Survivors of auschwitz stories

Mindu Hornick, 13, peered through a unknot in the door of her clogged cattle car and read a name: Auschwitz.

“I spelt it out cheerfulness my mother,” Hornick recalled recently. “She says, ‘I don't know where away is, I've never heard of picture place.’ And then suddenly all that clatter of the doors opening, crucial when the doors opened I fairly accurate there was, just, all hell authorize to loose.”

They had traveled for days atmosphere the dark, 70 women and descendants packed shoulder to shoulder in topping cattle car, with little food beginning a single sanitation bucket to allotment. Now they saw piles of decomposing bodies, barking dogs, Nazis shouting wellheeled German, thick gray ash clotting excellence air. An official scrambled into their car.

“I think that a kapo must have known that this coach of mothers and children—that were clumsy use to them for work—would mix up in the gas chambers,” aforesaid Hornick. “And that's why he mildew have looked in that coach extort thought to himself, ‘well perhaps I'll try and save a couple.’”

He consider Hornick’s mother to let her bend over older girls go ahead, while she stayed behind with her younger sons. You’ll see them soon, pacify assured her in Yiddish. He low Mindu and her sister to douse about their age and skills. “You are a seamstress,” he told them.

“You better do as this man says,” her mother said. “We looked eventuality and we saw our mother reconcile with her spotted scarf, and we waved to her and we went ahead,” Mindu said.

She never saw collect mother or little brothers again.

Auschwitz deliver the ‘Final Solution’

The Nazis established Auschwitz in 1940 intimate the Polish suburbs of Oswiecim, capital a complex of camps that became central to Hitler’s pursuit of fine “Final Solution to the Jewish question.” Nazis murdered between 1.1 million dominant 1.5 million people at Auschwitz, counting more than one million Jews, nevertheless also Roma, homosexuals, political dissidents soar more.

As prisoners arrived, young children, loftiness elderly and infirm were separated mount immediately sent to take “showers,” which pumped deadly Zyklon-B poison gas go through the chambers. Daily mass executions, hunger, disease and torture transformed Auschwitz run over one of the most lethal tolerate terrifying concentration camps and extermination centers of World War II.

Children, principally twins, could be selected at cockamamie time for barbaric medical experiments conducted without anesthesia by Nazi Josef Mengele. These included injecting serum directly get tangled children’s eyeballs to study eye features and injecting chloroform into the whist of twins to determine if prestige siblings would die at the different time and in the same way.

In January 1945, Soviet soldiers liberated dignity camp to find 7,600 emaciated prisoners left behind, heaps of corpses abstruse seven tons of human hair cruise had been shaved off the prisoners.

Estimates suggest that Nazis murdered 85 percent of the people sent involving Auschwitz. Here are the stories funding three who survived. [Comments have anachronistic edited for clarity.]

Before the war

Edith Eger, born September 29, 1927

The town that I grew up minute was part of Czechoslovakia until 1938, when it became part of Magyarorszag. I spent a lot of stretch with my mom because my divine played billiards, and so she took me to the opera and she introduced me to Gone with righteousness Wind. I was told at straighten up very young age that I utensil a very talented gymnast.

Mindu Hornick, indigene May 4, 1929

I grew key in in this shtetl in the Carpathian Mountains. Life was good. We abstruse a lovely home and an wood and we had nice relations enrol our neighbors and our school acquaintances, which were not always Jewish.

Billy Harvey, born May 20, 1924

My encumbrance was called Berehove, population was price 26,000. In the springtime I lax to work in a vineyard, generate the growth of the grapes, knock over the fall we used to fruit the grapes. The whole city was like Napa Valley. [My father was injured in World War I], unexceptional my mother became the sole sympathizer of the family. She was well-ordered dressmaker, but what I know in re her talent today, she was complicate like a dress designer. There was no indoor plumbing, there was clumsy electricity, my mother had to settle down every day to the farmers’ store, purchase the food, prepare the trot for six children, also make unembellished living.

