On the third day we arrived in Auschwitz. Suddenly the door opened, and we saw a wide area garishly lit with spotlights and surrounded by barbed wire. There were strange creatures running up and down along the platform. They were wearing pajamas and little caps on their shaved heads; they shouted something and took our baggage away. They looked as though they were crazy. Then we were divided up: men on one side, women and children on the other. We were led to a building called the “sauna.” That was a new word for me back then and I didn’t understand what it meant. There they took all our remaining things away, our clothes and shoes. Then we had to stand under a shower that ran cold and then very hot, for about fifteen minutes. SS men walked back and forth the whole time—even though we were all completely naked! When it was over we were given old tattered clothes and wooden slippers. Only the soles were wooden, the rest was just old rags. Each of us got two slippers that didn’t even match. Then we had to line up for “tattooing.” We were ordered to hold out our left arm to be tattooed. My number was 71266, my mother’s was 71267.
That was how we spent the first night. The next morning we were led to the camp. There we met people from the transport that had left Theresienstadt in September. They told us how lucky we were that everyone had been taken to the sauna, that no selection had been made, and that no one had been sent directly to the gas chamber. We—the entire December transport—were assigned to the so-called Family Camp B II b, where men, women, and children could remain together, although in separate barracks. In the opinion of the experienced prisoners, we were lucky in that as well, since in all the other camps, except the one for Gypsies, the separation of the men from the women, of the elderly and children from those capable of work, took place immediately on the ramp.
The Family Camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau had been set up by the prisoners of the September transport. As a few historians have noted (something that Eva Landa could not have known at the time), Himmler’s goal here was the same as with his model ghetto of Theresienstadt. It was intended as a tool of cunning Nazi propaganda in case it should become necessary to deceive foreign visitors about what was really going on in Auschwitz. That was why families in Camp B II b remained together. And that was why Fredy Hirsch was allowed by the SS to organize the children’s block.
The September transport had been stamped with the secret directive “SB six months,” which meant “Sonderbehandlung [special treatment] after six months of quarantine.” SB was the Nazi euphemism for “death by gas.”
“It was December 1943 and my life in Auschwitz-Birkenau began,” Eva Landa continues.
December twenty-fifth was my thirteenth birthday. I was sick and terribly unhappy because I had been separated from my friends in Theresienstadt. I remembered my days in the ghetto as a happy time in my life. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we would never go home again.
It turned very cold, and we were poorly dressed. We were hungry. In the morning we were given a dark green liquid that was called “coffee,” in the evening turnip soup and a piece of bad bread. The provisions we had brought with us were left on the train. We had to stand for hours of roll call. They would count us over and over again. It was torture.
The quarantine period passed, and we had to start working. My father had to pave a road, and my mother wove cloth for the German military industry. I was taken to the children’s block run by Fredy Hirsch, where a life similar to the one we had in Theresienstadt was organized for us. We played sports, theater, and wrote poems. And we sang: “Alouette,” “The Ode to Joy,” Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus,” and many more. I remember that one day we were singing a song in Latin and an SS man asked Fredy Hirsch what it was we were singing. And he replied, “God, give us bread and peace.” To which the SS man said, “You’ve already got it.” And Fredy replied, “That’s why they’re singing about it.”
The food in our block was better than in the others. Fredy Hirsch had seen to it that we got the same so-called children’s soup that they had in the Gypsy camp. It was the same as the adult soup but with barley groats added, plus white bread. We thanked him with a little poem before meals: “In our taba’at group [Hebrew for ‘ring’] we all are very hungry. / There’s nothing to laugh about, because we have to wash our dishes, otherwise Fredy will shout at us. / And now we can sit down and—eat!”
