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949: Liberation of Bergen-Belsen Susan Pollack OBE Credits & tags Home Memories People Places Experiences About Contact Menu Close April 15, 1945, Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was liberated. Susan Pollack OBE was there, after incarceration in Auschwitz and Guben: We were not human beings anymore. We were reduced to being animals - maybe more. That’s how it was. We were just – no feelings. No awareness of me. We didn’t exist anymore. When you’re under such inner fear, even the fear goes somehow. When hope disappears, you don’t ask God, because where is God? And just, it was the end of life, the end of life that you can’t – there is no way out. In Auschwitz there were two or three levels in the barracks. We looked in disbelief & we looked at it in a totally ignorant – you know, when you have no – your mind doesn’t produce any – the mind also needs to be fed. Well, we weren’t. So, the mind needs some comprehension, some questions. No, no, no, it was just vacant, vacant, vacancy. I was in a world which somehow doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t correspond to anything I knew. I wasn’t a person anymore. I wasn’t a human being. I see myself as just a shadow, reduced. There was an occasion, I think it was in – it was some – where could it have been? I looked up at the sky & saw the sun. Somehow, did I interpreted it as God is looking down? But I don’t know whether that is something I recognise now, or did I think of it that way in those times? I don’t know. In Auschwitz Susan was selected for slave labour in Guben. One would think you'd realise: oh, I’m being selected, there’s hope. No, I was a robot. I was a complete robot, with no sentiments, with no feelings, with no hopes. Just a robot and life didn’t mean anything. Guben was something to do with armaments, small pieces to sort out. They showed it to me, nobody beat me up. I just always nodded in agreement. I don’t think anybody was supervising me. When I was told to do something, I did it if I could. I was willing, of course, because really, I wouldn’t object to anything. No, no. When the Allies advanced, Susan was sent on a death march to Bergen-Belsen. We got into Bergen-Belsen, place of death, diseases. In the barrack where I was put, there were all rotted bodies. I crawled out—I wasn’t able to walk anymore—I crawled out to the next barrack. Who do I see? My former neighbour, a Jewish woman from Felsőgöd. She recognised me. ‘Are we going to survive?’ she said. I said ‘Yes, just hold on a bit longer. Things will work out.’ The following day, I could see the lice all over her forehead when I crawled back to see her. She died. Lice would carry the diseases: typhus, tetanus—all the diseases I could think of we were infected with—most of us died. I heard shouting when finally the liberation came. But it didn’t mean anything to me anymore. It didn’t mean anything. Those who were strong, perhaps they could reasonably perhaps work it out. Ah, we’re free. I crawled out, I crawled out. On the green, in the field I wanted to die there. I feel a pair of hands gently picking me up, placing me in a warm place. A miracle. A British soldier. I got on my feet. I said, ‘What put that goodness into your heart that you could actually…? You made yourself vulnerable for us.’ They set up in a small building, it wasn’t even a building, just a small couple of rooms, they had beds. I remember fainting couple of times. But I was given food. This woman tried to explain where I might be able to get help. I just nodded. She said ‘Sweden.’ I didn’t even know that Sweden existed. So not long after I was moved. The Swedish sent the boat. You couldn’t walk, you had to be carried. Sweden offered me & others a place of rescue. Previous Memory Next Memory ← Previous Memory Credits & tags Edited from Susan Pollack OBE's interview with Dr Bea Lewkowicz for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, October 2023 • Learn More → Susan Pollack OBE Auschwitz Bergen-Belsen British Army Concentration Camp Guben Liberation Slave Labourer Swedish Recuperation Read AJR biography Next Memory → See Instagram & Facebook posts Germany Text adapted & edited by Susanna Kleeman See Locations Facebook & Instagram Posts

