'It takes time to resurrect a person in itself': how the last Holocaust witnesses survived and live

Edition with the BBC tells the incredible stories of the lives and survival of some of the last witnesses of the Holocaust. These women, and then little girls, survived miraculously. But their struggle did not end there. Each of them found their own difficult path to get used to peaceful life and become part of it. And also - to find the strength to tell your story. Although, even after 75 years, it is still not easy for them to talk.

Фото: Depositphotos

“The only thing worse than Auschwitz is forgetting that it happened,” says Eva Szepesi.

She was 12 years old when she ended up in the Auschwitz concentration camp. On this, Eve’s childhood ended, and now she seems to be trying to catch up.

Before the interview begins, she takes out perfume, sprays it on her wrists and says: “You know, my mother had wonderful perfume in a beautiful bottle. As a child, I once took a bottle out of the closet because I wanted to smell as delicious as my mother. And suddenly she broke it. The whole house was filled with the smell of perfume.”

“For some reason, it was this very smell that I imagined all the way while we were being taken to Auschwitz. In fact, there was a terrible stench in our carriage. They weren't allowed to defecate. Someone was feeling sick. But I didn't feel anything. Instead of a terrible smell, I smelled the aroma of my mother’s perfume,” adds Eva.

Past the gas chamber

Eva is wearing pearl beads and a bright blue sweater; she is slightly tugging at her sleeve out of excitement. Underneath this sleeve, on the back of the arm, is the tattoo “26877.” This number was tattooed on her the morning after her arrival at Auschwitz.

“After the war, I often powdered the tattoo or covered it with the sleeve of my blouse. But I never wanted to mix this number. He belongs to me. Many prisoners had large numbers stamped on the outside of their hands, but I had a small one. I was lucky,” says Eva.

70% of people brought to Auschwitz were killed during the first day. Railroad tracks went right up to the gas chambers. People were unloaded from the wagons, someone was selected for work, and the rest were immediately killed.

On the subject: 'Now you can die': 92-year-old woman met with the family she saved during the Holocaust

The car in which Eve rode was sent to the hut, and the selection was appointed the next morning. Before dawn, a Slovak woman unexpectedly approached the girl, who worked as an overseer in Auschwitz.

"How old are you? 12? You are 16, and don’t even try to pretend to be younger!” she said menacingly.

Eva was scared and confused, but when she was asked about her age during the general formation, she blurted out in response: “Sixteen.” It saved her life.

Everyone who was younger was sent to gas chambers, and Eve was assigned to work in a quarry.

Star for life

“By January 1945, I was already very, very sick, and I had absolutely no strength left. And there were dead or barely alive people lying around. The Red Army was already close. The Nazis retreated and took with them everyone who could still stand. They had orders to shoot those who remained in Auschwitz, so that there would be no one to tell what they were doing there,” recalls Szepesi.

Eve then constantly lost consciousness and was on the verge of death. They decided not to spend ammo on it.

“At some point I woke up and realized that I was lying on a mountain of corpses. I had absolutely no strength, but I didn’t want to give up. I mumbled something, a man came up to me and fed me snow. This snow helped me so much! When I opened my eyes again, I saw in front of me a Russian soldier in such a beautiful fur hat. There was a red star on it. He smiled at me... And I was so happy with the human warmth that radiated from his face. It brought me back to life. I will always remember him,” Eva adds, smiling.

Crush all

“I was able to live on after the war because I suppressed everything in myself. I tried not to think about what happened to me in the past, to build a new life. And I suppressed everything, shoved it deep into my soul. But this cannot be hidden forever,” sighs Eva.

She tells how after the concentration camp she learned to walk again, how difficult it was to sit at the school desk again and how she searched and found the strength to live on.

“Many of those who surrendered while in Auschwitz did not survive. When you give up and say you can't take it anymore, that's the end. You need to convince yourself that you will overcome everything. And it helps,” says Eva.

In 1951 she met her future husband. Eva admits that she was in a hurry to start a family: “More than anything in the world, I wanted to have a child. After all, I lost my parents, and I really wanted to have a loved one. This is how my first daughter Judit appeared.”

But Eva, separated from her parents at the age of ten, did not know how to raise a small child: “Mom disappeared from my life too early. I missed her love, her example before my eyes, so when I became a mother myself, it was not easy. Sometimes I just didn’t know how to behave.”