A vague hope sprang up—maybe we would somehow succeed in leaving Auschwitz alive, although we knew what was going on around us. We even wrote skits about it. I remember there was a twelve-year-old named Štepan, a cousin of Handa Pollak’s. We had been in the same class in Prague. He was small and very talented. He and his friends in the Auschwitz-Birkenau children’s block enacted this scene for us: After the war Štepan is walking along in Prague, and someone asks him what time it is. He looks at his arm and answers with the number tattooed there. And the passersby say, “This fellow is crazy!” and grab him and take him to the madhouse. And he replies, “I knew I’d end up in Heydebreck.” Heydebreck—that was a special term for us children. We didn’t know any town by that name. We thought it was a Nazi invention. For us going to Heydebreck meant being sent to the gas chambers.6
March 6, 1944, was my boyfriend Harry’s thirteenth birthday. I made a little heart out of the clay of Auschwitz for him and inscribed it: “To Harry on his birthday from Eva, March 6, 1944.” The next day—it was T. G. Masaryk’s birthday—there was a lockdown, and no one was allowed to leave our block. Those from the September transport had to move to a neighboring camp. Someone called over the fence, “Fredy je otráveny,” which in Czech means both to be in a bad mood and to be poisoned. I can still recall my father trying to comfort me with the first version. But we soon learned the terrible truth.
Fredy Hirsch had taken his life. When he saw that resistance was pointless, he swallowed poison. The next day, March 8, 1944, the entire September transport, except for those with infectious illnesses, were gassed, including four girls from our room—Pavla Seiner, Olilie Löwy, Zdenka Löwy, and Ruth Popper. My father died on April 13. Only our December transport was still left in the Family Camp. People talked quite openly about how we were to be gassed six months after our arrival.
Eva Weiss, the girls’ counselor, had also arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau with Transport Dr on December 15. Her orders had come as a shock to her—she was the only one in her family to be transported. And so she had to set out by herself, “on the most mysterious of all journeys,” as she says when she begins to describe her experiences. “It was a trauma.” To this day Eva has tears in her eyes when she remembers the day she had to say goodbye.
A great deal has been said and written about that trip in cattle cars, and it’s all true. It was horrible. Locked up for three days without food, without water, barely enough air to breathe. I’ll never forget the moment of our arrival, it was deepest winter, the ground covered with snow. It was like a sudden storm sweeping over all our senses: blinding spotlights aimed directly at our eyes, which had grown used to darkness after three days in the cattle cars; shouts and—this was the worst part—the barking of savage, fierce dogs. We could barely see and couldn’t understand what was happening. All I wanted was— water! Despite all the threats I clung to my little backpack, which contained my most cherished things—above all my photo album. In the forced march to one of the buildings I managed to scoop up a little snow and put it in my mouth—what a wonderful relief that was.
They crammed us into an empty block, where a few girls were sitting behind a table. They were wearing striped uniforms, and their heads were shaved. We didn’t know where we were. Then some of the girls—they spoke mainly Polish and Slovak—came over to us and demanded our valuables. They said that we wouldn’t be needing them anymore. It was like a dream, and I gave them my watch. I don’t know when or how, but my precious backpack vanished at some point. The girls at the table registered us one after the other and tattooed a number on our arms. Mine was 73673. I told myself that this number wasn’t the worst possible number.
Then we were le
d to the so-called sauna; we had to undress and leave our clothes behind. We were searched in every possible spot for any valuables, and then we had to stand under the shower, which poured out ice-cold water. Since I didn’t have my mother with me and was feeling feverish, I joined up with my friend Eva Schlachet, whose mother was with her. I was sick, and they were both very kind to me. Time passed, and I can see myself in a blue coat and with shoes that felt very strange, walking along a path between barbed wire fences. Because I had a fever, I have only a vague recollection of it all. Then I ended up on a bunk beside Zuzanna Růžičková—who is now a famous musician in Prague. She and her mother looked after me. I must have contracted dysentery from that snow I ate. I fainted at the first roll call.
We were housed in separate blocks—men, women, and children. Our camp was called B II b in Birkenau. I don’t remember much, except that I felt terribly abandoned without my mother. Slowly I recovered and began to take part in the “activities.”
