Rachel Rózsa, my grandmother, was deported to Auschwitz together with her family in 1944, where she perished. Her last words to her children were: “I have lived. Just that you should live.”
Rozsa’s four children survived.
I have composed a work based on her last words, which were related to me by my aunt, Miriam, who lived in Israel (after WWII). It can be heard below, performed by amazing mezzo soprano Sarah Castle, fabulous musicians, and conducted by the absolutely perfect conductor (Karin Hendrickson) for this piece, and another, The Angel of Chomutov, recorded on the same day.
My grandmother was Hungarian- and Yiddish- speaking – she came from Nagy Szőlős in Hungary. So she would have related these words to her daughter in Hungarian, who related them to me in an English which she learned entirely from watching films. Speaking not even a word of Hungarian, I got a couple of Hungarian translators and a Hungarian friend on the case. There was an issue that the words I provided were embedded in a construction that is obviously not idiomatic to the Hungarian language (or English language, in fact), and they understood the intention of these words to mean that Rozsa was saying that the sole purpose of her life up to that point, had been so that her children should live/survive. I explained that the way I understood these words, was that Rozsa had had a chance to live, so all she now wished for was that her children should survive. (My aunt told me that her mother said she didn’t mind dying as she was tired – she had had a hard life. She would have been in her early 40s, and undoubtedly what made her tired was being wrenched from her home – being forced into the ghetto and then onto a train to Auschwitz; the inhumane conditions of the journey there; and everything she found and experienced there upon arrival.) More recently, it suddenly dawned on me that my aunt had related her mother’s words to me using a Hebrew construction. “Just (may it be) that you should survive” – with the connotation that that is all she now wishes for. So the Hungarian words I chose: “Csak ti éljetek” (which are not exactly what was offered by the translators) – may be “poetic” (as one translator conceded) rather than idiomatic.
To Rozsa’s words: “I have lived. Just that you should live”, I added the following:
I have lived
In joy
In abundance
With hopes
With dreams
In an earlier blog post, I show photos of her hometown – places where she would have walked, buildings, the Carpathian scenery, she would have seen as she grew up there, until she went to Mukačevo in (then) Czechoslovakia for an arranged marriage and a married life ahead of her with a man whom she had only met once before.
Photo: Marilyn Herman 2018. Chomutov, near the death march route, looking towards the Sudeten mountain range on the border with Germany.
Following on from my previous blog, I very recently decided to visit Chomutov, in the Czech Republic. I was interested to see what kind of place produced a heroine like the young woman who gave her life to give my father bread. I wanted to get an idea of the context at the time.
I am indebted to Jan Krupicka who grew up in Chomutov, who arranged for me to interview two couples and two widows who lived through World War II, taking me to the retirement home, and to Amalie’s village, and who interpreted between Czech and English during the interviews.
All but two of my interviewees had lived in other parts of Czechoslovakia during World War II. From my interviews, I learned about the general situation for civilians during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. Food rationing was imposed, and ethnic Czechs were restricted to the extent that one could not live on rations alone. Czech men were sent to Germany for forced, unpaid labour, to fill in for German men who were in the army. Czech women similarly had to engage in forced, unpaid labour for ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia, or if they were younger and without children to care for, they would be sent as forced unpaid labour to Germany. “The only people who didn’t come back were the Jews.”
From Karel and Kvetuse, a couple living in a retirement home in Chomutov, who had lived in other parts of Czechoslovakia during WWII, I learned that the generation of Czechs at the end of the 19th century all spoke German.
They told me that there were Czech and German schools. Once the German occupation started, it was stipulated that there should be a German class every day in the Czech schools, and history classes were only about the German Reich, and nothing else. Pages of history books referring to previous history were glued together, and after that the books were thrown away altogether, and history lessons were just given through talking by the teacher, without books.
There were ethnic Czechs who said they were German during the occupation, seeking benefits. They also told me of hearsay about one ethnic Czech man who was really pro-Nazi and a snitch.
I interviewed Viera on 30thNovember 2018, and relay what she said below:
The Germans were well-off, while food was very scarce for the Czechs following the German occupation. She knew a Czech woman who worked just for food. Ethnic Germans in the area were on higher rations than the Czechs.
I asked if this caused resentment. She responded that there wasn’t much resentment. Most of the Czechs left, [since Chomutov was being bombed by the allies – there were factories there serving German war effort]. Not many Czechs were left in Chomutov. Those who remained had to cope with how things were.
