June 4, 1957

Erev Shavuot

The day is almost over, I have to light the Yahrzeit candles, as well as the candles for this lovely holiday, Shavuot, which begins soon. It's supposed to be a joyful holiday for us Jews, but for me, for us, it will always represent sorrow and remembrance of the days of anguish and murder of the innocent.

It was exactly fourteen years ago that my loved ones spent the last days of their lives, although they didn't know it at the time, of course, in the ghetto of Ungvar.

I am overwhelmed by bitterness and anger once again, as the degradation and the inhuman treatment we all suffered come back to haunt me once more. Time has no meaning in memory and so I recall vividly my darling "Apuka," weak after a recent operation, dragging his feet and bending his weary back under the heavy load he carried (all his earthy belongings), one broken man in a long row of many stepping into the line of the condemned, his last trip, leading to the crematoria of Auschwitz. I remember my mother, always rebellious, now silently carrying as much as her strength allowed her to. And myself? In one arm I held Lidlid, on my shoulders a carry-all bag for baby, and my back burdened with another rucksack for eventualities, a long, long line ahead of me ... people, humanity, all Jews as far as my eyes could reach, from the ghetto to the train station, marching, or rather dragging themselves, to their awful destination.

Shavuot can never become a joyous holiday for me. The memories of this day are far too painful, they can never be erased from my thoughts.

Yet I am happy with Paul, as we try to build a new life on the ashes of the old one. Next month, we will move (with the Almighty's help) to our newly purchased house at 2442 Brinton Road, a recently built duplex, all new, fresh, enjoyable. We have two lovely children and many new possessions, just as any girls would have who came from a well-to-do family. That was Paul's wish: to give his family the best available all the time. And to achieve such affluence, he works day and night. What persistence!

His 40th birthday is approaching. He's still unbelievably active, and joyfully so, in our bedroom too.

Joyce is smart, intelligent, and has a good memory. She knows what she wants and is demanding. But she is also cuddly and sweet. She speaks English and Hungarian quiet fluently.

Sonny, on the other hand, speaks only Hungarian and that in baby language. He is simply adorable.

I watch them at play, getting dirty and uncontrollable. Then, once they are bathed and freshly dressed for bed, they kiss the mezuzzah and lie down. Their little bodies relax, and a pinkish colour suffuses their freshly scrubbed faces; they look angelic and utterly beautiful. I can hardly take my eyes off them. G-d has blessed me with these two precious angels, giving me a unique responsibility to raise them as good human beings and above all, good Jews.

And Paul is such an excellent husband! I feel so contented and happy. Thank you, G-d!

To me life is centered around the children and through them the continuity. For Paul, all is business. He works faithfully and tirelessly sixteen hours.

......................

Of course, he didn't like it. "I earn enough to support you and the kids, it's degrading for me that my wife should work away from the house." "What about me," I said, "don't I have feelings? I am your prisoner and maid and you like that?" "No, you are my children's mother and my wife. Please don't rebel! I only work for you--can't you see that? I'll tell you what. Open charge accounts in any department store, buy yourself what you want. Is that O.K.?" But he carefully checks every statement and inquires what every item is for! At times I've raised my voice and he's become verbally abusive, but he couldn't bear having misunderstandings between us, so he apologized, or brought me roses to make up, and life continued as before the storm, for I always forgive him.

Ste-Agathe, July 20, 1959

We spent three weeks at Mrs. Kahn's hotel and Paul is extremely pleased with us. We gained suntans and weight, and we're relaxed and happy. Why not? We were taken good care of, it was a marvelous vacation. Finally I caught up with some reading, too. I can't put down Exodus by Leon Uris. My mind is back in Bergen-Belsen, it's April 15, 1945. As an inmate I knew only a small part of the camp. According to Uris: "Camp Number One was an enclosure of four hundred yards wide by a mile long. That area held 80,000 people, mostly Hungarians and Polish Jews. The ration for Camp No. 1 was 10,000 loaves of bread a week. Our census showed thirty thousand dead in camp number one, including nearly fifteen thousand corpses just littered around. There were twenty-eight thousands women and twelve thousand men alive."

I was one of those people, staggering from hunger and thirst, after a bout of typhoid fever. I can still vividly recall Dr. Klein ordering us to the main parade place. But it was not an appel as we had expected. For by then most of us were either dying or too sick to stand on our feet anyway. We expected some punishment or even a "death sentence" from the notorious lager killer. Instead of shouting at us, as we had grown accustomed to being treated, he smiled and spoke to us as "equals": "Do not be afraid, I am on your side, you see I always liked the Jews, and if I ever was strict with you (my G-d, killing mercilessly, without reason, he calls "being strict"!) I did it for one reason only. I had to obey orders, but from now on I want to be lenient with you, good to you and help you in every way. I realize that you haven't seen food or water for two weeks, but all this will be changed from now on, I will see to it! I promise you!"

Was I dreaming? No! Dr. Klein, our camp commandant, knew better than we did, that the date was April 13th and the Allied soldiers were approaching the camps. He finished his famous speech with, "I'll be on your side and you on mine!" Did he really believe that we, the handful of survivors, would save him from the gallows? That night and the next night we heard artillery fire, although we couldn't tell how far away it was. Early in the morning of April 15th, we could hear tanks approaching. It sounded as if a whole army was on the move. We ran to the gates. They were open. The Germans were about to flee. Those of us who had the strength, threw stones at them, or cursed them. Our curses had no effect on them! Some women were shouting and dancing with joy--when they grasped the meaning of "open gates." I started to cry bitterly. My heart was gripped with terrible pain as I realized that I couldn't fool myself any longer. At last I knew that we were being liberated, but that there would be no one on the outside to meet us. I knew then without any doubt that my Lulu was dead; I didn't need anyone to spell it out for me. I looked around me: the corpses were piled up one on top of the other at least a meter high and in such a long row that there seemed to be no end to it. The stench was unbearable, and it certainly didn't help any to know that many of those bodies (now half-rotten) were once close friends of mine, relatives and neighbours from my home town.

The first soldiers who entered the camp became sick from what they saw, from the horrible stench and the utter human destruction around them. They grew pale and vomited on the spot.

This is what Leon Uris writes: "We made desperate efforts, but the survivors were so emaciated and diseased that thirteen thousand more died within a few days after our arrival!"

As for me, I can still recall passing by a big kettle where some inmates were preparing a meal. The water was boiling, there were pieces of meat in it. I turned around. "Want to join us?" asked one woman. She ladled out a piece and offered it to me. "Oh no, oh no, how could you?!" I screamed. "How can you eat human flesh?" I can still hear her demented laughter.

Uris: "Conditions were so wretched when we entered the camp that the living were eating the flesh of the corpses!"

When the English soldiers who liberated our camp could finally grasp this ugly reality, they covered the corpses with white sheets, until trucks arrived to carry them away. New camps had been built to accommodate the sick ones, and those with typhus and tuberculosis were separated. The old camp was burned down. English ladies and Red Cross nurses arrived to help us out in our new struggle: to survive. They knew nothing about the horrors of the old camp, and our true stories seemed like "hallucinations" to them.

Many refugees left the camps every day, but I stayed on to help those less fortunate than myself.

P.S. We later learned that Dr. Klein had tried to flee, but he was caught. He was sentenced to death at the Nuremberg Trials.