In 1956, Eve again saw the Soviet soldiers. But this time I experienced completely different emotions from this meeting. At the end of October 1956, the USSR sent troops to its hometown of Budapest to crush the Hungarian uprising.

“On the one hand, Soviet soldiers saved the life of me and thousands of other prisoners of fascist concentration camps. On the other hand, I saw with my own eyes how Soviet soldiers drowned the Hungarian uprising in blood. And this is difficult to accept and combine in your head. But this is how life is - different. But I still have a good attitude towards Russians,” she adds.

After the uprising was crushed, the Eve family was forced to flee Hungary. They settled in Germany, where Eve's husband was offered a job.

On the subject: Holocaust survivors cousins ​​reunited after 75 years of separation

For 50 years after the war, Eva was silent about her experience in Auschwitz: her loved ones knew about it as a brief fact from her biography - she never told them about her experience. But in 1995, director Steven Spielberg invited Eva to come to the site of the former concentration camp.

Then she first told her story to relatives. Today, Eve speaks a lot to schoolchildren. He says that at the beginning of a conversation, many are skeptical, but by the middle of the conversation, they usually do not remain indifferent.

“When I hear that Auschwitz is a fiction, I think: how important it is for all survivors, including me, to convey to future generations how everything really happened. So that this never happens again. My brother, my mother - they can't talk. Everyone who was killed by the Nazis was deprived of their voices and made mute. This means that we must speak for them.”

“It takes time to resurrect a person in itself”

“It took me a long time to learn how to just look people in the eye again after the war,” says Tamar Dryfuss.

Lucky dress and dog box

“The Jewish ghetto in Vilna was created in 1941. I was a little over three then, but I clearly remember many things, especially the day I last saw my father,” Tamar begins. — It was in 1943. The Germans came into the ghetto and ordered everyone to leave. We hid, but outside we heard an order that all the men must come out, otherwise we would be blown up.”

Father Tamar, along with other men, was taken to forced labor. She later found out that he was killed.

By 1943, about 50 people had been exterminated in the Vilnius ghetto. Tamar and her mother were sent to a concentration camp. Along the way they tried to escape three times. The first two attempts failed: for the first mother, Tamar was sentenced to 000 lashes. On the third blow, the woman lost consciousness. Despite this, she believed that it was better to be killed while trying to escape than to accept what was happening without complaint. The second time they were caught again - but not killed. Tamar's mother was hit in the head and was unconscious for two days.

“On the last transfer we were sent to the shower. Thank God it was just a regular shower. Everyone undressed. Mom found a suit for herself in a pile of clothes, and a dress for me. She even tied a bow for me, raised her head proudly, and we went,” recalls Tamar.

A well-dressed woman with a child walked unhindered past all the guards and went outside the camp gates. Perhaps the guards thought it was the family of one of the officers.

After this, Tamar and her mother hid from the Nazis for a long time, moving from village to village, from one yard to another. Once they hid from a raid for three days in a watchdog booth. For some reason, the formidable dog did not betray his unexpected neighbors and even shared food from his bowl with them: “Every time they brought him food, he did not eat, but left it for us. Mom said that people are worse than animals, because the animal will eat its prey, be satisfied and calm down, but people will not. People don’t get satiated; they always want more.”

“When we were hiding, my mother often asked me to sit quietly so that I wouldn’t accidentally give us away. Therefore, when the war ended, I did not immediately realize that that’s it, now we are free. It was a long process. It takes time to resurrect the person within you,” says Tamar.

But for her, the struggle against fascism did not end either in 1945, or even ten years later. In 1959, Tamar's husband got a job in Munich, and although she terribly did not want to go to Germany, she agreed.

“When we moved from Israel, there were still a lot of Nazis around. And it was unbearable to constantly see them, meet them everywhere and know that they went unpunished. Not everyone was convicted. Many did not even repent of what they had done. And it was incredibly difficult to come to terms with this,” says Tamar.

Tamar and her husband could not just look at this - they began to help the so-called “Nazi hunters” - volunteers trying to find those who went unpunished after World War II. Tamar and her husband managed to secure punishment for at least one person - the former chief of the Gestapo in Cologne.

On the subject: Diary of 'Polish Anne Frank': on the horrors of the Holocaust and first love

Tamar admits: her family, friends and books helped her return to normal after the war.

Now Tamar lives alone: ​​her husband died several years ago, and her children started their own families. Tamar closely follows modern politics: “The far right is again coming to power around the world. And this worries me very much. People don't like strangers again. This attitude needs to change. People must be accepted regardless of their skin color, religion or language they speak. But we still have to fight for this to happen.”