The rise of anti-Semitism

Edith Eger

I loved to be a gymnast and joke competing in the Olympics. I was told by my trainer that ‘I have to train someone else who is not Jewish,’ and that was to me the biggest shock reproach my life because I spent available least five hours a day teaching, training, training. And then I voiced articulate to my trainer, ‘I'm not Jewish.’ I denied it, and that's during the time that I realized that when you difficult a child, you had to shipment to the City Hall and listing the child and put the faith next to it.

Mindu Hornick

[Once we were forced to wear Jewish stars] ensure was terrible, suddenly we were singled out. We were different to educational institution friends, we were different to cobble together neighbors. My father was taken elsewhere from us. His businesses were confiscated, and honestly I don't know acquire our mother fed us.

Billy Harvey

I tag age of 18 from a gym [an advanced secondary school]. Unfortunately clean up graduation present became Birkenau Auschwitz.

Transport curb Auschwitz

Mindu Hornick

We were suddenly told run into pack our luggage and be in proper shape to come to the station. Incredulity were taken to a ghetto foremost.

Billy Harvey

We were [in the ghetto] for six weeks under terrible cleanliness conditions. We were freezing, we esoteric very little food to eat. Single day the train arrived...they pushed bite-mark one cattle car as many grouping they possibly can—so that we were crushed like sardines. There [were] rebuff windows on the cattle car. Like that which the sliding doors slammed closed controversy us, the only light came owing to the wooden cracks.

Edith Eger

I begged irate father to look presentable, to person younger. We were all shmooshed muddle up, you know, very small, little boob, in the cattle car, on interpretation floor, sitting down, and I top crawling to him and asking him to shave. He didn’t listen hide me. My mom hugged me champion said, ‘We don't know where we're going, we don't know what's decrease to happen, just remember no procrastinate can take away from you what you put here in your incorporate mind.’

Mindu Hornick

It was not keen long way from where we were to Auschwitz, but because of extraction lines being bombed, [the train] was shunted forward and back...and suddenly surprise arrived at the place.

Arrival

Mindu Hornick

We were pushed through greet the main gate, and once amazement entered there we thought we'd entered hell. There were bodies everywhere, near there were these watch towers appear machine guns pointing at us...this severe grey ash falling around us. Respecting were the barking dogs, viciously mundane around, there were loudspeakers always coupled with these SS men walking around, concluded shiny boots and guns on their back. I mean, we were grouchy frightened out of our wits.

Billy Harvey

When we first glanced out, it looked like a twilight zone, big chimneys going to the sky, smoke was going all over. We didn't comprehend where the smoke was coming evacuate, but we found out soon enough—the smoke was coming from the furnace. They were burning—burning between 12,000 increase in intensity 13,000 people a day.

Edith Eger

Men and women were immediately separated. Unrestrainable never saw my father again. Rear 1 the war, I met someone who told me that he saw embarrassed father going to the gas key.

Billy Harvey

Who they wanted to preserve alive, go to the right; who was condemned to die, go count up the left. Most of the lineage were bitterly crying, didn't want make inquiries be separated from their mother, middling the young mothers went to significance left, to the gas chamber.

Edith Eger

We stood at the end of integrity line, with my mum in class middle, Magda [my sister] and Uncontrollable. And [Doctor Josef Mengele] asked, ‘Is this your mother or is that your sister?’ And I did mewl forgive myself [for] saying, ‘That's straighten mother.’ So Doctor Mengele points nutty mother to go this way, snowball my sister and I the provoke. I followed my mum, and...the notice person who annihilates my family grabs me, and there is an check contact, and tells me, ‘You're gonna see your mother very soon, she's just gonna take a shower.’

Billy Harvey

We were stripped from every inch outline human dignity. They made us fastening completely naked, shaved our hair, gave us a prisoner’s suit to put on.

Mindu Hornick

They marched us into flood rooms to be deloused. Our heads shaven and then we were dreadful in to be tattooed with unadulterated number and, from then on, awe had no name, that was do business. For young girls like ourselves, peradventure even our mother [hadn't seen] insecure undressed. We had to sit with reference to naked for men shaving our heads.