Viera would take the animals and geese to the woods when there was an inspection [by the German occupiers). They would be warned a couple of days in advance by Czechs working in the government office. If these Czechs had been caught, they might have been executed along with their families.
You couldn’t survive on the food stamps. Life was better in the rural areas. You were in a better position to survive – to have what you needed.
Viera was studying fashion design. Her father was recruited at the age of 17 in World War I. He fought in an Italian batallion.
In World War II, Czech men didn’t have to go into the German army. They were supposed to be relocated to Germany to substitute for Germans who went to war, as forced unpaid labour. German cities were under attack [by the allies] – the situation wasn’t good there. Viera’s husband – a student – was digging ditches for the Germans.
In Czechoslovakia, the men were gone, and food was scarce.
Viera’s brother was supposed to be relocated. A German man saved him – he said that he needed him to work in his inn, where people would leave their carts and horses. He was an old man, and said he was ill and needed Viera’s brother to work for him.
There were lots of Czech/German married couples.
Some [ethnic] Germans collaborated with the Nazis, but others were perfectly fine. There were people who sought benefit from siding [with the Nazis]. Maybe some Czechs were the the worst “snitches”.
Mrs Amalie Libuse Vinduskova had lived in the same village near Chomutov her whole life. I interviewed her on 2ndNovember 2018. Amalie felt the need to talk about her experiences during WWII. It caused her great anxiety to remember and talk about her experiences, but she felt it was important for them to be known. This is what she said:
She told me about the remains of a Jewish cemetery in a forest near the village. Her daughter-in-law sent me photos and put stones on the graves in the Jewish tradition, since it was too late for me to go there after the interview.
Amalie also talked about where the victims were shot by Germans on the “Day of Executions”. I am not clear about what she was referring to, but will try to clarify it and revise this blog post shortly. I think she was referring to the death march after it passed through her village as she specified that it was in April 1945. (My father related that on the death marches, as soon as they arrived at some distance from a town or village, the German guards would shoot prisoners who they thought could not continue, or would shoot a group of prisoners to reduce their numbers.)
Amalie said that more than 30 people were shot. She said they may not have [all?] been Jews. Germans who lived in Czechoslovakia were also among those who were executed – those who went against the regime. Some of the graves in the woods are of German communists. None of the graves have names.
I am arranging to have the notice board (above) translated, and will add the translation here.
Amalie’s mother asked a [German] soldier where they were taking the prisoners. He responded: “Up the hill, and when we’re done, you’re next.”
Amalie heard the shooting and was shocked. When they heard the shooting, she went out and saw a prisoner in a white-collared shirt lying by a small apple tree. He couldn’t talk, but pointed to his mouth to indicate that he was hungry. The German guards wouldn’t allow him to be given food. On the way up the mountain, he grabbed some grass. He was about to put it in his mouth, when the German guard stabbed him with his bayonet. Amalia was crying and shaking (as a girl) thinking of this man.
She was 13 when she witnessed the death march passing through her village. She turned 13 in February 45. When Amalie saw the death march, she was shocked and couldn’t move. Her mother went to sit in the creek for the whole day
Czech adults didn’t approach the death march. Her mother and aunt went to hide. The children approached the march because they were children and spoke German. The prisoners were so weak and helpless!
I asked Amalie if she thought the woman who gave my father bread on the death march would have been Czech? Amalie was sure that a German girl wouldn’t have handed him bread. The Czech girl must have known what she was getting into. The guards were so threatening! It was huge, huge bravery!
Until the War, nobody cared who was Czech, German, Jewish, Polish. Only after the War started, such distinctions started to be made. As soon as these distinctions started to be made, marriages started breaking up.
Heller was a Jewish woman with a German husband. He divorced her (after the German occupation) and she was deported together with their two daughters to Theresienstadt.
Amalie’s mother had had a hard time in 1937 when there was a rubella epidemic. Three of her children died. She collapsed and received treatment for half a year. After that, her peaceful place was in the creek where she would retreat to.
Amalie’s father was Polish. He was the only Polish person there, having come to that region when he was only 16. He had paid a farmer to keep (hide) the family, but her mother refused to leave. As soon as he heard that the Germans were crossing the border, her father shot himself. He had heard what the Germans had been doing to the Jews in Germany. He committed suicide to save the family. He could have killed the whole family together. He shot himself to avoid deportation, and to save his family so that they wouldn’t be endangered by association with him.
