00:00:07.757 --> 00:00:11.136
The whole tragedy starts with the girls.

00:00:14.431 --> 00:00:16.850
They have been the first victims.

00:01:44.395 --> 00:01:49.109
I was living in a small Slovakian city.

00:01:52.654 --> 00:01:54.531
We were 6,000 citizens there.

00:01:55.448 --> 00:01:57.534
About 60% Jews.

00:01:58.993 --> 00:02:01.913
And we were in very good relations with the non-Jews.

00:02:05.625 --> 00:02:07.043
In 1938,

00:02:07.168 --> 00:02:09.838
Slovakia broke away from Czechoslovakia.

00:02:13.258 --> 00:02:16.094
After Hitler took power in Austria and Bohemia,

00:02:16.511 --> 00:02:18.221
a new president was elected.

00:02:19.639 --> 00:02:21.808
Joseph Tiso was a Catholic priest.

00:02:22.559 --> 00:02:24.686
He was also an anti-Semite.

00:02:27.063 --> 00:02:29.524
President Tiso installed a fascist government

00:02:30.441 --> 00:02:33.903
with the help of a paramilitary group called the Hlinka Guard.

00:02:36.865 --> 00:02:38.283
By 1940,

00:02:38.449 --> 00:02:43.663
anti-Jewish legislation in Slovakia
was even more severe than in Germany.

00:02:44.747 --> 00:02:48.084
Jews were not only forced to wear the yellow Star of David,

00:02:48.877 --> 00:02:52.338
they couldn't own a car, a truck, a radio,

00:02:52.547 --> 00:02:54.007
or even a cat.

00:02:55.675 --> 00:02:57.969
They took away our passports.

00:02:58.178 --> 00:03:00.972
Our rights to travel, even within the land.

00:03:01.639 --> 00:03:04.684
Our rights to be admitted to a public hospital.

00:03:05.393 --> 00:03:07.812
We had absolutely no rights left.

00:03:09.230 --> 00:03:13.484
On every corner, there were anti-Jewish posters

00:03:13.651 --> 00:03:16.487
showing the Jews in the ugliest possible way.

00:03:18.573 --> 00:03:21.576
All of a sudden, they stop speaking to us

00:03:22.076 --> 00:03:25.538
and then we began to feel the first hate toward us,

00:03:27.248 --> 00:03:28.666
but really hate.

00:03:32.629 --> 00:03:40.303
Slowly, slowly, the Jews became a mass
without means of existence

00:03:40.887 --> 00:03:44.682
because they didn't have any source of income, and

00:03:45.308 --> 00:03:48.853
there was only one way to solve the problem.

00:03:50.146 --> 00:03:52.690
The government had made an agreement with the Germans,

00:03:53.733 --> 00:03:58.404
that the Slovak Jews will be deported to Poland,

00:03:59.072 --> 00:04:02.867
provided that the deported will not come back.

00:04:03.952 --> 00:04:09.290
When Germany insisted that Slovakia send
20,000 workers to support the war effort,

00:04:09.832 --> 00:04:14.921
President Tiso ordered unmarried Jewish girls to volunteer for work.

00:04:19.676 --> 00:04:23.513
Bat’a was one of the largest shoe manufacturers in the world.

00:04:25.098 --> 00:04:28.935
The girls and their parents believed
they’d be working in the Bat’a factories,

00:04:29.102 --> 00:04:30.353
making army boots.

00:04:31.354 --> 00:04:33.982
Everyone, even the local police,

00:04:34.399 --> 00:04:36.067
believed the government's lie.

00:04:39.696 --> 00:04:41.281
We have been deceived.

00:04:41.781 --> 00:04:46.327
And the fascist regime said, "Okay, we give you young girls.

00:04:46.411 --> 00:04:49.122
You can employ them in your industry."

00:04:52.000 --> 00:04:55.545
Tiso and his fascist government made a secret deal

00:04:55.545 --> 00:04:58.172
to pay the Nazis 500 reichsmarks

00:04:59.215 --> 00:05:01.926
the equivalent of 3,000 U.S. dollars today

00:05:02.593 --> 00:05:04.345
for every Jew deported.

00:05:07.307 --> 00:05:10.977
One morning we wake up and we saw outside on the street,

00:05:11.602 --> 00:05:13.646
it was glued on the houses,

00:05:13.938 --> 00:05:17.859
an announcement that all the Jewish girls,

00:05:18.568 --> 00:05:21.779
non-married girls, from 16 up

00:05:21.946 --> 00:05:24.032
have to come to the school

00:05:24.282 --> 00:05:28.995
the 20th of March, 1942.

00:05:30.038 --> 00:05:31.080
For work.

00:05:36.461 --> 00:05:38.504
Edith and her older sister, Lea,

00:05:38.671 --> 00:05:41.257
lived near the Hungarian border in Humenne,

00:05:41.382 --> 00:05:44.594
one of the first towns to start registering girls.

00:05:45.386 --> 00:05:47.430
My mother was so against it.

00:05:47.847 --> 00:05:49.098
And my father,

00:05:49.557 --> 00:05:52.018
he was so disciplined, you know?

00:05:52.101 --> 00:05:54.103
He said, "It's a law, we have to do it."

00:05:55.396 --> 00:05:58.983
Margita Becker lived next door to Edith and Lea.

00:06:00.234 --> 00:06:02.403
My mother said, "Hey, you don't have to go."

00:06:02.487 --> 00:06:05.531
And that was the first time, maybe, that I disobeyed my mother.

00:06:07.033 --> 00:06:09.619
I said, "No, I want to go with my friends.”

00:06:09.744 --> 00:06:11.371
Friends are very important at that point,

00:06:11.829 --> 00:06:14.707
so I didn't want to be left behind.

00:06:14.957 --> 00:06:16.959
So we went to the school.

00:06:16.959 --> 00:06:22.799
And there was something that we were very surprised,
an SS was sitting there.

00:06:23.383 --> 00:06:28.388
The doctor and an SS by the table when they were checking us.

00:06:37.355 --> 00:06:39.982
Not every girl was collected in the same way.

00:06:40.775 --> 00:06:45.238
It took five days to gather 999 girls.

00:06:47.115 --> 00:06:48.408
The Hlinka Guard told us,

00:06:49.075 --> 00:06:52.745
“We are taking you to work to Germany."

00:06:53.121 --> 00:06:56.916
So we can help our families who are behind,

00:06:57.625 --> 00:06:58.918
and support them.

00:07:00.753 --> 00:07:02.088
When the police came...

00:07:06.134 --> 00:07:07.802
I had to start packing.

00:07:09.345 --> 00:07:10.721
They told my parents

00:07:10.721 --> 00:07:12.890
that they were going to take me to work

00:07:13.141 --> 00:07:15.601
and there was no other choice.

00:07:18.771 --> 00:07:23.151
Magda Amster’s best friend watched as she was arrested.

00:07:24.694 --> 00:07:29.282
Magda was hiding in the attic of their villa.
They had a beautiful house.

00:07:29.907 --> 00:07:32.535
And they started to beat Adolf,

00:07:32.577 --> 00:07:34.495
"Where is your daughter? Where did you hide her?"

00:07:34.495 --> 00:07:35.830
So she came down.

00:07:38.166 --> 00:07:41.669
And all of a sudden, they took us out and we marched,

00:07:41.836 --> 00:07:43.421
and an SS with us.

00:07:44.046 --> 00:07:49.177
All the parents began to shout and cry, and shout and cry.

