999, page 35
That is why the Visual History Archive at the USC Shoah Foundation is such an important database. The stories are there, even if they are not perfectly captured. Older survivors tend to jump around in time, and interviewers often missed asking vital questions about important details, such as: What was her maiden name? What was her number? What was your number? In Auschwitz, your number served as a calendar, indicating the day you arrived, what transport you were on, how many people were with you, and how many went to the gas. Without a number, we cannot place survivors or nonsurvivors inside the historic record that Czech Danuta painstakingly compiled for us in the Auschwitz Chronicle.
POSTHUMOUS RELATIONSHIPS BRING with them a weight that is hard for most people to imagine. Andrew Hartmann’s daughter, Susan Hartmann Schwartz, would have been Nusi Hartmann’s niece. “Too often, the Holocaust is described in the generic term of ‘six million,’ ” writes Susan. “Occasionally I sit back and think—that was my aunt on the first transport. Nusi was not just one of six million, or of one and a half million children, or even just one of the 999 on that first transport. She was my aunt. She was my father’s sister. She was a beloved daughter. She was a person—a human being. Nusi must’ve had dreams, like we all do at sixteen. Her parents did not know what that first transport meant. Did she? At sixteen, how petrified was she? Was she told anything by the Germans, and if so, what? Did she bond with anyone on that transport other than her cousin Magduska? Did anyone help ease her fear just a little? I can’t help but segue into the what-ifs. What if she’d been just a little older? Could she have survived? What would our relationship have been like if she had? I miss who I think Nusi would have been.” So do I.
Many survivors eventually received some financial restitution from the German government. However, they had to apply to get support. That required their ID number, medical documentation, and a statement about their experience. After one survivor passed away, her children discovered a medical report that had been submitted to Germany for reimbursement. It confirmed that a psychiatrist had treated her for suicidal thoughts and depression. Her husband had kept her treatment a secret from them.
Survivors who returned to Slovakia and settled there after the war faced another difficulty: they could not file for German reparations as survivors in the west could. And in Edith’s case, by the time they escaped communist Czechoslovakia, the deadline to file for reparations had passed. As a disabled survivor, she had a good case and went to court to seek an appeal. The German court agreed that she deserved reparations but said they couldn’t change the law. “It’s a bad law” had come back to haunt her.
When Ida Eigerman Newman’s daughter filled out the forms for her mother, the German official blurted, “Nobody survived Auschwitz with that low a number [#1930]!” But they did survive, and while some got compensation, others either chose to forego the paperwork and hassle or—like Edith and Linda—were unable to apply because they were living under a communist regime. The compensation was not extravagant: It equaled about $0.32 per hour of work.
Peggy Kulik née Friedman (#1019) says, “They don’t pay back what they took away. They took away everything. They cannot pay me for what my father had, what I had. There is no money for the lives they took. I was in a concentration camp for thirty-eight months. Did they pay me for my work? No. I never had a penny.” And she miscarried twins.
Many survivors never wanted to return to Auschwitz or Poland. “Our mothers never wanted us to come back to Poland,” Akiva Koren (Erna Dranger’s son) says. Others, like Helena Citron and Bertha Berkowitz, took tours of young people back with them. There is nothing like knowing and speaking to a real survivor. Walking through camp with one is even more life changing. This was their home for almost three years. They know it well. But for some, returning was too much. There is a 1990 photo of Rena standing under the Arbeit Macht Frei sign in which she looks as forlorn and lost as she must have felt the day she arrived in Auschwitz. She wanted to go to Birkenau and stand in a gas chamber to say the Kaddish for her parents, but under the shadow of the death gate, she collapsed. “Take me home,” she begged her husband. They caught the next plane back to America. She never went back. I took care of that wish for her, in 2017.
One of the questions that arises again and again is why did some women survive while others did not? Being in the right place at the right time, and not being in the wrong place at the wrong time, accounted for much. But there is no real explanation other than luck. And there are problems with that answer. “How can I say that I was lucky and another girl wasn’t? Did God watch out for me and not her? No! I was no better than they were, so why should I survive?” Rena Kornreich asks. Some say it was bashert—meant to be. Fate.