Previously her father would join the Germans going to work. Once he shot himself, he became “the Polish bastard”. The Germans didn’t mind that the Jews were in the death march. Before the War, the Germans wanted to leave for their “home country”. Then [after the War] when they were being chased out, they didn’t want to go. Her own uncle was one of the worst Germans who was beaten and chased out [after the War].
28 German soldiers were put up in their house. The officer would stay there all day. He was very civil to her mother. When a neighbour came round and said: “Do you know who you are drinking coffee with?” (in order to betray her because the family was Polish), the officer asked where the neighbour lived, and threatened her.
You couldn’t tell who was German, or who was Czech [or Jewish?] [from looking at or speaking to someone]. But once the War started, the [ethnic] Germans started feeling superior.
The Jewish people were gassed in trucks, with the exhaust pipes discharging inside the trucks. The local German people approved of this. Her mother spent that day sitting in the creek.
Her older siblings protected Amalie from it. She was the second youngest. They didn’t talk about such things in front of her. She was called a “Polish bitch” [by Germans?] once the War started. They mostly spoke German at home. Her parents were scared to speak in Czech. After the War, her mother said she was not going to speak German anymore.
There were Germans who were neither communist nor pro-Hitler. They wore white bands, and got food from the Russians. There were good and bad Germans.
It was a German-speaking region, and Amalie went to a German school. There was only a German school in her area. Everyone went to it: Jews, Czechs. After the German occupation, at school, when she put up her hand to answer a question, her teacher told her there was no point in her learning. Her teacher didn’t expect her to survive the War because of her Polish identity. It was local Germans from Chomutov who were teaching in the school.
The German pupils would get food first, and the Polish and Jewish pupils would get whatever was left, if anything. They would be sitting on the steps [while the German pupils were eating]. In the winter, only the German pupils got meals at school, and the other children didn’t get anything.
The German flag was raised at school and the children had to raise their arms and say “Heil Hitler”.
Amalie’s mother had lived through World War I, when she had had to be very self-reliant and creative (resourceful). When there was a wheat harvest, her mother would collect whatever remnants were left on the field after the harvest, (although they were gardeners before the occupation) and would make little breads, and sprinkle sugar on top. She told her children to eat these in the bathroom so that the other children wouldn’t laugh at them.
Amalie’s cousin was mother to a six-week old baby. As a punishment for giving frozen bread to a Polish worker, she was imprisoned for two months – despite having a six-week old baby at home. The German mayor was nice, and arranged for her to be released early.
Amalie’s three sisters had to work as maids on local German farms. They had to be German [i.e. the farmers they worked for]. They were nice people. Ordinary people. Some of the farmers could be mean to the girls [who worked for them]. It was forced, unpaid labour. They were just given board and lodging.
Her two older sisters were dating Germans, one of whom was very much in love with her sister and wanted to marry her. He was sent to the Russian front, because he wanted to marry a Polish woman.
Her brother was stationed with a Czech army unit guarding the border. They were forced to surrender. He went to Benechov and hid, so that he was not deported. Her younger brother worked in salt mines in Thuring.
Ritter was a nice farmer. He would take a loaf of bread, carve it out and put lard in it, and give it to her mother.
The German farmers were producing food for themselves and also had to give produce to the Nazis.
The Czech people were not allowed to breed animals or grow plants. Amalie’s family used to have commercial gardens: they were gardeners who grew food [before the occupation], and now her mother had to collect remnants from fields after the harvest.
I commented that the Czechs were being starved, like the Jews. Amalie said that the German approach was that if you eliminate someone, you get what’s left.
Amalie’s first husband was from the Ukraine, from a village called Lapaus in the Damidovka district. There, they brought the Jews to a forest and made them dig a grave.
In Chomutov, there were lots of Jewish shop owners who were very nice. One Jewish shop owner would let his first customer have her shopping for free. The second customer, he would let her have her shopping on credit. If someone owed him money, he would come round and collect a little at a time. He wouldn’t collect the whole debt at once.
There was a Ukrainian general: Vlasov who joined the German side. When the tables turned, the “march” of Vlasov’s men took two days – to send them to Siberia.
There was a huge community of Czechs living in the Ukraine. They came to the vacated farms (i.e. vacated by the expelled Germans.)