991: My Ransacked School Ruth Jackson Credits & tags Home Memories People Places Experiences About Contact Menu Close Ruth Jackson, age 12, Berlin, November 8, 1938: For the Nazis, you didn’t have to do anything wrong, you just had to be Jewish. On the day before Kristallnacht, the Nazi Youth went round & painted a big white ‘J’ or wrote the word ‘Jude’ meaning ‘Jew’, on all the shop windows in Berlin, so that was an easier target for them. On the actual night I was woken—my parents told me to get dressed, & we all sat & waited, because we could hear all the noise down the roads, of lorries, people being—shouted, being pulled out of their homes. There was a furrier opposite us & he had two small children. They were pulled out in their nightclothes & shoved onto the lorry. It was a very frightening experience. I was waiting for them to come into our house any moment now, but somehow we got missed out. It was a corner house & they went round the corner & they took a young family with a baby. I really couldn’t understand what they could have done wrong. So we sat there waiting & finally with a lot of shouting & banging, a lot of noise everywhere, glass flying, the Nazis left. My mother made the usual cup of coffee & said, ‘Now we can go to bed’, but we really couldn’t go to sleep any more. The next morning she told me not to go to school, but I was fond of school so I went, only to find that my school had been ransacked. We had vines growing up the school & we enjoyed harvesting the grapes, but they had all been pulled down. The books were all smouldering from the fire in the foreground. The building was a new building so it was very much of a concrete block, they couldn’t do much there but the glass windows of course were broken, the furniture was broken or burnt. The Headmistress told us to go home again, very quietly, but in small groups, which we did. After that, my parents thought it was best that I went to another school again, which I did. The new school was not far away from the KDW, if you know where that is, it’s a big store, on Joachimsthaler Strasse, it was called the Josef-Lehmann-Schule. So I went there, just for a short time, until I emigrated. After going to the new school I used to quite often walk to the school, take a bus in the morning, walk home again. I quite liked walking down the Kurfürstendamm, especially at Christmastime, they used to have Christmas trees for sale all along the road, & they had booths along there, selling things, Christmassy things. Like any other child I enjoyed looking at those, but I couldn’t understand why all these people were all in such a happy mood. They didn’t seem to care about what was happening to us at all. And Hanukkah, that’s our feast of lights, was spent very quietly at home. Previous Memory Next Memory ← Previous Memory Credits & tags Adapted from Ruth Jackson's interview with Helen Lloyd for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, August 2004 • Learn More → Ruth Jackson Destruction Of Property November Pogrom / Kristallnacht Read AJR biography Next Memory → See Instagram & Facebook posts Germany Text adapted & edited by Susanna Kleeman See Locations Facebook & Instagram Posts