“They were short!” says Lydia Marek, the daughter of Martha Mangel (#1741) and niece of the Zimmerspitz sisters and cousins. It is simultaneously humorous and shocking—could it be that simple? “My mother was four feet, eight inches, and her cousins were all under five foot,” Lydia explains. Not only would their bodies have required less food, but shorter girls wouldn’t have lost weight as quickly as taller women. Also, during selections, shorter girls would have been under the eyeline of guards and less likely to catch the attention of the SS selecting prisoners for the gas. The smaller the girl, the more unthreatening she would have appeared, as well.
Of course, small size could not have been the only reason for survival—there were diseases, violence, accidents, frostbite, and any number of other hazards to overcome. However, size may indeed have played an important factor. All of the children I have spoken to concur—their mothers were very short people. Rena used to joke that she was the tall one in her family; she was five foot two.
Orna has a different perspective. “The bonds between those women were unbreakable. They all saved each other.” This was sisterhood in its darkest hour and at its finest. Fay Shapiro and Jeffrey Lautman concur. “I called Bertha Berkowitz and my mother [Magda Friedman] ‘soul sisters’ ” Fay writes in an email. “They made a pact with each other that if they survived, they would be there for each other for every happy occasion—and they were. We would Schlep to Cleveland as young children on a Greyhound bus, or they would drive down to Baltimore. [From the moment our mothers were together again,] they would almost be connected at the elbow!”
Across the world in Australia, Orna’s experience was quite similar. “Mum was lucky to stay in contact with quite a few women she spent time in Auschwitz with. Seven of them lived close by in Melbourne. They met regularly, and although I was not privy to the exact content of their conversations (spoken in languages I did not understand), I remember they would often end up talking about their time in Auschwitz, and whilst there would often be tears shed, what to this day strikes me the most is how often they laughed and giggled about how they outsmarted the SS and survived. Even as a child, I was fascinated to see them laughing despite the hell they survived.”
It may be that laughter about the camps was unique to the women who worked in Canada—Rena never spoke about sharing funny stories with her friends, nor does Edith. Canada was that much different, and because the girls who worked there were so accomplished at outwitting the SS and stealing necessities for other prisoners right from under SS noses, their acts of rebellion became cherished memories. How many people can boast of having stuffed a bed jacket into one’s shoe, as Margie Becker did?
THE REMAINS OF CANADA burned to the ground long ago. Only rows of cement foundations remain in the field where the sorting depot once stood and where so many female survivors worked and struggled to endure. Where the ruins of Crematorium V should be there is now flat earth. Nearby stands the sauna where Ida Eigerman sneaked in to take her shower.
Standing in the flat expanse of Canada, Tammy and Sharon—Ida’s children—wonder which cement slab was where their mother slept, which one was where she worked. In the sauna, they remember the shower she risked her life to take. They are looking at a memorial wall of photographs when a group of Swedish high school students descend upon us, and the room suddenly is full of young voices and faces.
“Their mother was a survivor on the first transport to Auschwitz,” I tell the teachers. “It was made up of 297 teenagers, the age of your students.”
Immediately, the teenagers surround the second-generation sisters. Among the blond Swedes are African refugees, who receive hugs and share tears as the sisters relate their mother’s experience of escaping oppression, being a refugee after the war, and emigrating to another country.
A few hours later, we join Orna Tuckman and Ida’s granddaughter, Daniela, at Block 25, where in 1942, Bertha, Elena, and Margie carted bodies away. Where Ella saved Irena. Where Edith wept for Lea. Traditionally, the Kaddish—the Jewish prayer for the dead—requires ten men. We are a minyan of women. Taking each other’s hands, we begin the prayer. It is a prayer for Lea Friedman, for Magda Amster, for Adela Gross, for Magduska and Nusi Hartmann—for all the young women of the first transport and all of the transports who perished here in Auschwitz.