00:07:49.760 --> 00:07:51.512
And my mother, I heard her,

00:07:51.804 --> 00:07:53.055
I’m hearing her now.

00:07:53.264 --> 00:07:54.432
How she said,

00:07:54.765 --> 00:07:59.145
"About Lea, I am not so worried. She's strong.

00:07:59.770 --> 00:08:01.981
But Edith, she's like nothing."

00:08:03.941 --> 00:08:06.986
The older girls
wanted to show the Slovak government

00:08:06.986 --> 00:08:10.698
how patriotic and hardworking Jewish girls were,

00:08:11.699 --> 00:08:13.201
and cheered up the younger ones

00:08:13.409 --> 00:08:15.203
by telling jokes and singing.

00:08:16.829 --> 00:08:20.291
[Hlinka Marching Song]

00:08:26.380 --> 00:08:28.382
We saw the beautiful mountains,

00:08:28.549 --> 00:08:31.677
the Tatra mountains and everybody was singing.

00:08:33.137 --> 00:08:35.056
[Slovak] Wonderful Tatras.

00:08:35.139 --> 00:08:36.390
Oh boy!

00:08:40.019 --> 00:08:48.236
♪ Lightning flashes over the Tatra, the thunder pounds wildly ♪

00:08:49.153 --> 00:08:56.661
♪ Lightning flashes over the Tatra, the thunder pounds wildly ♪

00:08:58.120 --> 00:09:10.550
♪Let us pause, they will surely disappear, the Slovaks will revive ♪

00:09:14.220 --> 00:09:18.015
They took us to Poprad,

00:09:18.266 --> 00:09:20.643
and we were there a few days

00:09:20.893 --> 00:09:25.439
until they had young girls from Eastern Slovakia.

00:09:34.740 --> 00:09:39.370
When the girls arrived in Poprad,
they were secured in an empty army barracks.

00:09:40.913 --> 00:09:42.373
They were forced to clean,

00:09:42.707 --> 00:09:45.167
while being slowly starved.

00:09:45.418 --> 00:09:48.379
Feed 150 grams (5.29 ounces) of either
legumes, goulash, potatoes, or cabbage.

00:10:21.120 --> 00:10:26.584
The girl stood in line as 999 of their names

00:10:26.792 --> 00:10:28.669
were typed into a list.

00:10:49.565 --> 00:10:52.443
We had to line up, five in rows,

00:10:53.527 --> 00:10:56.906
and march to the railroad station.

00:11:01.786 --> 00:11:07.500
And far away, we saw a long track of cattle cars.

00:11:08.209 --> 00:11:12.713
We didn't even think of it, that those are suited for us.

00:11:12.838 --> 00:11:14.423
We are human beings.

00:11:16.801 --> 00:11:20.179
The railway charged 3,700 reichsmarks

00:11:20.388 --> 00:11:22.014
to transport the girls.

00:11:22.515 --> 00:11:25.976
And 360 reichsmarks for their luggage.

00:11:27.144 --> 00:11:28.813
The train ticket to deport them

00:11:29.605 --> 00:11:32.566
was the one-way travel to Auschwitz.

00:11:34.110 --> 00:11:37.655
25th of March was my birthday.

00:11:37.988 --> 00:11:41.283
I was 19 that day.

00:11:41.909 --> 00:11:44.453
They loaded us on a train.

00:11:44.912 --> 00:11:49.208
The guards started screaming, in Slovakian, naturally,

00:11:49.250 --> 00:11:52.378
“Up! Up! Dirty Jewish whores,” and so on.

00:11:52.586 --> 00:11:55.506
We didn't know where we are going. We didn't have any idea.

00:11:56.632 --> 00:11:58.342
Not water. Not anything.

00:11:58.509 --> 00:12:00.136
And locked from outside.

00:12:00.594 --> 00:12:01.679
74 Personen [people]

00:12:28.748 --> 00:12:33.502
We were really like sardines, and we were scared.

00:12:33.627 --> 00:12:35.713
I was sitting in a corner,

00:12:36.005 --> 00:12:37.923
and I was staring.

00:12:38.299 --> 00:12:41.719
Some of them were screaming, crying...

00:12:41.969 --> 00:12:45.181
But nobody could really

00:12:46.474 --> 00:12:48.893
anticipate what’s coming.

00:12:52.104 --> 00:12:54.815
On the Polish border, the train stopped.

00:12:55.149 --> 00:13:00.237
The guards gave the whole transport over to the SS.

00:13:09.288 --> 00:13:11.540
In no time we went again.

00:13:12.750 --> 00:13:15.961
Maybe four, five hours... I don't know the time.

00:13:18.005 --> 00:13:21.634
The train stopped in the middle of a field.

00:13:22.802 --> 00:13:26.639
And there was an empty place. Nothing.

00:13:33.562 --> 00:13:34.563
The doors opened up,

00:13:35.397 --> 00:13:38.192
and the only people that we saw were SS

00:13:38.943 --> 00:13:42.196
with those big, huge German Shepherd dogs.

00:13:42.613 --> 00:13:46.033
The next thing that you heard is
“Los! Los! Macht Schnell.”

00:13:46.408 --> 00:13:48.077
“Hurry up! Make it fast.”

00:13:49.370 --> 00:13:53.541
A huge flat land in front of us where we marched

00:13:54.500 --> 00:13:56.836
with little flickering lights.

00:13:58.838 --> 00:14:00.506
When we came closer,

00:14:01.841 --> 00:14:04.885
we saw the barbed wire and we saw the barracks.

00:14:05.135 --> 00:14:08.764
We came and marched through an iron gate.

00:14:09.598 --> 00:14:12.893
The gate opened, on top, Arbeit Macht Frei.

00:14:14.562 --> 00:14:19.984
On the left side was a huge brick
building with a huge chimney.

00:14:20.568 --> 00:14:25.072
So we whispered to each other, "That's
the factory where we are going to work."

00:14:26.699 --> 00:14:29.076
We just wondered.

00:14:30.703 --> 00:14:33.956
We just wondered what's going to happen to us.

00:14:37.084 --> 00:14:39.753
We were the first thousand women

00:14:41.714 --> 00:14:44.800
who ever entered the gates of hell there.

00:15:10.200 --> 00:15:13.537
After the Germans invaded Poland in 1939,

00:15:13.746 --> 00:15:15.873
Auschwitz became a concentration camp

00:15:15.873 --> 00:15:18.459
for Russian and Polish prisoners of war.

00:15:19.585 --> 00:15:21.670
Soon, Polish resistance fighters,

00:15:21.921 --> 00:15:24.423
intellectuals, artists and communists

00:15:24.423 --> 00:15:26.216
were also imprisoned there.

00:15:26.383 --> 00:15:27.259
All men.

00:15:29.261 --> 00:15:32.389
On the morning of March 26, 1942.

00:15:33.098 --> 00:15:34.183
that changed.

00:15:35.768 --> 00:15:38.854
A few hours before our Jewish girls entered Auschwitz,

00:15:39.355 --> 00:15:42.399
999 female German prisoners

00:15:42.650 --> 00:15:45.486
arrived from Ravensbrück concentration camp.

00:15:47.988 --> 00:15:51.533
Was the number 999 coincidental?

00:15:52.701 --> 00:15:55.621
Head of the SS Reich's Führer Heinrich Himmler,

00:15:56.121 --> 00:15:57.831
believed in numerology

00:15:58.415 --> 00:16:01.919
and that the number nine signifies the end of a cycle.

00:16:02.920 --> 00:16:04.296
A final solution.