955: 28 People Hiding In The Loft Rivka Reich Credits & tags Home Memories People Places Experiences About Contact Menu Close Rivka Reich (age 4), Oradea, Hungary, 1944: Our soap factory backed onto the railway station where they took Jews to Auschwitz. We thought going to Auschwitz would be just hard labour; we didn’t think further. But my father was different. He thought we must escape. People thought that they would go to Auschwitz & come back & find all their riches. My father & grandfather as well. They hid their silver & money in the ground. When the SS came, they knew that the Jews did that so, they interviewed him & they… I don’t know how to say it. They really hurt him, with electric wires. All full of blood. So he told them straightaway where everything was. Nobody wanted to be killed for that. That was the beginning of the terrible times. After that my father was trying to think how we can escape, how we can go. Then he thought: in the actual factory there was a loft with a roof, one more floor, never used, but you could go up. He thought maybe we could hide there. We had a non-Jewish manager, called Appan. He was very nice to us. They offered him a house & my mother's diamond ring. He said, 'I'll look after you, hide into this rooftop. Your wife, yourself & your two children. I'll bring food & look after you for as long as needed.' My father told my grandfather about it, my grandfather was very upset. He said 'Why don’t you come with us to Auschwitz? You will be able to work for us, we are elderly people'. My father said 'no.' My grandfather was terribly upset. After that all the people came to speak to my father. He was considered something quite special in town: very clever, very capable. They came all to him: 'Herr Rothbart, maybe you can think of something to save us.' My father told one person, Yankel Schreiber, 'I'm thinking of going into the loft.' 'Can we come with?” So they came, with six children, so there were eight people. My mother took us for a bath in the Mikveh. Berish Weiss saw her there & said 'What are you going to do?' My mother said 'We are going to hide. Come with us.' Another three people. And it grew. The Schreibers came, and then there was a Mrs Fuchs who was a widow with two children, she came as well. My nanny came and a few other young men who were begging to come. It turned out that at the end of the day we were 28 people instead of 4. Which was a tremendous thing, it was a small area, we could just about lie down, we couldn’t walk around, the facilities were just a bucket & only food we survived with was what this fellow brought for four people. We could hear from the window, still now I can hear it, the footsteps of the SS with the big boots, it was so frightening. But people laid down, because when people laid down they don’t move so much. My father said 'If everybody lies down you save energy, & they don’t hear you either”, at night especially. If somebody fell asleep, if they made the slightest noise, that was terrible, so one of us was always up to see that nobody should make a noise & nobody should move. At night noises are always amplified. Just below we could see them walking up & down, taking the people from the ghetto to Auschwitz. Appan brought chazzer [non-kosher meat] with whatever he had. I was allowed to eat it, because I was 4. If a 4-year-old child starts crying or makes the slightest noise, everybody gets endangered, so I was allowed to eat it. Hakadosh Baruch Hu [God] definitely helped all the way, because I didn’t cry. If I wanted to cry or be upset I cried in a cushion & never raised my voice. I had to learn to speak only quietly. For quite a while afterwards I had no voice. I still remember what they used to cook: if he brought some beans, somebody would hold a pan over a candle. That's how we cooked the beans, you can imagine hours standing there, but whatever food they could get would keep us going. They davened [prayed]. We were petrified all the time. There was not a time when we were not, we never could relax. The slightest noise. Rats crawling over you. I coped because my parents were very loving. We suffered, but compared to what people suffered in Auschwitz it was nothing. I can still feel it, I never talked about it for years. But my mother talked about the war a lot: 'We have to talk about the miracles. We are so lucky we are saved, we are saved for something, not just for nothing. There is a purpose in life why we are saved’. She never took it for granted & all her life she had a purpose in life, she helped people, they both did. In those days there were no committees but all their life they helped all war victims, anyone who was victim of anything. They were there to help until their last days. The group hid for 6 weeks until pressure on Appan forced them to make other arrangements. Rivka & her family escaped to Romania & survived. Previous Memory Next Memory ← Previous Memory Credits & tags Edited from Rivka Reich's interview with Dr Rosalyn Livshin for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, December 2005 • Learn More → Rivka Reich Food Helped By Non-Jews Hiding Valuables In Hiding Near Escape Nerves of Steel Recovery Read AJR biography Next Memory → See Instagram & Facebook posts Hungary Text adapted & edited by Susanna Kleeman See Locations Facebook & Instagram Posts

Germany Fulda Memories 978: Hitler On The Loudspeakers Simon Jochnowitz I remember Hitler on all the loudspeakers everywhere. You couldn’t escape it. I remember being in bed & saying “Oh I can’t sleep, I can't sleep... Previous Location Next Location

Stella Shinder Read full biography at The AJR / Refugee Voices Testimony Archive Memories 963: Experiencing Antisemitism Stella Shinder I had a little umbrella with red stripes. A little schoolmate of mine said, 'Is that the blood of German babies that the Jews are killing?' Read Full Memory Previous Person Next Person

See Locations Sweden Memories 928: Goodness Kindness & Helpfulness Susan Pollack OBE I never exchanged a word with anyone. I was on my own, withdrawn within myself. If you'd been found talking to someone, you'd have been shot... Read Full Memory 972: Discovering My Brother Was Alive Mala Tribich MBE One day I got a letter from my brother Ben. We were in this stately home with all its beauty, I opened it, I read it & was so excited... Read Full Memory 974: How To Recover Susan Pollack OBE It took a long time for me to strengthen my own needs. I made a friend & she made a very big, deep impression on me. A shared nightmare... Read Full Memory Ribbingelund Sweden Locations Previous Country Next Country