One Final Word
DEAR READER,
Please, please, you have to understand, you don’t have a winner in a war. Even the winners are losing kids and losing houses and losing economy and losing everything. That’s not a win! A war is the worst thing that can happen to humanity! This I would like to give you: to understand through your heart and not through your ears, so you can understand what happened in those years.
Thousands of books could be written on the disaster that was called the Holocaust, but it will never be fully described. Ever. I was there. And I have lived with it for over seventy-eight years. I lived it. I saw how each one of us dealt with it in a different way. Who was strong enough to hope that maybe it would get better? Who kept fighting, not physically but mentally? And spiritually, how could we survive? To tell you the truth, I did not believe that I would survive. But I said to myself, I will do what I can.
And I am still alive.
—Edith Friedman Grosman (#1970)
The Grosman and Gross families (left to right): Ladislav Grosman, Debora Gross (Adela’s sister), Edith Grosman (#1970), Anna Grosman (Debora’s daughter), Zuzka (Ladislav’s sister), and her husband, Dr. Bela Spiegel, Juraj Grosman (Debora’s son), and George Grosman (Edith’s son).
PHOTO COURTESY THE GROSMAN AND GROSS FAMILIES.
List of Photographs and Illustrations
p. 1 Map of Slovakia, 1942: Redrawn from original map found in Slovak National Archives, the archival fonds Ministerstvo vnútra, 1938–1945; p. 14 Lou Gross permission; p. 14 Lou Gross permission; p. 21 Benjamin Greenman permission; p. 40 Predsedníka ŽNO, Prešov, and Juraj Levický, Humenné archives; p. 63 Giroa Amir permission; p. 74 Ivan Jarny permission; p. 117 The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Memorial and Museum; p. 198 Museum of Jewish Heritage, collection: 2000.A.368; p. 224 USC Shoah Foundation Visual Archive, Eugene Hartmann testimony, 1996; p. 238 Museum of Jewish Heritage, collection: 2000.A.390; p. 252 Museum of Jewish Heritage, collection: 2000.A.389; p. 260 USC Shoah Foundation Visual Archive, Eugene Hartmann testimony, 1996; p. 271 Yad Vashem, document collection: Record No. O.75, File No. 770, No. 33; p. 279 Yad Vashem, document collection: Record No. O.75, File No. 770, No. 70 ; p. 296 Yad Vashem, document collection: Record No. O.75, File No. 770, No. 55; p. 376 Edith Grosman and family permission.
Photo insert:
p. 1 Friedman family photos, courtesy of Edith Grosman.
p. 2 Hartmann family photos, courtesy of Schwartz and Young family.
Magda Hans image taken from Ria Elias interview, 1997, USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education; sfi.usc.edu.
Annou Moscovikova and Zuzana Sermerova photo, courtesy of Juraj Levicky.
Rozalia and Therezia Ziegler photo, courtesy of family.
p. 3 Lea Friedman and Anna Herskovic photo, courtesy of Edith Grosman.
Adela Gross photo, courtesy of Lou Gross.
Image taken from the interview of Irena Ferencik, 1996, provided by the USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education; sfi.usc.edu.
Magda Amster and classmates photo, courtesy of Benjamin Greenman and Peter Chudý.
p. 4 Helena Citron image taken from the interview of Tsiporah Tehori, 1997, provided by the USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education; sfi.usc.edu.
Irena Fein image taken from the interview of Irena Ferencik, 1996, provided by the USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education; sfi.usc.edu.
Ria Hans image taken from Ria Elias interview, 1997, USC Shoah Foundation —The Institute for Visual History and Education; sfi.usc.edu.
Beth Jacob School image taken from Margaret Rosenberg interview, 1996, USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education; sfi.usc.edu.
Class of 1939 photo, courtesy of Edith Grosman.
p. 5 Dranger photos, courtesy of Koren, Ischari and Vjada families.
Ida Eigerman photo, courtesy of Sharon Neuman Ehrlich.
Kornreich photos, courtesy of Gelissen and Brandel families.
