisonment.

“Well children, aren’t we lucky? We are all getting new middle names.” My father was still trying to appear optimistic, while at the same time my mother was in tears.

In the summer of 1938, another edict had been handed down by the Germans. It was the addition of the name Sara for Jewish females, and Israel, for Jewish males, to be used as legal middle names. All our papers had to be changed to the new names at the police station, to better identify us officially as Jews.

At the age of eight, the significance of this latest intentional degradation escaped me at the time.

I was fast becoming confused by all my names anyhow. My middle name of Margot was dropped for the time being. From my great-grandmother Bettina, I had inherited a third name, Betty. That name disappeared altogether for several years, until I resurrected it later, when I was about sixteen.

According to the Germans, from now on I was officially Ilse Sara Kohn. My last two school report cards were made out in this name. My teachers signed them, including their new middle names. However, my father ignored the whole business and sent my report cards back to school, using his original Max Kohn signature.

Emigrating to the United States or other desirable countries was difficult for us, as we did not have necessary quota numbers or visas. Born in Czechoslovakia, my father carried a Fremdenpass, which was an identity certificate for people without a proper passport. This Fremdenpass had to be renewed punctually by the German police. For reasons known only to themselves, the Germans did not choose stateless Jews for the concentration camps, when they first started with their selections. Later, no more exceptions were made.

Living in Berlin since he was a young man, my father fought for the Germans in the First World War. He never held a German passport and did not qualify for German quote numbers for immigration to the U.S.A. Not having a proper passport, he was also denied entry into many other countries. Beside all these problems, the fact remained that we did not have any relatives outside of Germany who could sponsor us anyway.

Jewish leaders urged their people to leave the country as soon as possible, or at least to send their children out of Germany. My sister and I were put on the list of Aliyah children who were being sent out to Palestine.

These children became part of the early kibbutzim settlers of what later became the State of Israel. My cousin Heinz Kohn whose Bar-Mitzvah I attended two years earlier, went to Palestine on one of these transports. As it turned out later, he was the only member of his family to survive the war. He told me his story some five decades later, when we re-established contact with each other.

Heinz became a volunteer soldier in the British Army in Palestine when he was eighteen years old. He was to spend nearly five years in the army, serving in Egypt and Libya and was present at the Allied invasion in Salerno, Italy. During that time, his mother Rosa, who was my maternal grandfather’s sister, her husband Karl and a sister Lizzy were sent to Theresienstadt by the Germans. They did not survive. Heinz, whose Hebrew name is Seew, now lives in Israel with his wife Deborah, surrounded by their children and grandchildren.

Edith and I were all excited about leaving for Palestine. We belonged to a Theodore Herzl Club in Berlin, where we learned to sing Hebrew pioneer songs. We had heard all about kibbutz life in sunny Palestine, where everyone lived and worked together, marching off into the fields to pick oranges, wearing little sunhats and waving blue and white flags. At least that was the way it looked in picture books. It sounded good to us, we could not wait to pack our bags. But my mother did not want to split the family up. At last, after much agonizing, she refused to let us go, afraid that she would never see us again. Her instinct was of course quite right, but we were rather disappointed that we were not going to be pioneers after all.

For a while it looked as though my father might be successful in getting us all out to South America. Spanish lessons by a tutor started at home. The one phrase we all remembered was “Vaya con Dios, senor, pero vaya.” In later years this became a family joke. One of us would whisper it to the other, when a guest overstayed his welcome. “Go with God, Sir, but go.”

The South American venture fell through and the Spanish tutor was quickly replaced by an English speaking one, just in case we could go somewhere where English was needed.

I remember waking up one night, that spring, when my Onkel Ernst came to say goodbye to us. His white scarf contrasted against his navy blue coat, as he stood in the dark corridor embracing my mother. Carrying only a small suitcase, and a summons from the Gestapo tucked in his pocket, he fled to Prague, where he had arranged to meet his fiancée, Martel. After a quick marriage ceremony, they went across to England, where they made a living hiring themselves out as a butler and maid team.

When the war was over they settled in Nottingham. My uncle, by then known as an anglicized Ernest Miller, went into the insurance business, Aunt Martel operated a boarding house for many years.

Our family made several trips to the Berlin train station to say good-bye to friends and relatives. There was a distant cousin whose name was Ilse, just like mine. She was from the Koeppler family and was being sent out to England along with a group of Jewish children. Her navy beret jammed over her straight brown hair, she waved to us out of the train window, until we could not see her anymore. She survived the war, living with an English family, who later adopted her. Her sister, Marianne, was a nurse and was not allowed to leave by the authorities. The Germans used her to work in their hospitals during the early part of the war. Later she was sent to her death in a concentration camp, along with her parents.

As more and more countries refused entry to us, it finally became clear to my parents, that the one place left for us to save our lives was China. Many thousands of miles away, accessible only by a long sea voyage, it was a totally different country whose climate, oriental environment and questionable political and economic outlook, not to mention the language problem, was largely unknown to us. Shanghai was, however, the one spot where European Jews were permitted to land without a visa, affidavit or certificate of guarantee, considered so necessary by other countries.

The Japanese shipping company, Nippon Yusen Kaisha, whose ships sailed to the Orient, gave my father a negative reply, when he tried to buy tickets for a sailing to Shanghai. They were booked for months ahead. However, when my father returned again and pleaded with them to re-examine his papers, which incidentally contained 500 German marks for the shipping officer folded inside, the reply was more hopeful.

A few days later, my father received a telephone call with the good news. Two first class cabins were reserved for us on the Kashima Maru, sailing from Naples to Shanghai, on May 21, 1939.