A few days later Fredy Hirsch came and took me with him to Block 31—the so-called children’s block. I was greeted very warmly. I knew most of the counselors from Theresienstadt, and many of the children as well, some of whom were from Room 28. I remember being so happy to see Poppinka [Ruth Popper] and Pavla Seiner and Olilie again. They had been in the camp since September, and some, like Eva Landa, had arrived on my transport. I remember Eva very well, because she was an anchor in my group, very pretty and full of energy. I know there were other girls as well, but I don’t recall their names.
I was a substitute mother to many of the orphans, a substitute mother under extreme conditions. It was my job to play with them and give them lessons—without books or any other materials. The important thing was to make them forget where they were and what was happening around them. We played word games, sang, danced, even memorized parts for plays and skits, which the children then put on. One of these was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and another was Robinson Crusoe. There were lots of optimistic songs, always with a happy end. Sometimes the SS men would come by and watch us; some of them, or so it seemed to me, turned sentimental. Maybe they were thinking of their own children.
All the older children, and, I think, many of the younger ones, understood only too well what was happening around us. There was no way not to see the chimneys with flames shooting out at the top. The smoke permeated the air. “No one leaves here except up through the chimney”—how often we heard that statement!
The neighboring camps were used as transit camps. We could see across the fence. One day we discovered a friend from the Zionist movement. It was Dov Revesz, a Hungarian. He was too exhausted to call back to us. The next day the camp was empty.
We heard Russian prisoners nearby for a few days, singing their beautiful, melancholy songs. At times we even chimed in. Sometimes we sang Czech and Hebrew songs. But soon the Russian soldiers were no longer there.
We celebrated Jewish holidays and even solemnly observed the Sabbath. When someone had a birthday, we threw a little party. We didn’t have much to eat, but we saved up something from our tiny rations—a little slice of our bread, which seemed as though it had been made from sawdust, a bit of margarine, and, when we had it, a smidgen of turnip marmalade. Those were the ingredients for our “birthday cake.” I recall that I once decorated a couple of them to look like dominos.
Directly across from our block was the hospital where Dr. Mengele conducted his experiments with twins. And there were twins among us as well whom he was interested in. When Mengele showed up, the cry passed from barracks to barracks like a jungle telegram, “Twins to thirty-two,” and then all the twins had to report to him. I remember the Salus twins from Brno, who both had one blue eye and one brown eye. That shout of “Twins to thirty-two!” was almost something of a joke. We had no idea about his awful experiments. And I suppose we simply didn’t want to believe the rumors about them.
In February there were rumors that the entire September transport would be sent to a labor camp—to “Heydebreck,” as the SS put it. The rumor came from the Auschwitz underground movement, whose members were mainly Communists. Although it all looked quite hopeless, Fredy Hirsch and some of his counselors—I remember one of them, Hugo Lengsfeld—discussed plans for an uprising. I seem to recall that someone had smuggled a hand grenade and some matches into the camp. We were told what to do if worse came to worst.
Early in March, the SS gave each of us a postcard. We were told that we could write to our relatives on the outside. We were allowed only thirty words, and we had to date them about one or two weeks ahead. I think the date was March 26. Of course we all tried to guess what this was about. It was quite unusual. We tried to use the thirty words to say where we were and what was happening to us. We had to write our messages in code and hope that they would be understood. For example, we used the name of someone who was dead and wrote that we had met him. Or we wrote that we had met Mavet—which is Hebrew for “death.” All the cards arrived. But by the time they did, most of the people who had written them were already dead.
March 7, 1944, will always remain in my memory. The day began with a lockdown, a sure sign that something was about to happen. All the people from the September transport, and also some children of my group, had to move to the neighboring camp. There was a lot of shouting. I can still recall that I was in Fredy’s room, but I no longer recall what we spoke about. I didn’t know that all of them were to be gassed. He knew; that’s for certain. But he didn’t say a word.