People need to know what was going on in the War. Now they are making a lot of noise about how the Germans were expelled. But they are not talking about how the Germans behaved. They would take a baby from its mother, and smash it against a wall.
Photo: Marilyn Herman 2018. Angel – from a monument in Chomutov for protection against the bubonic plague.
In April 1945, my father, Abraham Herman (aged 14), and his brother, David Herman (aged 18), were prisoners on a forced death march from Rehmsdorf to Theresienstadt. When they crossed over from Germany into the Czech Sudetenland, in the town of Chomutov, Czech bystanders were throwing food to the prisoners, but there would be such a scramble, the bread would break up, and nobody would get any. (I have very recently visited Chomutov, and interviewed some people who lived through WWII. They informed me that during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, ethnic Czechs and ethnic Poles were effectively subjected to a policy of slow starvation – with food rationing enforced to a degree that it was not possible to live on the rations alone.) The German guards threatened to shoot anyone who gave the prisoners food. One heroic, defiant young woman ran inside the line of prisoners, placed bread firmly into Abraham’s hands, and as she ran back out, a German guard smashed the butt of his rifle down on her head and she fell. In all likelihood, she never got up again.
I am composing a work to commemorate this unknown Czech heroine. I was scouring poetry and psalms for words, and even ordered an anthology of Czech poetry with translation. Finally, I decided to use my own words:
My grandmother, Rachel* Rozsa, was born in Nagy (pronounced “Noj”) Szolos in Hungary (now Vinogradiv in the Ukraine). An idyllic spa town nestling in the Carpathian Mountains, whose name means “Large grapes” – indicative of its wine production. (Also famous because the composer Bartok moved there with his mother.)
Her father was Rav (Rabbi) Itzhak Braun, who was renowned for being a miracle-worker. At the end of WWI, mothers would come to him to find out where their sons were. It was described to me that he would close his eyes and grab hold of the mother’s arm, then after a while, he said: “He is crossing the border NOW!” banging his cane on the ground at the precise moment at which the returning soldier was crossing the border, and it would turn out to be accurate. It was also described to me that he would take children who were sick in their spirit into his home and they would heal in his atmosphere.
I was the first family member to visit Nagy Szolos in 70 years. The previous visit was by Rachel Rozsa, who went to her father’s funeral taking my father when he was just a baby.
When I visited Nagy Szolos, I tried to find Rav Itzhak Braun’s grave in the Jewish cemetery. The Mukaceve Rabbi’s driver took me there, and we stopped at a house on the way to pick up the key to the cemetery from the lady who lived there, returning it on our way back. I spent 2 or 3 hours in the cemetery searching, but couldn’t find the tombstone. Half of the cemetery was overgrown with weeds, so it was hard to access those stones. Even where the weeds had been cut or trampled down, I was getting grazed and scraped by weeds, and burnt in the hot sun, trying to find it. Many of the stones were eroded by the elements, so it was difficult or impossible to read the script.
Overgrown with weeds:
Rachel Rozsa’s marriage was arranged by a matchmaker. So after her marriage, she made the journey – a whole day by ox and cart (now an hour by car) from Nagy Szolos across the border into Mukacevo in Czechoslovakia, to live with a man she had met once or twice. This is the view along the way:
My aunt, Miriam, told me she was not happily married. Her mother-in-law would come into the kitchen, lift the lids off her pots on the stove, and exclaim: “What? Is this what you give my son to eat?!!!” So one can imagine this did not go down very well with Rachel Rozsa! Being Hungarian, she made goulash. She also made dumplings and pancakes. When food became scarcer – probably after they were closed inside the ghetto – she was able to make a chicken last for 3 meals for 6 people.
Rozsa, Miriam told me, had big dreams – but had to work hard, so she just “had her books for dreaming.” My father couldn’t remember the colour of her hair. Miriam, told me she was brunette, and “very conscious of being beautiful”, although my aunt, whose knowledge of the English language was picked up entirely from watching English-language films – might have meant that she was “very beauty-conscious!”. She was also fashion conscious. She loved reading and was well-read, and would send Miriam to the library to get her books by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, etc. that she read in Hungarian. She would take some time in the afternoon after finishing housework to lie on her bed and read.