00:16:05.923 --> 00:16:08.968
His full name, Heinrich Leopold Himmler,

00:16:09.343 --> 00:16:13.347
also equals 9 9 9.

00:16:15.349 --> 00:16:19.645
And it was Himmler who personally
ordered the first transport,

00:16:20.688 --> 00:16:25.109
as well as the 999 women from Ravensbrück.

00:16:26.944 --> 00:16:29.238
A mixed group of murderers, prostitutes,

00:16:29.238 --> 00:16:31.281
homosexuals and communists.

00:16:31.782 --> 00:16:34.660
These Aryan women served as Kapos

00:16:34.868 --> 00:16:37.037
in charge of the Jewish girls

00:16:44.962 --> 00:16:48.340
They lined us up in front of those 10 barracks.

00:16:49.508 --> 00:16:52.219
They counted us and over counted us.

00:16:52.678 --> 00:16:56.932
So after a long time, they let us into the barrack.

00:17:00.144 --> 00:17:03.105
At four in the morning, Kapos burst into the block

00:17:03.147 --> 00:17:05.065
and began beating the girls.

00:17:05.107 --> 00:17:07.901
“Wake up, wake up! Raus! Raus!”

00:17:09.903 --> 00:17:11.488
Everyone ran outside

00:17:11.697 --> 00:17:14.616
where they were once again lined up and counted.

00:17:17.536 --> 00:17:20.581
Fifty of us had to line up, one by one,

00:17:20.789 --> 00:17:22.332
still in our civilian clothes.

00:17:23.542 --> 00:17:27.379
The girls were told to put their jewelry and valuables on the table.

00:17:31.550 --> 00:17:33.510
[Slovak] A guardsman came

00:17:33.594 --> 00:17:37.139
and took everything we were wearing

00:17:38.432 --> 00:17:42.269
earrings, necklaces, watches and rings.

00:17:42.519 --> 00:17:45.022
And he said, "You will not need it anymore."

00:17:45.355 --> 00:17:49.068
We still thought it was some kind of a joke.

00:17:49.443 --> 00:17:51.820
It doesn’t matter! We will make
some money and buy new jewelry.

00:17:51.862 --> 00:17:54.782
We felt that the world was ours!

00:17:57.159 --> 00:17:59.495
Now, to get undressed, for little girls,

00:17:59.953 --> 00:18:02.915
most of us came from Orthodox families.

00:18:03.957 --> 00:18:05.667
To get undressed in front of men,

00:18:05.918 --> 00:18:07.002
it was very hard.

00:18:07.336 --> 00:18:09.046
Very hard. I remember it.

00:18:09.463 --> 00:18:10.547
Boy, do I remember well.

00:18:11.048 --> 00:18:12.966
From a distance, I noticed there is a table.

00:18:13.217 --> 00:18:14.426
And I heard the girls there.

00:18:14.468 --> 00:18:16.512
They had to lie down
naked there on the table,

00:18:16.929 --> 00:18:19.348
and the officer with rubber gloves, the German officer,

00:18:19.515 --> 00:18:21.767
was doing something to them and she was screaming.

00:18:23.018 --> 00:18:27.815
They were checking on those first girls

00:18:28.565 --> 00:18:34.446
and they say, “Oh my, they all are virgins.”

00:18:34.905 --> 00:18:38.492
They were looking if they have something hidden or something.

00:18:38.951 --> 00:18:40.327
They are all virgins.

00:18:40.536 --> 00:18:43.455
The girls came back crying, so we cried with them.

00:18:46.458 --> 00:18:48.836
You had to completely undress

00:18:49.128 --> 00:18:50.963
and then sit on a chair,

00:18:51.171 --> 00:18:55.467
and they came and shaved us. Everywhere.

00:18:56.593 --> 00:18:58.178
After they were shaved,

00:18:58.178 --> 00:19:00.848
the girls were forced to stand naked in the snow

00:19:01.181 --> 00:19:04.726
and then ordered into a large vat of disinfectant.

00:19:07.813 --> 00:19:09.857
One after the other, one after the other,

00:19:09.857 --> 00:19:12.526
they weren't looking if they
had period or something.

00:19:13.402 --> 00:19:14.736
We had to go.

00:19:16.280 --> 00:19:20.742
In the last row were piles of dead Russian soldiers uniforms.

00:19:21.118 --> 00:19:24.746
They were covered in blood, feces and bullet holes.

00:19:25.831 --> 00:19:30.252
The uniforms still were stiff from blood.

00:19:31.170 --> 00:19:36.967
The blouse was so big for me, it was all the way down to the floor.

00:19:37.551 --> 00:19:40.095
The pants I put up were here.

00:19:40.429 --> 00:19:41.847
We didn’t have a choice.

00:19:43.015 --> 00:19:45.517
And nothing to hold it.

00:19:46.685 --> 00:19:48.103
No underwear. Nothing at all.

00:19:48.103 --> 00:19:50.606
Just the uniforms with the holes and the lice in it.

00:19:51.231 --> 00:19:52.357
And a piece of wood,

00:19:53.400 --> 00:19:55.527
different sizes of wood with a leather strap.

00:19:55.986 --> 00:19:57.446
That was all the clothes that we got.

00:19:58.113 --> 00:20:00.741
It was horrible. It was stinky.

00:20:01.533 --> 00:20:04.828
This we had for six months. We never changed.

00:20:07.998 --> 00:20:09.666
They brought us over to the men’s camp.

00:20:09.666 --> 00:20:12.169
And put the tattoo on us.

00:20:12.586 --> 00:20:14.755
And my tattoo is 1,716.

00:20:14.755 --> 00:20:18.217
The 1,000 counts for the 1,000
German women they had there.

00:20:18.550 --> 00:20:21.220
From the Jewish women I am the 716th there.

00:20:21.511 --> 00:20:24.348
So this is the first Jewish transport
that ever came to Auschwitz,

00:20:24.681 --> 00:20:25.891
and the first women transport.

00:20:26.183 --> 00:20:34.316
I am the 173rd Jewish woman
who ever entered Auschwitz.

00:20:38.153 --> 00:20:41.281
My number is zehn achtunvierzig, 1048.

00:20:41.657 --> 00:20:43.200
1955.

00:20:43.492 --> 00:20:45.410
Fifteen vierunsechzig (1564).

00:20:45.702 --> 00:20:47.955
1756.

00:20:48.288 --> 00:20:50.082
1800.

00:20:50.624 --> 00:20:52.626
1437.

00:20:53.252 --> 00:20:55.295
Häftling (prisoner) neunzehn siebzig 1970.

00:20:55.963 --> 00:20:58.382
That was my name.

00:21:11.603 --> 00:21:14.398
The barrack was a two-story building.

00:21:14.731 --> 00:21:19.111
Brick building. They were built before World War II.

00:21:19.486 --> 00:21:21.363
Like army barracks.

00:21:22.781 --> 00:21:24.950
They put my group in Block 10.

00:21:25.284 --> 00:21:27.744
There were 10 buildings and there was a wire fence.

00:21:28.161 --> 00:21:29.162
And then the other blocks,

00:21:29.329 --> 00:21:31.665
14 of them were for men on the other side.

00:21:33.292 --> 00:21:36.670
Zählappell (roll call) means stand up to be counted.

00:21:38.046 --> 00:21:40.590
It took four hours and
we were standing there.

00:21:41.883 --> 00:21:43.218
Roll call is 4 o’clock in the morning.