Sara Bleich photo, courtesy of Andrea Glancszpigel.
p. 6 Magda Moskovic image taken from Magda Bittermannová interview, 1996, USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education; sfi.usc.edu.
Joan Rosner image taken from Joan Weintraub interview, 1996, USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education; sfi.usc.edu.
Matilda Friedman image taken from Matilda Hrabovecká interview, 1996, USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education; sfi.usc.edu.
Ruzena Gräber Knieža image taken from Ruzena Knieža interview, 1997, USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education; sfi.usc.edu.
Perel Kaufman image taken from Perel Fridman interview, 1997, USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education; sfi.usc.edu.
Klara Lustbader photo, courtesy of Peter Chudý.
p. 7 Magda Friedman photo, courtesy of Donna Steinhorn.
Girls on bicycles photo, courtesy of Rutman family.
Minka Friedman photo, courtesy of Bernard Weiss.
Marta Friedman Gregor photo, courtesy of Orna Tuckman.
Klara Herz image taken from Klara BaumÖhlava interview, 1996, USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education; sfi.usc.edu.
Katarina Danzinger image taken from Katharina Princz interview, 1996, USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education; sfi.usc.edu.
Linda Reich Breder, photo, courtesy of Dasha Grafil.
p. 8 Berkowitz family photo, courtesy of Jeffrey Lautman.
Peggy Friedman image taken from Margaret Kulik interview, 1997, USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education; sfi.usc.edu.
Regina Wald photo, courtesy of Vera Power.
Kleinmann family photo, courtesy of Peter Guttman
p. 9 Fanny and Eta Zimmerspitz photo, courtesy of Zimmerspitz family and Lydia Marek.
Edita Rose Goldman photo, courtesy of the Eva Zilberman.
Marta Mangel Marek photo, courtesy of Lydia Marek.
1997, USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education; sfi.usc.edu.
Piri Randová-Slomovicová image taken from Piri Skrhová interview, 1996, USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education; sfi.usc.edu.
p. 10 Regina Schwartz and family images taken from Regina Pretter interview, 1996, USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education; sfi.usc.edu.
Alice Ickovic image taken from Alice Burianová interview, 1996, USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education; sfi.usc.edu.
p. 11 Dr. Manci Schwalbova photos, courtesy of Zuzana Kovacik.
Orli Reichert photo, courtesy of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.
p. 12 Linda Reich working in Canada photo, courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Group in Prague photo, courtesy of Ariela Neuman.
p. 13 Bertha Berkowitz in Bergen-Belsen photo, courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Ida Eigerman photo, courtesy of American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives.
p. 14 Elena Zuckermenn Grunwald and friends photo, courtesy of Ruth Wyse.
Arm with number and baby image taken from the interview of Tsiporah Tehori, 1997, provided by the USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education; sfi.usc.edu.
Margie Becker wedding image taken from Margaret Rosenberg interview, 1996, USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education; sfi.usc.edu.
Bertha and Elena as students photo, courtesy of Ruth Wyse.
Marta F. Gregor and friends photo, courtesy of Orna Tuckman.
p. 15 Ruzena Gräber Knieža with child image taken from Ruzena Knieža interview, 1997, USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education; sfi.usc.edu.
Wedding party and three old friends images taken from Margaret Kulik interview, 1997, USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education; sfi.usc.edu.
Perel Kaufman with baby image taken from Perel Fridman interview, 1997, USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education; sfi.usc.edu.
Photos taken in Sweden, courtesy of Rosette Rutman and estate of Regina Valo.
Dormitory in Sweden photo, courtesy of Rosette Rutman and estate of Regina Valo.
p. 16 Friedman and Grosman family photos, courtesy of Edith Grosman, Hannah Murray, and family.
Diligent efforts have been made to identify the individuals who are shown in the photos. Sadly, it has not been possible to identify all of them. If a reader recognizes any of the people who are shown, the author would welcome details, which can be sent through her website, www.renaspromise/education-form.php. She will share the information with the families and other interested parties.