She spoke to her children in Hungarian, and to her husband in Yiddish. Another of the very few things I know about her is that she used to sing a song with the chorus:
Van London, van Nápoly, van Konstantinápoly, Van Róma, Barcselona, Madrid, Csikágó
…. and that she used to dream of going to these places. If she had known that two of her sons would end up living in London and the other son in the States……said Miriam (who lived in Israel)! (And of course …. if she had known that she would have 24 great-grandchildren, plus two great-great-grandsons…so far….)
When I was in Budapest (the nearest airport to Mukacevo & then a 7-hour train journey) I tried to find this song, and asked in a number of shops and museums. Eventually someone told me it came from a film called Kek Balvany (“The Blue Idol”), and it was quite a feat to access a DVD copy of this film from the National Film Archive in Budapest, with the indispensable help of a Hungarian friend who also watched the film with me, patiently translating it! I think my grandmother must have seen this film at the cinema in Mukacevo. The family was religious, like all the Jews of the region. But they sent one of their sons to the Zionist school (which the Mukaceve rebbe referred to as “that goyishe (colloquial & derogatory term meaning non-Jewish) school”, which indicates that they were not ultra-ultra religious. And therefore I imagine she would have gone to the cinema. Although my grandfather would consult the Mukaceve rabbi if he had any concerns about anything. The song must also have been broadcast on the radio.
My father felt that his mother knew what was happening to Jews during WWII.
In 1944, Rachel Rozsa was transported to Auschwitz with her family. They were forced off the train by barking SS with whips, and lunging alsations. She was forced to separate from her sons and husband. Someone, or some people, had decided that she should be exterminated, and had plotted, planned and collaborated to achieve this. Someone made her strip. Someone made her enter the gas chamber. Someone had designed the gas chamber to accommodate her and others like and unlike her. Someone released the gas into the chamber. Zyklon B. She was 43 or 44 years old.
Miriam, Rozsa’s 15-year-old daughter, was with her mother until she was taken to the gas chamber. Rozsa told Miriam that she didn’t mind dying – she was tired. But she wanted her children to survive: “I have lived. Just that you should survive.” When mothers were selected for the gas chambers, many of their children ran to be with them and therefore also died with them. But Miriam wasn’t close to her mother: her mother worked too hard to have time for her. So when Rozsa was selected, Miriam didn’t try to join her.
Miriam circa 1947/8
One day, Miriam saw a woman she thought was her mother. It turned out to be her mother’s sister. Miriam met with her every day, until one day, she didn’t turn up, and someone told her that she had been cremated.
A silver leaf in Rozsa’s memory was affixed to the silver tree installed by Tony Curtis outside the Great Synagogue in Budapest, each leaf commemorating a Hungarian Jew who was murdered in the holocaust.
Apparently Rachel Rozsa did go to Budapest once with her father (and sister – I’m not sure how many sisters she had), although it is so far away from Nagy Szolos.
* * *
* Rachel is pronounced with the “a” sounding like the “u” in “up“, the “ch” sounding like the same letters in the Scottish word “loch“, & the “e” sounding like the “e” in “bell“.
You walk down the River Road…..in Mukacevo (Munkacs) – Czechoslovakia between the wars, Hungary before that, occupied by Hungary during WWII, now in the Ukraine, nestling in the Carpathian Mountains……
Where my father came from, and where he lived in this house with his family:
You walk down the River Road, which leads to the River Latorska, where my father and his brothers would jump off the bridge and swim….
From the town centre ….
…… from the municipality …..
….the Town Centre
Where there’s a fabulous art deco cinema (some of the earliest talkies were Hungarian)….
…and a theatre…
So you walk down the River Road….
….and there on the left, on a pink wall is a Memorial Plaque. In Ukrainian & Hebrew, the following is written:
“In the year 1944 thousands of Jews were led from here on their last journey to death.”
When I tell people that my father was imprisoned in Auschwitz, the question that invariably follows is: “How did he survive?”
As is the case with most of “The Boys” (732 child and teenage holocaust survivors admitted into Britain after WWII), the fact that my father survived is almost inconceivable. And as we know from Martin Gilbert’s book, The Boys: Triumph Over Adversity, survival depended on a combination of factors: kind acts by others, chance and luck against improbable odds, the will to live in the face of all that was happening; and physical and mental strength and stamina.