00:21:43.468 --> 00:21:45.220
Every Block Elder had an assistant,

00:21:45.470 --> 00:21:46.638
called the Room Elder.

00:21:46.888 --> 00:21:50.100
They are using sticks to get you
off the bed, if you can't wake up.

00:21:50.392 --> 00:21:51.768
and they are beating you.

00:21:53.979 --> 00:21:56.898
Everybody got a bowl, a red bowl, big bowl,

00:21:57.232 --> 00:21:58.692
and a spoon.

00:22:01.611 --> 00:22:05.657
Our food was a little bit of black
coffee, and a small piece of black bread.

00:22:05.741 --> 00:22:07.159
In the morning and evening.

00:22:07.367 --> 00:22:09.703
They cut it in half and cut it in quarters,

00:22:09.870 --> 00:22:12.914
and a quarter of this we got with a piece of margarine.

00:22:13.457 --> 00:22:17.544
For lunch, we got soup. It was made out of horse meat.

00:22:18.128 --> 00:22:19.212
It was horrible.

00:22:19.463 --> 00:22:22.215
The soup was so bad that nobody could eat it.

00:22:22.966 --> 00:22:25.427
And we began to be very, very hungry.

00:22:25.927 --> 00:22:28.305
The tea was in the bowl, and
the soup was in the bowl.

00:22:28.805 --> 00:22:31.641
And sometimes was kakki in the bowls.

00:22:32.184 --> 00:22:33.518
You see the dirt around it.

00:22:33.894 --> 00:22:36.063
You had to eat from the same bowl.

00:22:46.907 --> 00:22:50.118
First we were demolishing houses.

00:22:51.578 --> 00:22:54.414
We had to bring about 18 girls there.

00:22:54.414 --> 00:22:56.208
We had the big poles,

00:22:56.249 --> 00:22:58.418
and we hold it and used to

00:22:58.877 --> 00:23:00.796
try to demolish the walls.

00:23:00.796 --> 00:23:02.547
That was our first job.

00:23:02.547 --> 00:23:03.757
It was very hard.

00:23:04.383 --> 00:23:06.760
That was very dangerous, and if the German

00:23:07.135 --> 00:23:10.597
if he felt like killing a
couple of people, so he would say,

00:23:11.556 --> 00:23:12.808
”You push this way.”

00:23:13.475 --> 00:23:16.186
And the wall would come down and crash all the girls.

00:23:17.354 --> 00:23:20.190
Two girls were injured.

00:23:20.857 --> 00:23:24.945
The SS came and they shoot them both.

00:23:27.197 --> 00:23:30.033
We had to carry them to the Lager (camp).

00:23:49.553 --> 00:23:51.054
I got myself a Siddur.

00:23:51.304 --> 00:23:54.307
I have no idea how I got it. I don’t remember.

00:23:54.975 --> 00:23:58.270
But that Siddur, kept me alive.

00:23:58.812 --> 00:24:00.105
I prayed an awful lot there.

00:24:00.188 --> 00:24:02.732
Whenever I had free time,

00:24:03.316 --> 00:24:06.194
and whenever no SS were around.

00:24:07.487 --> 00:24:10.407
For many girls, there was a sorority of survival.

00:24:13.368 --> 00:24:17.747
Religious devotion played an important part in their lives.

00:24:17.747 --> 00:24:17.789
Religious devotion played an important part in their lives.

00:24:18.874 --> 00:24:22.794
For others, desperation and hunger motivated them.

00:24:27.507 --> 00:24:30.343
Who needed the religion there
and who would be bothered?

00:24:30.552 --> 00:24:34.139
No religion, nobody dreamed about the religion.

00:24:34.139 --> 00:24:35.807
We couldn’t have nothing.

00:24:36.057 --> 00:24:38.685
Sometimes we saved a little piece of bread,

00:24:39.227 --> 00:24:41.354
and we put it under the pillow.

00:24:42.439 --> 00:24:43.190
You know what?

00:24:44.316 --> 00:24:46.026
We stole from each other.

00:24:46.568 --> 00:24:50.322
I learned a lot, not to take anything for granted.

00:24:54.075 --> 00:24:57.162
Deporting Jews was still not legal in Slovakia,

00:24:58.914 --> 00:25:01.917
but 7,407 young women

00:25:02.417 --> 00:25:05.295
and 3,470 young men

00:25:05.545 --> 00:25:09.132
had been illegally deported to Auschwitz in six weeks.

00:25:11.343 --> 00:25:13.637
On May 15th, 1942,

00:25:13.929 --> 00:25:17.974
the Slovak Assembly voted to
deprive Jews of their citizenship.

00:25:18.892 --> 00:25:23.939
From the gallery, armed Hlinka guards
watched the law become ratified.

00:25:28.401 --> 00:25:32.280
It was finally legal to deport Slovak Jews.

00:25:35.325 --> 00:25:37.661
President Tiso assured his people

00:25:37.661 --> 00:25:40.830
that Jewish families were being "rehomed"

00:25:41.206 --> 00:25:42.958
and would remain together.

00:26:03.937 --> 00:26:08.942
On the 4th of July 1942, the SS held their first selection of Jews.

00:26:08.984 --> 00:26:12.571
Immediately after the transports arrival in Auschwitz.

00:26:13.321 --> 00:26:17.951
264 men and 108 women were admitted into camp.

00:26:19.703 --> 00:26:22.789
The rest were gassed in Bunker Two.

00:26:26.751 --> 00:26:30.922
And they kept coming and coming, and coming...

00:26:35.093 --> 00:26:38.013
Auschwitz women's camp, with the 10 barracks,

00:26:38.054 --> 00:26:40.640
and people were living outside too,

00:26:41.224 --> 00:26:43.018
was so crowded,

00:26:43.351 --> 00:26:47.188
you had to step over people who were sitting outside.

00:26:52.193 --> 00:26:54.613
When the head of the SS Heinrich Himmler

00:26:54.821 --> 00:26:57.657
arrived at his killing fields on July the 17th.

00:26:58.158 --> 00:26:59.909
He inspected the facilities,

00:27:01.036 --> 00:27:03.246
discussed plans for expansion,

00:27:04.956 --> 00:27:09.836
monitored the selection of 1,251 Dutch Jews,

00:27:10.962 --> 00:27:14.424
and watched the gassing 399 women and girls

00:27:14.716 --> 00:27:17.010
and 50 men and boys.

00:27:17.385 --> 00:27:20.930
That evening there was a reception held in his honor.

00:27:21.973 --> 00:27:25.560
The next morning, he entered the women's camp for the first time

00:27:26.061 --> 00:27:28.938
to inspect the Kapos and his Jewish prisoners.

00:27:29.356 --> 00:27:33.985
We had to be completely naked and march in front of him.

00:27:36.029 --> 00:27:37.072
At the end of the day,

00:27:37.322 --> 00:27:39.449
Himmler approved the flogging of women

00:27:39.866 --> 00:27:44.371
and ordered all Jewish prisoners unfit for work to be killed.

00:27:45.121 --> 00:27:47.916
He then promoted Commandant Rudolf Höss

00:27:48.208 --> 00:27:52.796
and ordered the quick completion
of a larger camp called Birkenau.

00:27:56.966 --> 00:28:01.429
And in the middle of the summer, all
of a sudden, they took us together

00:28:01.429 --> 00:28:03.640
and said we are changing the place.

00:28:03.640 --> 00:28:05.517
We are going to Birkenau.

00:28:07.185 --> 00:28:10.730
Birkenau was 5 kilometers from Auschwitz.