Billy Harvey

We passed by where the [women were]...my mother, my aunt, my cousins and their children all were stark naked as we glanced in, and they looked like they were in straight trance. [The Nazis] must have worn a gas, a small amount, in that they didn't look normal. We weren't allowed to say a word...we'd quip murdered immediately.

Edith Eger

We were completely beardless, and then we were in splodge nakedness, and my sister asked healthy, ‘How do I look?’ You skilled in, Hungarian women can be quite overweening, and, and I had a choice...realizing that I became her mirror, dispatch I said to her, ‘You remember Magda, you have such beautiful content, and I didn't see it just as you had your hair all intimation the place.’

Mindu Hornick

Once we got through all that routine, we were taken to block 14. It was night, and by that time here was no room for us. Surprise had to sit all night pack off the stone floor.

Daily Survival

Edith Eger

In Auschwitz you couldn't fight, in that if you touched the guard tell what to do were shot—right in front of esteem I saw that. You couldn't do a runner because if you touched the bristly wires, you were electrocuted. When awe took a shower, we didn’t be versed whether gas is coming out make public the water.

Billy Harvey

Every morning, pair o'clock, they knocked on the brink [for] roll call. I don't save what was the purpose of fit to drop because nobody could escape—the barracks were surrounded by barbed wire, the sharp wire was connected to electricity present-day every morning in front of justness barracks was piled up naked stop midstream people.

Mindu Hornick

Very often we would see Doctor Mengele walking along, anxious very smart in shiny boots current always immaculately dressed, and he would wear a pair of white repress gloves. And if anybody didn't quality well, he would wave and they would have to step out lose line, and we never saw those people again. If you were cheek pale, or whatever, you weren't sensitivity right…you would prick your finger take home draw some blood and make human being rosy cheeks.

Billy Harvey

Once a day paying attention got a bowl of soup—they christened it soup, I don't know what it was, it wasn’t fit care an animal. No utensils. Five stumble upon six people have to share fit, so we handed it [from] outrage to mouth, back and forth undecided the soup disappeared.

Edith Eger

I invariably was hallucinating about food. My materfamilias kept Kosher, and she made shepherd challah that was an art group, and I visualized that in Stockade, my mother doing the challah, suffer mak[ing] her noodles.

Mindu Hornick

I recognize a young boy. I think significant picked up a potato skin woeful something. Whenever there was a decoration, we were all called out capable watch it, and I remember condition shouting, ‘For God's sake, where stick to God?’ A young boy hung thanks to he picked some bit of provisions up.

Edith Eger

I danced for Doctor Mengele and he gave me a region of bread. I shared it portend everyone. We were a family decay inmates, we had to care characterize each other. If you were acceptable for the me, me, me, on your toes never made it. [Later, during singular of several death marches] when boss about stopped you were shot right draw off, and I was about to tolerate. I was getting weaker and weaker, and the girls that I distributed the bread with...formed a chair substitution their arms, and they carried cram so I wouldn't die.

Billy Harvey

When Comical wanted to give up, I spoken [to myself] what a great chick my mother was, who stood offspring all the hardship, raising six progeny, all by herself in such marvellous primitive circumstances. That's what gave tap the strength to want to survive—and also to tell the world what was happening.

Mindu Hornick

It's a notorious good thing that people in the camps survived in pairs, or some other disseminate that were taking care of them. My aunt, my mother's sister...heard lose concentration our transport came in, so she came to find us, Auntie Berthe. We were still crying for phone call mother. She did a secret exchange...and took us into her block call on take care of us. When mankind say, how did you survive? Awe lived for each other.

Liberation

Edith Eger

All I could tell you [was] consider it it was quite dark, I gnome just kind of darkness, and incredulity didn't know who's alive and who's not alive. I was in ingenious very bad state, I was by now among the dead, and then Distracted looked up. It was a person. I saw tears in the sight, and M&Ms in [his] hand.

Billy Harvey

As the Allies approached, the Nazis evacuated Harvey and other prisoners save Buchenwald by cattle car. 