Erna Klein Read full biography at The AJR / Refugee Voices Testimony Archive Memories 933: Interned In Algeria Erna Klein One Arabic sentence helped a lot. It meant: ‘Are you drunk or whatever is the matter with you?’ That helped me out of a few difficult situations... Read Full Memory Previous Person Next Person

Betty Bloom Read full biography at The AJR / Refugee Voices Testimony Archive Memories 926: Dressing Up As A Gestapo Officer Betty Bloom The Gestapo were coming to arrest a Jewish baby in an orphanage. So my sister dressed up as a German officer and demanded this child... Read Full Memory 987: Father's Deportation Betty Bloom Unfortunately, at 6am, there was a knock on the door & two Gestapo officers marched in & arrested my father... Read Full Memory Previous Person Next Person

Rose Lebor Read full biography at The AJR / Refugee Voices Testimony Archive Memories 950: Liberation of Majdanek Rose Lebor At liberation I was four. All the executions, the beatings that they had to watch. My mother could never bring herself to tell me... Read Full Memory Previous Person Next Person

996: How To Hide In Berlin Hans Danziger Credits & tags Home Memories People Places Experiences About Contact Menu Close Hans Danziger's Jewish parents survived the war in hiding in Berlin: My father had nerves of steel. Before the war, Jews were obliged to put ‘Israel’ in front of their names. My father refused. He said his name wasn't Israel & nobody was going to tell him what to do. So he was hauled up before the magistrates, who sentenced him to 3 weeks in Spandau. He went to prison. My mother was absolutely terrified of what they were doing to him inside, came to meet him at the prison gates with bags of sandwiches in case he’d been starved. He said, “Put those away. I couldn’t eat a thing more.” In the evenings, he said, the warders used to come round to his cell, & say, “Come on Danziger, tell us. What are these idiots doing to the Jews?" He told them what was going on & they were amazed. Another time, when they were hiding during the war, he'd been somewhere & was coming through the railway barriers. My mother was waiting for him & somebody jostled my father. My father turned around & offered to punch him in the face. My mother nearly died. They had no papers, nothing. My father said to her afterwards “If I'd cowered, they might have been saying, ‘Are you a Jew or something?’” He said, “As it was, nobody dared question it.” Another day, he was on the tram, having been to the country to fetch eggs & butter & so forth from a farmer. Black market. He was on the tram & some Nazi with a big swastika in his buttonhole said to him, “What have you got in your case?” My father said, “I've got butter, eggs, sugar, a bit of this, leg of chicken.” The chap says, “Yeah, yeah. In your dreams.” My father said, “Just shows you my son, always tell the truth.” This is how they first hid: my father was working in Daimler-Benz. One day, the Jews were told to stay behind. My father thought, well, this does not bode well. So he put his hat & coat on, & went. The gatekeeper said to him. “A bit early, isn't it?” My father said “I've got a dental appointment.” “OK, see you tomorrow.” He obviously hadn't been told to keep the Jews in. So my father went. God knows what happened to the rest. My father went straight to the underground, took off his yellow star, rode around, I don't know for how long. He then phoned some friends who said, “Yes, Lotti’s with us.” So he knew my mother was safe. Then he went to the house. Fischer, the porter, had made an arrangement with him. If there was trouble or the Nazis were upstairs, he would turn a cup upside down in his porters’ lodge. So my father went past & he saw the cup upside down. So he didn't go up. Then a couple of nights later, he went back again. There was nothing there. So he went upstairs. He broke the seal on the door, because the Gestapo had sealed the door. He started getting the boxes ready & the porter came rushing up & said, “What are you doing? Are you mad? Some people are saying there's a light on in the Danziger flat.” So they turned the lights off. My father said “Take what you want, just get the boxes to Goerner.” So they did up the boxes & manhandled them downstairs to the porter’s lodge. From there, they went to his friend Goerner’s place. These were all non-Jews. There were many people, all non-Jews who helped them, hid them, gave him false papers, took them out. I can't say enough about them. My father tried with Yad Vashem to get honours for certain people. One of them employed my father as a night watchman. So during the day, my father went out of the district where he was known & went to different places. At night, he had a safe place to go as a night watchman. By this time, my mother had been questioned by the Gestapo about where my father was. She could answer honestly saying she hadn't a clue. They left her alone. Then her friend Helli was working at an electrical plant, Siemens. The foreman there quite fancied her. When it was time, all the Jews stayed behind, he said to her “Look, I know you're not that keen, but do you want to go with them? Or do you want to come home?” She said, “I'll come home with you if my friend Lotti can come.” So he said, “Alright, bring your friend Lotti, but you’d better hurry.” So he got them to his house & put them up. There was an old railway carriage at the end of his garden with the chickens in. He threw out the chickens & installed Helli & my mother. He used to bring them little bits of felt to make hats, which he then sold in the factory. Nobody asked where he got the hats from. He was a bit of a drunk, & when he was drunk, he used to sing anti-Nazi songs. Not a good thing to do in those days. So, my mother got very frightened & said to Helli, “I don't think we ought to hang around here.” So my mother stayed with some other friends, one of whom was not Jewish. Had been married to a Jew, who had divorced him. He found my mother a job with some woman who had dementia & was some raving old Nazi. My mother didn't look very Jewish so that was OK. We have a photo of a Nazi officer in the photograph book. And we said, “What on earth’s he doing in there?!” You know. She said, “you don't judge a book by its cover”. She said she was somewhere at a party & this officer was there & he said to her, “I'm sure,” you know, “ask your husband's permission, but honoured Lady—gnädige Frau—if you would care to have my arm should you want to go out. I would always be—here's my phone number.” So she phoned him & he took her out. If she wanted to go shopping to some shop, where she wouldn't be allowed normally, he would take it to the shops. He knew she was Jewish. He didn't ask any questions; he didn't want to know. He never asked. He never said anything. But obviously, why should he bother, you know? Sadly, sadly, he was killed by the Russians at the end of the war & both his sons died on the Russian front—they were both doctors. Very sad. The ones who do good get killed. Previous Memory Next Memory ← Previous Memory Credits & tags Adapted from Hans Danziger's interview with Dr Bea Lewkowicz for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, February 2021 • Learn More → Hans Danziger Arrested Encounter With Nazi Officials False Identity Helped By Non-Jews Hiding In Plain Sight In Hiding Near Escape Nerves of Steel Read AJR biography Next Memory → See Instagram & Facebook posts Germany Text adapted & edited by Susanna Kleeman See Locations Facebook & Instagram Posts

Hungary Budapest Memories 929: Fending For Myself Aged 9 Stephen Nagy I contracted scarlet fever. You had to go to an isolation hospital for six weeks. The fascist Hungarians took over. So, I was stuck in hospital... 942: Father's New Woman John Hajdu MBE In each flat it was about 20 of us squeezed in. The area was guarded by the Arrow Cross Party: fascist & brutal. Hardly any food... 943: The Legless Side Of The Bed Laszlo Roman I was always told I mustn’t pee by the side of the road because someone might see that I am circumcised... 958: Discovering I Was Jewish John Dobai My parents thought that by changing their religion, it might produce some sort of saving, at least for me. But they were wrong... 959: The Invasion Of Hungary George Donath It was a Sunday. We went to my grandparents for lunch as usual. All of a sudden we see these black Mercedes drawing up in front... Previous Location Next Location