00:28:11.064 --> 00:28:13.525
We thought that Auschwitz it was hell.

00:28:13.900 --> 00:28:17.237
We didn't know that Birkenau is waiting for us.

00:28:17.404 --> 00:28:21.408
Birkenau was huge, with a lot of camps.

00:28:21.908 --> 00:28:24.077
We marched in and assigned to different barracks.

00:28:24.369 --> 00:28:26.329
And in the barracks were three shelves,

00:28:26.663 --> 00:28:28.331
and a wall here and a wall here.

00:28:28.707 --> 00:28:30.583
On the shelves were wooden planks,

00:28:31.084 --> 00:28:32.585
and a little rag of a blanket there.

00:28:34.003 --> 00:28:38.174
The Russian soldiers uniforms
were finally replaced with striped dresses,

00:28:38.383 --> 00:28:40.677
but no one was allowed underwear.

00:28:41.594 --> 00:28:44.305
Winter was bad. Summer was worse.

00:28:44.514 --> 00:28:46.933
It was so hot in summer,

00:28:47.600 --> 00:28:51.396
our heads, shaved heads, blisters everywhere.

00:28:51.771 --> 00:28:53.273
The feet swollen,

00:28:53.356 --> 00:28:55.692
the hunger, Muselmänner [living skeletons],

00:28:55.984 --> 00:28:58.027
just dragging our bodies.

00:28:58.403 --> 00:29:00.488
The latrine was an open hole.

00:29:05.160 --> 00:29:08.997
A typhus epidemic raged through the men's and women's camps.

00:29:09.831 --> 00:29:14.127
And there, the girls began to die, one after the other.

00:29:17.046 --> 00:29:19.549
Mass selections were used to cull the sick,

00:29:19.924 --> 00:29:24.137
but SS often took healthy girls to fulfill their quotas.

00:29:26.848 --> 00:29:29.934
The murder machine now ran on full steam.

00:29:31.978 --> 00:29:35.899
Every few days, girls were selected to die in the gas chambers.

00:29:37.400 --> 00:29:42.822
The precise number of Jewish women
killed in early 1942 is unknown.

00:29:43.948 --> 00:29:46.868
Men's deaths were registered on a monthly basis,

00:29:47.368 --> 00:29:51.164
but the SS didn't accurately record women's deaths.

00:29:52.123 --> 00:29:56.294
All we know is that throughout the summer and fall of 1942,

00:29:56.586 --> 00:29:59.005
thousands of young women were gassed.

00:30:02.217 --> 00:30:05.720
I heard that they were looking for
girls for Leichenkommando.

00:30:06.137 --> 00:30:09.557
Wherever a girl died, we were the ones to carry them out.

00:30:13.019 --> 00:30:18.316
Like Bertha, many girls scrambled
for indoor work and speciality jobs.

00:30:20.902 --> 00:30:23.613
One of the best jobs was working in "Canada"

00:30:23.863 --> 00:30:27.784
sorting the belongings of new
arrivals from the Jewish transports.

00:30:33.790 --> 00:30:36.501
Edith and Leah were working hard labor outside,

00:30:37.043 --> 00:30:39.796
cleaning the camp roads and swamps of garbage,

00:30:40.255 --> 00:30:44.050
a job that would later become
a punishment detailed to kill prisoners.

00:30:45.260 --> 00:30:47.387
Everything was freezing on us,

00:30:47.428 --> 00:30:49.931
and then we went with
these clothes to bed.

00:30:49.973 --> 00:30:53.852
and in the morning, the same clothes to work.

00:30:54.978 --> 00:30:58.481
I began to shiver and I said, “I think I will be sick.”

00:30:59.065 --> 00:31:01.317
Lea tried to take care of me.

00:31:01.609 --> 00:31:04.028
She helped me to go through it,

00:31:04.195 --> 00:31:06.239
and she was kissing me all the time.

00:31:06.239 --> 00:31:09.742
"You will see that this will pass also. A better time is coming."

00:31:11.744 --> 00:31:17.917
She was really pulling me to work because she knew that

00:31:18.626 --> 00:31:22.005
if we don't go to work, it’s the end.

00:31:27.051 --> 00:31:30.346
One day I woke up and I said, “Lea, I am healthy.

00:31:30.680 --> 00:31:31.723
No fever.”

00:31:32.682 --> 00:31:34.642
Lea said, "But I am sick."

00:31:37.854 --> 00:31:40.481
So we changed the functions,

00:31:41.065 --> 00:31:45.403
and I was schlepping her to work. But it didn't go,

00:31:45.987 --> 00:31:49.574
because she fell in a coma.

00:31:50.491 --> 00:31:52.410
So they took her there was a block, [The Block of Death]

00:31:52.577 --> 00:31:55.747
it was called the 25th block.

00:31:56.873 --> 00:31:58.625
Nobody came out, you know.

00:32:00.293 --> 00:32:01.794
She was so beautiful.

00:32:02.378 --> 00:32:04.255
So clever and so intelligent.

00:32:05.506 --> 00:32:08.843
I went out to her block, and there she was lying,

00:32:11.095 --> 00:32:15.183
not dead, but with...

00:32:17.143 --> 00:32:20.521
the rats, and I was just standing and...

00:32:20.772 --> 00:32:23.566
Why me, here, and why's she there?

00:32:25.818 --> 00:32:27.320
It was December

00:32:28.404 --> 00:32:29.906
1942.

00:32:30.865 --> 00:32:33.576
It was the biggest selection in the camp,

00:32:34.160 --> 00:32:36.412
The camp was overcrowded.

00:32:40.291 --> 00:32:44.003
The girls had to stand naked in the snow for 12 hours.

00:32:45.254 --> 00:32:46.923
Any girl selected to live

00:32:47.090 --> 00:32:49.467
had to jump over a snowy ditch.

00:32:49.968 --> 00:32:53.554
Those who fell into the ditch were also sent to the gas chambers.

00:32:55.306 --> 00:32:59.852
SS records state that only 2,000 young women were gassed,

00:33:00.728 --> 00:33:04.315
but the real figure is 10,000.

00:33:13.908 --> 00:33:18.246
We went out to the Zählappell. It was a Saturday.

00:33:19.622 --> 00:33:20.999
An empty camp.

00:33:22.333 --> 00:33:26.671
10,000 girls were burned and gassed,

00:33:27.130 --> 00:33:29.841
and burned in this night.

00:33:30.383 --> 00:33:31.342
And Lea among them.

00:33:43.938 --> 00:33:46.566
Zena Haber, 17.

00:33:47.316 --> 00:33:48.192
Gone.

00:33:49.944 --> 00:33:52.989
Lenka Treil, 17.

00:33:53.448 --> 00:33:54.073
Gone.

00:33:55.324 --> 00:33:58.870
Regina Baruchovic,  17.

00:34:00.079 --> 00:34:03.750
Irina Greenberger, 17.

00:34:04.917 --> 00:34:06.669
Olga and Madugska Hartmann,

00:34:08.379 --> 00:34:11.215
Magda Amster, 19.

00:34:12.508 --> 00:34:15.470
Henia Ehrenburg ,18.

00:34:16.804 --> 00:34:19.265
Adela Gross, 18.

00:34:21.642 --> 00:34:27.273
Anna Herskovitz and Edith’s sister Lea, 19.

00:34:31.194 --> 00:34:32.361
So the light went.

00:34:49.670 --> 00:34:52.465
By the one year anniversary of the first transport,

00:34:53.007 --> 00:34:56.928
almost 40,000 women and girls had been registered in Auschwitz.