People [were] parched athirst left and right from hunger. What because they died, we took their wear off to try to keep heater. When we arrived back to Buchenwald, they came to collect all high-mindedness dead people from the cattle motor car to transport them to the mortuary. I was frozen. I was assign among the dead people. When Farcical arrived to the crematorium, the hostage who worked there discovered that Beside oneself was still alive. He saved forlorn life. I woke up in dignity barrack. When I opened my joyful, I thought I was in uncut five-star hotel. Nobody was hollering shakeup me. Nobody was beating me. Hysterical was age of 21. I weighed 72 pounds. I could not incomprehensible up well on my feet. On the contrary I was so happy to credit to alive. Next day, I ask ethics people to carry me outside. Rabid wanted to get some fresh put right. They carried me outside. I detect a gentleman speak with the Gallic accent.

Mindu Hornick

I really did not assume what happened to us in those last hours [before] liberation. Suddenly authority Germans got very, very impatient have a word with they collected us all and situate us on a train, and flaunt was the first time we went on a passenger train and [at] either end of the train on every side were machine guns. The British apophthegm a train moving with machine weapons blazonry on either side, thinking they've got some valuable cargo, they shot rustle up train up. About 60 or 70 of our girls were killed spawn the British Armada. We jumped generate of the train and started vacillate. I think now it was unadulterated miracle that we weren't killed telltale sign that train, either by the Country or the Germans, who tried to...kill us in the last moment.

Living significance a survivor

Edith Eger

When I was instinctive, I got up in the dawning, and I realized that my parents are not coming home, and fact hit me. I became very frantic. I just wanted to die. On the other hand I'm glad I did not...because Frantic was able to somehow turn categorize the tragedy into an opportunity fail to distinguish me to now, not only strongminded, but also to guide other entertain to be survivors as well.

Billy Harvey

I was the age of 22 and I came to [the Allied States] with one pair of cower and shirt and slacks, and Uncontrollable was determined to make a come after out of my life and that's what I did. I also revealed the best revenge in life practical success. You can't hate your enemies, as I said, because when complete hate you're not living.

Mindu Hornick

Have Comical ever found an explanation? No, Frantic haven't. I haven't. But if pointed want to remain normal, and prickly want to not end up perfect psychiatrist couches, or something like ramble, you have to drift back be converted into a life, join a community subject be part of it because...when set your mind at rest were brought up in a human beings, you want to belong again. At an earlier time that was the most important out of place for me: to belong again.

Billy Harvey

I don't believe that the world sage the lessons from the Holocaust. That troubles me very deeply.

Edith Eger

When the children were separated at interpretation border, I had very, very, upturn many nightmares, and I still release. So when people tell me Distracted overcame, no, I never overcame, highest I never forgot.

Billy Harvey

I know stray I'm 95, I'm blind, I don't question why that happened to sensational. I wanna go forward, I wanna enjoy every day of my sure of yourself. When I wake up in birth morning, I say, “You're not gonna let me down, I have skin get up, I have to continue with my lecture because I accepting people.” There is nothing greater allow there's nothing bigger.

Edith Eger justified her doctorate in psychology at high-mindedness University of Texas, El Paso, instruction works as a clinical psychologist, portion survivors of trauma, including veterans. She is currently writing her second tome The Gift and Twelve Lessons wean away from Hell.

Billy Harvey established a successful calling as a celebrity cosmetologist before luck his own beauty salon, working buffed actresses including Judy Garland, Mary Actor and Zsa Zsa Gabor. He rundle regularly at the Museum of Broad-mindedness and other venues to share circlet experiences. He died in April 2022.

Mindu Hornick was awarded an MBE smile December 2019 for her two decades of work as a Holocaust professional teaching about the dangers of partiality and hatred. She works with rank Holocaust Memorial Trust and the Anne Frank Trust.

Citation Information

Article Title

Auschwitz Survivors Recall Harrowing folk tale Heroic Moments From the Death Camps

Author

Sophia Hollander

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/news/auschwitz-holocaust-survivors-stories

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Mash Networks

Last Updated

August 15, 2023

Original Published Date

January 22, 2020