Our rebellion never took place. And Fredy, our leader and inspiration, took poison, fell into a coma, and was carried out. The camp was very quiet afterward—as though after a defeat.
The news that spread through the camp the next day was horrifying: the entire September transport had gone to the gas chambers. They died with many of them singing the Czech national anthem or “Hatikvah” or the “Internationale.” We knew the same fate awaited us at the end of June, six months after our arrival.
We had lost a good many counselors, but we kept up our work, mourning for all those we missed. Fredy Hirsch’s position was taken over by Seppl Lichtenstein, who was also connected with the underground. We had to get used to the idea that we didn’t have long to live. We made jokes about it, and even laughed—because that was the only way we could bear it.
We went on singing and playing just as before. We had a little space outside where we could do sports, jump around, and dance. Off to one side we could see the chimneys, the embers of their flames against the sky, and sometimes terrible screams would reach us—at one point children were simply tossed into the fire. On the other side we could see barbed wire and the railroad tracks beyond, where trains arrived day and night. By then it was primarily Jews from Hungary. Most of them went directly into the gas chambers.
It was around noon on May 11, 1944, when news of more transports to the East exploded like a bomb in Theresienstadt. On the streets, in the barracks and Homes, the dreaded word haunted every conversation: “transport.” It was said to be for seventy-five hundred people. Who would be included this time? And the guessing began all over again as to who would receive that ominous slip of paper. Some said it would be mainly old people and TB patients, while others said that it would affect men of working age.
Fredy Hirsch. There is no way today to find out for certain whether Fredy Hirsch committed suicide or if, in order to prevent an uprising, camp doctors intentionally gave him an overdose of the sedatives that he had asked for. There are several contradictory versions. One thing, however, is certain: Fredy Hirsch faced a hopeless situation. He was aware that no uprising could save the lives of the children under his care.
Only a few could lull themselves into a sense of relative security: the so-called Mischlinge (children of mixed marriages), those who had been awarded important medals during the war, their families, and those who had been designated as “prominent.”7 Rumor had it that the municipal orchestra, the community guards, and the fire department were also prote
cted—they were still needed. But all the others?
The transport orders had already been prepared. “At 7 A.M. on May 13th,” Otto Pollak wrote, “Joška arrives with the bad news that Hermann, Trude, and Lea are on the transport. Helga arrives with Lea at the office unannounced. At the sight of that beaming, smiling childish face and at the thought of such an innocent creature departing for who knows what, I start to cry. I go out on the veranda. Helga, with tears rolling down her cheeks, follows and says in real pain: ‘I feel as if my little sister will be leaving.’ ”
Seventy-five hundred people got ready for transport. In Room 28 it was Erika Stránská, Alice Sittig, Ruth Schächter (Zajíček), Miriam Rosenzweig, and Hanka Wertheimer who packed their suitcases and bags. “My mother told me that we had to leave. She was very sick at the time,” Hanka recalls. “She had always hoped that Jakob Edelstein, the chief Jewish elder, would help keep her off the transports. She knew him personally, from Brno, through her membership in the Zionist organization Blue-White. But he had long since left the ghetto. On May 15 we all boarded Transport Dz—my mother, my grandmother, my great-aunt, and me. My friend Miriam from Room 28 was on it, too.”
The many goodbyes began. “You know, after the war: Olbramovice 1,” Handa said while she hugged her friend. And Hanka replied as she had so many times: “After the war I’ll wait for you under the Old Bell Tower on the Old City Ring.” Nothing could shake her faith: the war would soon be over, they would all see each other again in Prague, and one day they would emigrate to Eretz Yisrael. Others were less confident. It was hardest to say goodbye to Zajíček, who was being deported along with her brother Alexander.
The Girls of Room 28: Friendship, Hope, and Survival in Theresienstadt Page 23