00:34:57.887 --> 00:35:02.475
Over 24,000 had died or been murdered.

00:35:07.897 --> 00:35:11.275
From 1,000, we were left 300.

00:35:13.111 --> 00:35:15.947
No one survived Auschwitz on her own.

00:35:16.864 --> 00:35:20.076
We were six girls in one Koya (bunk).

00:35:20.827 --> 00:35:22.453
I guess we had two blankets.

00:35:22.537 --> 00:35:24.080
There were no pillows of course,

00:35:24.372 --> 00:35:25.665
because our soup bowl was the pillow.

00:35:26.124 --> 00:35:28.167
If one turn we all have to turn.

00:35:28.668 --> 00:35:30.503
I always go to my barrack 27,

00:35:30.795 --> 00:35:33.756
and I see my bed where I spent my few years,

00:35:33.756 --> 00:35:34.841
my young years.

00:35:38.886 --> 00:35:40.847
Illness threatened every prisoner.

00:35:41.264 --> 00:35:42.807
And a month after Lea died.

00:35:43.224 --> 00:35:45.977
Edith became so ill, she couldn't walk.

00:35:47.436 --> 00:35:52.108
Her Lager Sister took Edith to see a
Slovak doctor from the second transport.

00:35:54.152 --> 00:35:57.446
Dr. Manci Schwalbova gave Edith a bed in the hospital,

00:35:58.197 --> 00:36:02.160
and snuck her out whenever the
SS came to select sick girls.

00:36:03.327 --> 00:36:07.165
Doctor Schwalbova did the same for many Slovak girls.

00:36:09.417 --> 00:36:11.919
Girls working as functionaries and secretaries

00:36:12.086 --> 00:36:14.213
also helped each other survive.

00:36:15.423 --> 00:36:17.258
As a scribe for Dr. Mengele,

00:36:17.592 --> 00:36:19.427
the infamous Angel of Death,

00:36:19.760 --> 00:36:22.471
Ella not only registered girls coming into camp.

00:36:22.889 --> 00:36:25.683
She supervised the Leichenkommando girls.

00:36:31.147 --> 00:36:34.692
One day, I stayed in the Lager,

00:36:35.526 --> 00:36:38.362
because my shoe broke down.

00:36:40.198 --> 00:36:41.657
I didn’t go to work

00:36:42.909 --> 00:36:46.329
Irena had to hide while a friend organized shoes for her.

00:36:47.246 --> 00:36:48.706
When an SS caught her

00:36:48.873 --> 00:36:52.919
she was sent to the Block of Death - Block 25.

00:36:54.545 --> 00:36:58.424
The Leichenkommando girls
recognized Irena from the first transport,

00:36:58.841 --> 00:37:02.053
and knew she would be gassed if
they didn't help her escape.

00:37:03.387 --> 00:37:04.430
Her name was Eta (Ella).

00:37:05.223 --> 00:37:08.142
She pulled me out and took me to her block.

00:37:12.104 --> 00:37:14.273
One of the girls came out with us.

00:37:14.815 --> 00:37:17.610
She just held on to the stretcher and she come out with us.

00:37:19.445 --> 00:37:20.488
I hope she survived.

00:37:22.657 --> 00:37:25.201
From every hell, somebody came back.

00:37:25.243 --> 00:37:27.286
Somebody has to come back from here, too.

00:37:31.707 --> 00:37:33.709
By January 1944,

00:37:33.876 --> 00:37:37.630
over 74,000 women had been registered in Auschwitz.

00:37:38.339 --> 00:37:41.092
Of those registered, 45,000

00:37:41.467 --> 00:37:42.635
had been murdered.

00:37:45.846 --> 00:37:49.141
Most of the survivors were not Jewish.

00:37:52.645 --> 00:37:56.190
Birkenau had expanded across 472 acres

00:37:58.401 --> 00:38:01.195
The Death Gate now arched over train tracks

00:38:03.030 --> 00:38:06.284
and there were four gas chambers and crematoriums.

00:38:10.454 --> 00:38:14.458
Canada had also expanded, filling 30 barns

00:38:15.626 --> 00:38:18.170
where everything from pots and pans

00:38:18.629 --> 00:38:21.215
to shoes and baby carriages were stored.

00:38:22.258 --> 00:38:25.553
There were 600 girls working swing shifts in Canada.

00:38:27.930 --> 00:38:29.098
50 feet away,

00:38:29.473 --> 00:38:34.186
hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews
were entering the gas chambers.

00:38:35.187 --> 00:38:39.692
The gas chambers, the crematorium,
it was nicely landscaped around.

00:38:39.984 --> 00:38:40.776
Green grass.

00:38:41.193 --> 00:38:44.071
95% went straight to the gas chamber.

00:38:46.574 --> 00:38:49.035
When Slovak transports began arriving, again.

00:38:49.493 --> 00:38:52.913
the girls watched their own families walk to their deaths.

00:38:56.208 --> 00:38:58.836
One day I was standing

00:38:59.879 --> 00:39:01.964
and looking out to the wire

00:39:02.548 --> 00:39:04.008
and I saw my cousins,

00:39:04.550 --> 00:39:06.510
my aunts, my uncles.

00:39:06.635 --> 00:39:07.595
I saw.

00:39:07.845 --> 00:39:08.971
Going.

00:39:08.971 --> 00:39:10.723
And I knew where there are going.

00:39:10.973 --> 00:39:12.641
I couldn't say nothing.

00:39:15.603 --> 00:39:18.606
Seeing the flames high in the skies.

00:39:19.273 --> 00:39:23.235
The smell and the clouds settled and the ashes,

00:39:23.527 --> 00:39:25.071
black, greasy

00:39:25.613 --> 00:39:27.782
fat on our faces.

00:39:31.077 --> 00:39:33.704
As allied forces advance towards Germany.

00:39:34.163 --> 00:39:37.958
Reconnaissance planes could be seen in the sky over Auschwitz.

00:39:39.710 --> 00:39:41.629
It was rumored that all healthy prisoners

00:39:41.629 --> 00:39:43.672
were going to be evacuated to Germany.

00:39:45.299 --> 00:39:48.386
And all unhealthy prisoners would be killed.

00:39:58.354 --> 00:40:01.107
On January the 18th, 1945,

00:40:01.524 --> 00:40:06.654
the men's and women's camps were forced to line up for roll call.

00:40:08.197 --> 00:40:09.990
They put us in the Zählappell,

00:40:10.241 --> 00:40:11.867
and from the Zählappell,

00:40:12.326 --> 00:40:15.329
they take us to a march, to the Death March.

00:40:18.457 --> 00:40:21.585
It was the worst snowstorm in many, many years.

00:40:22.586 --> 00:40:27.133
Snow was about over a meter or two meters high,

00:40:28.342 --> 00:40:31.679
The roads were paved with corpses.

00:40:32.680 --> 00:40:36.892
I was pulling with me a girl from Humenné.

00:40:37.184 --> 00:40:38.352
She couldn't walk.

00:40:38.394 --> 00:40:40.896
She was saying, "I can't. I can't."

00:40:41.689 --> 00:40:43.357
"Don't do this to me!" I said.

00:40:43.816 --> 00:40:44.859
"You are going.”

00:40:46.068 --> 00:40:48.154
That girl was Edith.

00:40:49.530 --> 00:40:52.366
We were marching for I don't know how many,

00:40:52.825 --> 00:40:56.829
200 kilometers that can be about 120 miles.