JADZIA (JEANETTE) ALTMAN GREENBAUM

Context: Salvation

Source: Jadzia (Jeanette) Altman Greenbaum and Maryann McLoughlin. 2 More Weeks, Deutschland Kaput! Margate (NJ): ComteQ Publishing, 2008, pp. 40–45. Used by permission.

Bergen-Belsen was perhaps the supreme example of the chaos, overcrowding, and general horror that struck all the Nazi concentration camps, and the image of the camp at the time of its liberation by the British in April 1945 has left just as indelible an image of the Nazi system on the Western mind as Auschwitz has in its. Born in the Polish city of Będzin, Jadzia Greenbaum survived a series of labor camps and a death march before arriving at Belsen. Even at that time, she was barely alive, and then she contracted typhus, as well. The account here describes her recollections of that awful time in Belsen, and the liberation of the camp by the British that saved her life.

From Flossenbürg, they took us on a cattle train. We were on this train for one week with little food. They gave us black, clay-like bread and told us to save it for a few days. There was no water unless it rained. Then we would stick our hands out and get a little rainwater. There was only a bucket for a toilet. But who needed to go! We didn’t eat. We didn’t have water except for a little rainwater.

While we were traveling, we thought that they were taking us north. But then they took us south. Then the train stopped and we stayed a half-day on the tracks not moving. After this they brought us to Bergen-Belsen. By this time there were a lot of dead people on our train.

When we stopped we saw a little gully with big frogs in the water. The water was clear so we ran over and drank the water in that gully. What did we care about being sick! We needed water.

One German soldier said to us, “You are going to a paradise, to Hotel Paradise.” We could not believe him. An older German soldier passing by said, “Kinder, you won’t get out from here.” …

Then they began to march us into the camp. At the entrance to Bergen-Belsen we saw little bungalows with little ribboned curtains on the windows and flower gardens around the bungalows. Initially we thought these were for us. (Actually, the SS lived in them.) However, once past the bungalows, we started to see barracks, then we saw dead bodies, and we saw skeletal people barely walking—musselman. As we were walking down the road, we saw a wheeled wagon that people were pushing. The wagon was loaded with dead bodies. We started to smell something dreadful. We could not understand what the smell was. Then we realized that dead people were piled up behind the barracks and the bodies were being burned. We let that wagon through and then we saw the barrack-section where we would be staying.

I saw that Bergen-Belsen had two main sections with a road running through the middle; one section on one side of the road and the other section on the other side. They took us into one section where we saw a huge tent and a big barrack. There were three rooms in this long barrack. In the first room were non-Jewish Polish women from the Warsaw Uprising (not the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in which Jewish Poles fought). In the second room, more Polish women. In the third we went in to take a look and dead people were lying there. We looked in the tent—dead people there too. Next they took the dead bodies from the third room, putting these in the big tent. We were given the third room.

We went into the big room. Then we looked down at the cement floor. The floor seemed to be writhing. We looked closer and saw white crawling things—maggots from the dead bodies that had been in the room or big lice from their bodies. We wanted to leave immediately. The guard said, “No one leaves.” We started to stamp on the maggots or lice. They told us to sit down on the floor. There was only one straw bed; this Mitzi and her two sisters took.

Next day when we woke up we were covered in lice. Mitzi came out and she and both sisters were also full of lice. She said, “Don’t be shy.” Each one took the back of the other girl. “Lice each other.” She said, “You are full of lice. This is how you kill them.” Then she showed us to how to crush them with our nails. From then until the end of the war, I had lice. A lot of girls became ill from typhus that the lice carried. But I didn’t have typhus then.

We had no water not even to drink, and no toilet. Sometimes we needed to use the toilet. We had to go outside to an open pit that had a few seats. Running water was on the other side to clean away the waste. I went over one time.

Because we were so crowded the non-Jewish Polish women figured they could take a few Jewish women in their barracks. They took in forty of us. I was one. That was a little, teeny bit better. At least I was not on cement but on plywood on top of cement. But I still had the lice. Polish women had lice too. The whole place was full of lice.

Behind us was a road and barbed wire. On one side they were burning the dead. On the other side were foreigners, civilians—English, American, South American, and Chinese, wearing their own belongings—dressed nicely. The Germans had taken them as hostages, I suppose.

One night the Polish priest, a prisoner, came into the Polish barrack. He told them to pray. He said, “The war will soon be over.” I said, “We’re Jewish.” He said to us, “You pray in your way. We’ll pray in ours.” So we prayed….

Suddenly we heard little tanks approaching and stopping. We ran to the wires, screaming, and sticking our hands out the wire. We ran so hard that the dust from the ground came up in clouds. We saw a star on the tanks. I thought, “O my God! We’re liberated.” Then the tank turned around and went away. We were so disappointed that some girls began to cry and sob.

Later that day a jeep with four speakers drove in, broadcasting in many languages. “The war is not over, but you are liberated. However, we cannot open the gate and let you out because of the typhus in the camp. We still have to fight the Germans; we cannot let our soldiers become ill with typhus. We are bringing you food.” We never got this food for two or three days….

At last we knew we had been liberated. No one was on the watchtowers anymore. The Germans had run away before the British had arrived. The Germans had told the Hungarian POWs to watch us. Some girls got out and went over the ditches and the Hungarian guards shot them just before the end. Two girls tried to escape and one was shot. This was heartbreaking!

When the Germans left they had taken the foreign citizens with them, they left only the sick foreigners and a lot of clothing. We didn’t have clothing, just rags. We went over, opened the wire between the barracks, and took some clothing. I took myself a fur coat. At least I was warm. But I was still hungry!

When we came back, the English started to give us food. We sent girls to the kitchen with a clean garbage can and they brought us back the food. At first they fed us a hearty soup with big pieces of meat and fat. They meant well, but this was not good for people who had not eaten for days and who were not used to a rich diet. People became very sick and some died.