Many of Tamar’s days are scheduled almost minute by minute: speeches to schoolchildren, lectures at universities and conferences, interviews on television. She hopes that the modern far-right will hear her speeches and think a few times before “hiding behind their catchy slogans.”

“I believe in today's youth. There are decades of difference between us, but it seems to me that we understand each other. In the end, these guys are facing the same questions that I was facing 60-70 years ago, only in a slightly less radical formulation. And I will be glad if I can help young people find answers,” says Tamar.

“The war taught kindness”

Confident and fast walk, painted lips - looking at Maria Neumann, it’s hard to believe that she is 90 years old.

“I’ll have an interview in the morning, and in the evening I’ll go to a cafe: we meet there with the guys every two weeks. We sit, share our impressions, discuss something - sometimes news, but more often books. I really like to read,” says Maria.

Erzael-cafe in the center of Cologne is a meeting place for those who lived through the Second World War. There, Maria often sees Tamar Dryfus. Those gathered don’t often remember the war. But still, some stories were heard for the first, and sometimes the only time, in this cafe.

A pair of shoes on a wooden run

The war for Maria began on June 23, 1941, when the Nazis came to Borisov (now the territory of Belarus). All the Jews were immediately driven into the ghetto.

“We got up early. They pulled on everything they could pull on and went to work. They worked until late in the evening. They cleaned the street and carried heavy loads. We were often beaten. And usually for no particular reason,” recalls Maria. She was ten years old then.

On October 20, 1941, the ghetto was liquidated, having shot almost everyone in a day. According to historians, only a few dozen people out of more than 7000 prisoners managed to escape.

“My sister and I managed to escape thanks to our mother. She told the father to hide in the cellar with the older children. Mom slammed the lid behind us and covered the passage with a rug. Mom left the little ones upstairs with her - she was afraid that they might betray us by crying, and then they would all die. A moment later, the Germans entered the house and took mother and our little ones away to be shot.”

Maria, her sister Genya and father did not leave the cellar for two days. All this time they heard the Nazis kill the residents of Borisov.

“I start talking about it, and even now I get chills throughout my body. These experiences do not leave me; they live in my very heart. There's no escape. But you have to live and say thank you to God for every day you live,” she confidently adds.

On the subject: 'Triumph over Evil': a Holocaust survivor celebrated the 104 anniversary in the circle of 400 descendants. A PHOTO

After two months of wandering in the surrounding villages, Mary's father went into partisans. And the girls were identified in the orphanage.

“When saying goodbye, my father said: believe in God and believe in people. I live by this covenant to this day. Anything happened, but I always met people who helped me in a seemingly hopeless situation. Not everyone can be trusted. But the heart always correctly suggested who to open up to.”

Already after the war, Maria found out that her father died in the summer of 1944, having almost lived to see the release of Borisov.

“It was difficult in the orphanage. We had one pair of wooden shoes. We were there with typhus and all sorts of things. And also frequent bombings. The boys in the boys' section died. But we were lucky - a high-explosive bomb fell under our windows, but did not explode,” recalls Maria.

After the war, Maria returned to Borisov, graduated from school and entered the culinary college. One autumn day she met Dmitry, a guy with whom she lived next door before the start of the German occupation. A few months later the young people got married. Dmitry passed away early - just a few years after the wedding. Maria did not want to look for love again. But the experience did not embitter her.

“The main lesson I learned from the war and all the trials is about kindness. There is kindness, and it is stronger than evil. I tried and try to be kind, and it gives me strength.”

Read also on ForumDaily:

Dark tourism: why people like to go to dangerous places

In Russia, declassified documents on the release of Auschwitz

Diary of 'Polish Anne Frank': on the horrors of the Holocaust and first love

American dream: how a Ukrainian who survived 5 concentration camps built a popular resort in New York

'Triumph over Evil': a Holocaust survivor celebrated the 104 anniversary in the circle of 400 descendants. A PHOTO

Do you want more important and interesting news about life in the USA and immigration to America? — support us donate! Also subscribe to our page Facebook. Select the “Priority in display” option and read us first. Also, don't forget to subscribe to our РєР ° РЅР ° Р »РІ Telegram  and Instagram- there is a lot of interesting things there. And join thousands of readers ForumDaily New York — there you will find a lot of interesting and positive information about life in the metropolis.