00:40:58.414 --> 00:40:59.832
when we were walking,

00:41:00.082 --> 00:41:01.459
the bloody snow, you know?

00:41:02.126 --> 00:41:05.754
It made them so strong...

00:41:07.548 --> 00:41:09.633
...heart ache

00:41:09.633 --> 00:41:13.262
that you cannot imagine.

00:41:15.347 --> 00:41:18.559
The only thing that we had to eat was snow.

00:41:19.143 --> 00:41:23.981
We marched from Thursday, 18 January,
till Sunday morning.

00:41:31.447 --> 00:41:34.909
We came to the border of Germany.

00:41:35.993 --> 00:41:39.830
They loaded us in open coal wagons,

00:41:40.372 --> 00:41:43.459
They squeezed a hundred of us  in one open car.

00:41:44.293 --> 00:41:49.590
Many of the inmates died there, so we just throw them out.

00:41:52.593 --> 00:41:54.261
This journey on the train

00:41:54.345 --> 00:41:58.432
that was the worst experience that I ever had.

00:41:59.517 --> 00:42:04.230
Freezing to death, throwing over my dead comrades,

00:42:05.356 --> 00:42:08.150
who survived three years in Auschwitz.

00:42:16.367 --> 00:42:20.329
9,000 female prisoners arrived in Ravensbrück camp,

00:42:21.038 --> 00:42:23.290
but there was no room for the new arrivals,

00:42:24.124 --> 00:42:25.292
and no food.

00:42:27.044 --> 00:42:30.130
We were so many girls there

00:42:30.464 --> 00:42:33.551
we were sitting one in the other, one in the other.

00:42:34.218 --> 00:42:42.309
To go out to the snow to make pee-pee was impossible,
because you were really stepping on people.

00:42:42.643 --> 00:42:45.521
We didn't have the beds. We were sitting on the floor.

00:42:46.522 --> 00:42:51.735
Five o'clock, they brought horses who are dead.

00:42:53.070 --> 00:42:54.822
And I went to the kitchen.

00:42:55.155 --> 00:42:58.742
It was early in the morning, nobody was there,

00:42:58.909 --> 00:43:01.161
and there was the horse meat.

00:43:01.579 --> 00:43:03.414
I put in and I put in and I put in.

00:43:03.497 --> 00:43:05.124
I don't know if I wore the apron,

00:43:05.457 --> 00:43:07.710
and I brought it to the girls to eat.

00:43:07.793 --> 00:43:09.545
And the horse meat was good.

00:43:11.255 --> 00:43:13.549
Yeah, we were hungry.

00:43:15.175 --> 00:43:16.427
We were hungry.

00:43:16.677 --> 00:43:23.309
You don't know, who was not in
a situation, how hunger hurts.

00:43:26.895 --> 00:43:28.981
It's worse than a disease.

00:43:31.108 --> 00:43:33.027
Hunger hurts very much.

00:43:34.111 --> 00:43:39.033
I didn't dream of too much, only to
have a roof and to have what to eat.

00:43:47.666 --> 00:43:48.792
Back in Poland,

00:43:49.084 --> 00:43:51.211
the Russians were liberating Auschwitz.

00:43:53.255 --> 00:43:56.884
They found 5,800 sick prisoners.

00:43:58.677 --> 00:44:00.929
4,000 were women.

00:44:07.561 --> 00:44:09.855
For those prisoners, death marched to Germany,

00:44:10.314 --> 00:44:13.776
liberation would take another three months.

00:44:26.622 --> 00:44:29.208
To reduce the prison population in Ravensbrück,

00:44:29.541 --> 00:44:32.127
6,000 women were gassed.

00:44:34.296 --> 00:44:36.882
Others were transferred to satellite women's camps.

00:44:38.842 --> 00:44:40.427
But food was scarce

00:44:40.803 --> 00:44:43.430
and prisoners were starving to death.

00:44:46.684 --> 00:44:50.354
Edith was taken to work at an airport repairing runways.

00:44:52.314 --> 00:44:56.568
Whenever allied bombers attacked,
the prisoners ran to the kitchen.

00:44:57.319 --> 00:45:03.242
That was the first time that we ate a little normal food.

00:45:03.492 --> 00:45:06.412
because when they run in the bunkers, the SS,

00:45:06.412 --> 00:45:10.999
so we went out of the block,
and went straight to the kitchen

00:45:11.375 --> 00:45:15.963
and ate out everything that was there cooked for the SS.

00:45:16.046 --> 00:45:18.173
I ate so good.

00:45:20.050 --> 00:45:24.054
Semolina in milk, sweet semolina in milk.

00:45:24.638 --> 00:45:26.765
Ah, what it was.

00:45:29.268 --> 00:45:31.979
Liberation would come soonest for Bergen-Belsen,

00:45:33.230 --> 00:45:36.734
which the Germans surrendered
due to a severe typhus epidemic

00:45:36.942 --> 00:45:40.487
that had already claimed tens of thousands of lives.

00:45:41.321 --> 00:45:46.535
There were piles and piles and piles
of dead bodies in Bergen-Belsen.

00:45:51.832 --> 00:45:55.711
Come April 15, 1945,

00:45:56.253 --> 00:45:58.005
over the loudspeaker,

00:45:59.798 --> 00:46:02.176
[German]"Wir sind schon da, wir sind schon da.

00:46:02.342 --> 00:46:03.969
Wir sind um euch zu befreien gekommen."

00:46:04.678 --> 00:46:06.054
“We're here. We're here.

00:46:06.096 --> 00:46:07.598
We came to liberate you."

00:46:12.728 --> 00:46:14.480
It was beautiful. It was wonderful.

00:46:15.939 --> 00:46:20.611
And the next day, I was traveling around
with the Lagerführer,

00:46:21.487 --> 00:46:23.739
the commander of the camp.

00:46:24.031 --> 00:46:25.240
And I was showing around

00:46:25.574 --> 00:46:27.785
where the piles and piles of the dead people are,

00:46:38.295 --> 00:46:41.048
As terms for surrender were being negotiated.

00:46:41.381 --> 00:46:45.886
Reich's Führer Heinrich Himmler took 1,000 female hostages

00:46:46.136 --> 00:46:48.138
and threatened to execute them

00:46:48.180 --> 00:46:51.391
if the Swedish Red Cross didn't pay his ransom.

00:46:52.476 --> 00:46:53.977
They put us in a field.

00:46:54.061 --> 00:46:56.814
And machine guns were pointing at us.

00:46:57.105 --> 00:46:58.982
We were there, maybe for a whole day,

00:46:59.274 --> 00:47:00.943
and they were about ready to shoot.

00:47:01.568 --> 00:47:04.488
An SS comes on a motorcycle and he says,

00:47:04.488 --> 00:47:06.865
"Halt. Halt. Stop."

00:47:08.534 --> 00:47:11.161
They took us to Sweden.

00:47:13.080 --> 00:47:15.958
When we came there, we couldn't believe it.

00:47:16.124 --> 00:47:19.586
They opened the door and we looked around,

00:47:19.962 --> 00:47:22.631
and there was nuns, the Red Cross.

00:47:23.048 --> 00:47:25.968
People threw bread from the windows.

00:47:26.385 --> 00:47:27.761
People were wonderful.

00:47:28.178 --> 00:47:29.096
They gave us chocolate.

00:47:29.179 --> 00:47:30.639
They gave us cigars.

00:47:30.722 --> 00:47:32.432
We were smoking cigars,

00:47:34.017 --> 00:47:35.102
and throwing up from it.

