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We were in Auschwitz for seven weeks. In fact this was Auschwitz-Birkenau. You could present yourself, they selected people for work, to take them away from there, but as long as my sister was in the sick-bay, we didn't go, of course. When she came out, we presented ourselves. In the meantime people were dying one after the other, I don't know how many daily. And the big car came. There were people who were still alive, but they were dying, they were still breathing, still moving, when they were thrown onto this car, the living together with the dead. When you thought of this, you thought you had to get away from there by all means. That's why we presented ourselves, when my sister was released from the sick-bay. This Polish woman doctor was there at the selection, and she remembered my sister. She was almost let through, but then they pulled her away. I got away from there with Dorika.
Dorika spoke to a kapo [concentration camp inmate appointed by the SS to be in charge of a work gang] - that's what they were called. She knew her, because she had made her a dress. She had brought everything: material, thread, needle. And there, in the Birkenau concentration camp [13] she had sewed a summer dress for this kapo. I recall even today that it was a nice, patterned material. And now, when Dorika asked her to try to do something in order to get Hermin over to those who were already selected, this kapo hit Dorika so hard that she fell down.
We went further in a dreadful state of mind, we cried bitterly, because we were sad about Hermin having been left behind. She was very skillful all her life, she was very competent in what she was engaged in; in that sense she was an independent person. But she needed somebody next to her, company, all the time. When her sister fled with her husband, she couldn't stay [in Bucharest] by her own, because she was a little shy. She didn't like to be alone. Therefore we were grieving, because we felt that she would break down, that she wouldn't be able to stand it. I don't even know when my sister Hermin died. My poor sister, it is even hard to imagine what she might have been going through before she died. One does not forget such things until death...
Dorika spoke to a kapo [concentration camp inmate appointed by the SS to be in charge of a work gang] - that's what they were called. She knew her, because she had made her a dress. She had brought everything: material, thread, needle. And there, in the Birkenau concentration camp [13] she had sewed a summer dress for this kapo. I recall even today that it was a nice, patterned material. And now, when Dorika asked her to try to do something in order to get Hermin over to those who were already selected, this kapo hit Dorika so hard that she fell down.
We went further in a dreadful state of mind, we cried bitterly, because we were sad about Hermin having been left behind. She was very skillful all her life, she was very competent in what she was engaged in; in that sense she was an independent person. But she needed somebody next to her, company, all the time. When her sister fled with her husband, she couldn't stay [in Bucharest] by her own, because she was a little shy. She didn't like to be alone. Therefore we were grieving, because we felt that she would break down, that she wouldn't be able to stand it. I don't even know when my sister Hermin died. My poor sister, it is even hard to imagine what she might have been going through before she died. One does not forget such things until death...
Period
Year
1944
Interview
Magda Fazekas