929: Fending For Myself Aged 9 Stephen Nagy Credits & tags Home Memories People Places Experiences About Contact Menu Close Budapest: Stephen Nagy was nine and a half in September 1944: I contracted scarlet fever, at that time a very serious illness. You had to go to an isolation hospital for six weeks. On October 14th I got a phone call from my father saying to get my clothes together: the next day I'd go home. But the next day was October 15, when the right-wing fascist Hungarians under Ferenc Szálasi took over. So, I was stuck in hospital. At first, I felt reasonably safe. I had a friend there who called me, in Hungarian, büdös zsidó, which means “smelly Jew” which the Jews were called. I wasn't pleased. But he wasn't very nasty about it. I didn't understand why I was still in the hospital. I later learned that first of all no one could come for me because the Germans blew up the bridge. Also, my family arranged through connections with the hospital director that they keep me there until further notice. I heard guns. The Russians were getting nearer. Then on December 21, suddenly this gentleman called Mr. Bujdosi, I remember the name, a lovely gentleman, came with a car. And I was taken to an International Red Cross house. There were a lot of Jewish children there. Conditions were reasonably normal. There was food. I was quite ignorant of what was going on except I knew there was a war. I knew the Russians were coming nearer. I knew that there were daily air raids, the siren sounded. We had to go down to the shelter. The house escaped because there was obviously a Red Cross marked on the roof. I was pretty frightened. I wasn't a happy bunny. But I was 9½ & reasonably streetwise. I was already on my own for nearly two months. I was fending for myself. I found it a relatively normal thing. There were 2 or 3 adults in charge. One woman was a rather old battle axe, not very pleasant to us. Then, soon after Christmas, suddenly, the adults disappeared. I was curious what was happening & went down in the shelter. I found lots of old Jewish people, including my father's second cousin. When she saw me, she just said, 'My God. What are you doing here? Don't go back upstairs. Stay downstairs with me. We've still got some food.' So I stayed. "Then on January 18, after weeks of awful bombing suddenly there was eerie silence. I woke up on a straw mattress next to the lady. She said 'Don't go outside!' but I did & found we were 'free'. The same day, my relative’s daughter came for her & found me there & took me back to their flat. I had my first decent meal there. A potato dish. What happened after that—I never forgave her—was that the daughter took me to a Yellow Star house, saying she didn't know anything about my parents but that my uncle & aunt were there, which they weren't. So I was stuck there alone for another 4 weeks. The remaining Germans tried to dig a tunnel & escape but were all annihilated. So there was lots of bombs. Sadly, my older relative, who was at the International Red Cross house, was in the street & was killed by a shrapnel. Eventually my uncle & aunt arrived. It was ice cold. The Danube was frozen over. My job was to go down with a saucepan & bring up water from the ground floor because there was no pressure. I carried this water up, stopping after each floor because by this stage I was quite weak. One day, February 1, I was carrying water, I heard a strange voice, which I thought may have been my brother's but it's gone a bit deeper than what I remembered. I went up there & found my mother & brother in the flat. They'd escaped from Old Buda. They were in a house where Germans moved into the lower ground floor. But on the 31st of January, suddenly these Germans disappeared. So next day, my mother & brother went down to the Danube, where it narrows & was thick ice. They had taken the dog, who was very close to my 7-year-old cousin. Several times, my brother gave it a kick to go back but it wouldn't. They managed to cross the Danube & decided to write a little note, “We crossed the Danube at Ujpest. Come after us.” And my brother gave the dog a huge big kick & it found a way all the way back to the house. And as my cousin put her arms around the dog & kissed the dog she found this note. So the next day, my aunt, with my father & my cousin, came the same way & arrived at my uncle & aunt's yellow star house, where we all were. So that was the family reunion. Previous Memory Next Memory ← Previous Memory Credits & tags Edited from Stephen Nagy's interview with Dr Bea Lewkowicz for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, March 2019 • Learn More → Stephen Nagy Arrow Cross In Hiding Jewish House Liberation Nerves of Steel Reunited Read AJR biography Next Memory → See Instagram & Facebook posts Hungary Text adapted & edited by Susanna Kleeman See Locations Facebook & Instagram Posts