00:47:37.896 --> 00:47:40.065
For the rest of the girls still in camps,

00:47:40.357 --> 00:47:43.360
liberation would not happen until May.

00:47:46.029 --> 00:47:47.865
The day Edith was liberated,

00:47:48.031 --> 00:47:51.410
she got her period for the first time in three years.

00:47:52.744 --> 00:47:54.162
She began shouting:

00:47:54.913 --> 00:47:57.457
“I'm a woman again! I'm free!”

00:47:58.667 --> 00:48:00.586
It was the 4th or 5th of May.

00:48:01.295 --> 00:48:02.796
We saw tanks coming.

00:48:03.046 --> 00:48:04.548
And finally,

00:48:04.965 --> 00:48:08.302
Russian tanks came in and liberated us.

00:48:10.095 --> 00:48:14.182
To reach home, the girls got rides on wagons and trains.

00:48:15.100 --> 00:48:17.728
Some walked for weeks.

00:48:19.730 --> 00:48:24.610
I know my three brothers, my sister, everybody was wiped out.

00:48:24.860 --> 00:48:26.445
But anyway, I wanted to go home.

00:48:29.114 --> 00:48:31.325
Escorted by Polish and Czech men,

00:48:31.742 --> 00:48:36.288
one group of young women walked from Prague,
all the way to Slovakia.

00:48:36.622 --> 00:48:39.750
A journey of over 200 miles.

00:48:41.793 --> 00:48:43.921
Finally, we found the train.

00:48:43.921 --> 00:48:49.217
The only room, because it was loaded with refugees,

00:48:49.426 --> 00:48:51.386
was on the top of the train.

00:48:51.970 --> 00:48:53.680
I was so young.

00:48:54.222 --> 00:48:56.308
Why not on the top of the train?

00:49:05.317 --> 00:49:07.569
Most of the girls who returned to their homes

00:49:07.819 --> 00:49:10.030
found no one waiting for them.

00:49:11.073 --> 00:49:12.991
I thought I'd find somebody at home.

00:49:13.116 --> 00:49:13.867
Nothing.

00:49:14.117 --> 00:49:15.452
The house was burned down.

00:49:16.536 --> 00:49:18.664
The stuff that we had was taken away.

00:49:19.456 --> 00:49:21.249
I sat on the stairs

00:49:21.750 --> 00:49:25.754
in the front of a store and crying.

00:49:26.546 --> 00:49:28.131
What should I do with myself?

00:49:31.677 --> 00:49:35.138
I think in every misery there is some kindness.

00:49:36.181 --> 00:49:39.893
We happened to have a neighbor that
was a very decent human being.

00:49:40.352 --> 00:49:44.898
My parents gave her their
candelabras, two candelabras.

00:49:44.982 --> 00:49:47.192
When I came back, she gave me back

00:49:47.192 --> 00:49:50.821
my candelabras that my parents got as a wedding gift,

00:49:50.862 --> 00:49:52.531
and just those I have.

00:50:05.210 --> 00:50:07.212
The neighbor gave her the candlesticks,

00:50:07.421 --> 00:50:08.964
and with that, her history.

00:50:18.098 --> 00:50:20.517
We didn't have any idea who is alive.

00:50:20.767 --> 00:50:25.355
I didn't have any idea that I will find parents and siblings at home.

00:50:27.065 --> 00:50:31.236
My mother fainted on the spot when she saw me.

00:50:33.613 --> 00:50:37.659
My father lost most of his family during the war.

00:50:38.201 --> 00:50:41.246
One brother and one sister, survived.

00:50:41.496 --> 00:50:45.417
And, he met my mother

00:50:45.417 --> 00:50:48.879
the day that she returned from Auschwitz.

00:50:49.880 --> 00:50:53.675
My grandmother invited my father for lunch.

00:50:54.468 --> 00:50:55.802
For gefilte fish.

00:50:56.595 --> 00:50:59.014
He came and ate in our place.

00:50:59.014 --> 00:51:01.975
The next day he came to take me out, so we went for a walk.

00:51:02.642 --> 00:51:05.979
Then he said, "I didn't fall in love with Edith.

00:51:06.063 --> 00:51:08.648
I fall in love with the gefilte fish."

00:51:11.526 --> 00:51:14.946
Like many girls, Edith eagerly returned to high school

00:51:15.197 --> 00:51:16.990
and planned to go on to college.

00:51:17.866 --> 00:51:20.660
Other girls wanted to get married and start families.

00:51:23.163 --> 00:51:25.957
Edith and Ladislav were only married for a year,

00:51:26.083 --> 00:51:29.586
when Edith became disabled by the tuberculosis in her leg.

00:51:30.754 --> 00:51:34.257
She was pregnant and had to have a medical interruption

00:51:34.466 --> 00:51:36.968
or an abortion to save her life.

00:51:38.762 --> 00:51:41.681
Many girls were too weak to survive childbirth

00:51:42.182 --> 00:51:44.142
and had to terminate their pregnancies.

00:51:45.310 --> 00:51:47.020
Many had miscarriages.

00:51:48.522 --> 00:51:51.441
It took years for some to be able to bear children.

00:51:52.984 --> 00:51:55.612
Some were never able to have children.

00:51:57.155 --> 00:52:02.327
I was kicked in my back from an SS man
and he damaged my uterus.

00:52:02.661 --> 00:52:03.620
I lost twins.

00:52:04.538 --> 00:52:05.205
Two boys.

00:52:05.956 --> 00:52:09.042
I didn't want to have children because I thought,

00:52:09.126 --> 00:52:12.170
"I don't want children should go through what I did."

00:52:12.671 --> 00:52:14.172
It was a surprise.

00:52:14.631 --> 00:52:17.592
The best thing that happened in my life.

00:52:20.679 --> 00:52:24.349
Who cared about hundreds of girls

00:52:24.641 --> 00:52:27.394
who went to Germany to work?

00:52:28.395 --> 00:52:30.438
Nobody even mentioned it.

00:52:30.897 --> 00:52:32.983
Nobody knew about it.

00:52:33.817 --> 00:52:36.778
Then suddenly, you open the door

00:52:36.945 --> 00:52:40.240
for that tragedy.

00:52:40.824 --> 00:52:43.869
I never could work it out why

00:52:44.161 --> 00:52:46.288
was that particular

00:52:46.997 --> 00:52:50.876
transport only young girls.

00:52:52.294 --> 00:52:54.254
What was in their mind?

00:52:56.381 --> 00:53:01.595
And I still can’t work it out. What was the reason?

00:53:04.222 --> 00:53:09.728
The Nazi genocide had to target
Jewish girls specifically as women

00:53:09.811 --> 00:53:13.398
because Jewish identity is
passed down through the mother.

00:53:13.982 --> 00:53:18.445
The continuation of the Jewish
race depended on young women.

00:53:18.945 --> 00:53:22.574
The future mothers of next generation of children.

00:53:27.454 --> 00:53:32.083
I would do anything to have the girls remembered.

00:53:36.755 --> 00:53:38.256
Please, please,

00:53:38.548 --> 00:53:40.759
you have to understand,

00:53:41.259 --> 00:53:43.929
you don’t have a winner in a war.

00:53:44.846 --> 00:53:48.892
Even the winners are losing kids, are losing houses,

00:53:49.267 --> 00:53:52.062
are losing economy, are losing everything.

00:53:52.062 --> 00:53:53.647
That’s not a win.

00:53:54.522 --> 00:53:59.444
A war is the worst thing that can happen to humanity.