Since Transcarpathian Ruthenia, where my father, Abraham, lived, was occupied by Hungary in 1938, Jews in this region were not subjected to deportation until 1944. However, by this time, the Nazis were in a hurry to complete the job of exterminating the Jews. This was their priority.
Deported from Mukaçevo not long after his Bar Mitzvah, Abraham was among the youngest concentration camp survivors, and the only survivor of Birchashof Birkenau – one of the camps – a farm complex – at Auschwitz. Almost all of his entire age group were exterminated with all the other children upon arrival at Auschwitz, but as is the story with many of the other “Boys”, he observed the advice of one of the Polish inmates upon arrival, given in Yiddish: “Say you’re 18!” As his family were being selected either for work or for immediate extermination, he insisted that he was 18. It seems someone wanted to believe him, and so he was steered in the direction of those selected to work and starve to the point of death, as his father did, rather than face immediate extermination in the gas chambers, as his mother did.
The photo shown is the earliest photo I have of him. It was attached to his form held by the Jewish Refugees Committee, and seems to have been taken immediately upon his arrival in England, when he was 16. This is more than three years after someone accepted his insistence that he was 18, and let him live.
In the Auschwitz barracks where he and his father were imprisoned, there were two kapos: “a nice one and a nasty one”. The “nice” kapo was a German man called Peter: “a very tall fellow: 6’6” or thereabouts” – who had been serving his sentence in a German prison after being caught just after robbing a bank. The “nasty” kapo was a brutal, heavy-set Ukrainian man called Otto. When Otto hit a prisoner, that prisoner never got up again:
“He was a real criminal. He was a murderer. He must have murdered at least one a week there – beating him to death – giving him twelve lashes – and from him, they didn’t last long. He was doing all the beatings – you know – during appell. He was always doing it. People were really shuddering.”
Peter, the German kapo, took Abraham under his wing, looking after him, bringing him extra food, and protecting him from the brutal kapo: “He told this Otto that if he does anything to me, he’ll kill him!” When the SS there wanted fruit that had ripened on some trees, Peter recommended Abraham for the job of climbing the trees and picking the fruit, and while up in the trees, he was able to eat his fill of fruit.
“So I remember we went with a horse, a German guard with a gun, there was this German kapo [Peter], and me. We had lots of baskets. So we went, and I picked fruit for them….That was in [the summer of] ‘44.”
Abraham derived food from other sources:
“…there were the Polish boys – Jewish, who would go and work on transports. They’d bring some extra food back. Often it was green [with mould]…but it doesn’t matter. It was still good enough.”
Another source of food came from a Hungarian guard who had “ …some German-speaking girlfriend”.
“He asked if I would write a letter in German for him. I said: “You write it in Hungarian, and I’ll write it in German.” I had learned German…. before the War. I started German, I think I must have been five or six, I started to learn German – at school. And my father spoke German, and I was writing the Gothic German… the reason I was doing the old-fashioned German was because my father knew the old-fashioned German. Of course I learned it at school as well.”
I understand that this demand for Abraham’s translating skills was an ongoing state of affairs, as was the extra food he received in appreciation.
Although Abraham would give some of the extra food he received to his father, instead of eating it, his father would give it to the Mukaçeve rebbe (rabbi) who was with them, since the rebbe would not eat the food they were given apart from the bread, as it wasn’t kosher.
There seems to have been a relationship of trust between Abraham and Peter, the German kapo, as Abraham discussed with him the possibility of escape.
“I was in situations where I could have escaped, but I didn’t know in which direction. I did discuss it with Peter, I remember… He said there’s no way. I’m in the middle of things. Right in the middle. If I manage to get through this wire, which is easy enough….because we did get out… but you’ll not get through further. There were wires within wires within wires within wires. There’s no way. At least not from there, and with this tattoo, I’d be recognized anywhere. Yes, the only other thing I had was prison uniform. Not a very good thing to cover it with.”
Abraham’s father grew weaker and weaker with starvation and labour; he was taken to the hospital, and Abraham never saw him again:
“….he was writing notes for two weeks. And then they stopped, finished.”
In my father’s dossier, a summary of Abraham’s background provides the information that his mother (Rachel Rosza) was sent to the gas chambers in May 1944, and his father (Chaim) was sent to the gas chambers in July 1944.
When Auschwitz was being evacuated and the prisoners were forced to go on their first “death march”, the German prisoners were free to join the German army and head for the Russian front (which I doubt Peter would have done!) or to go wherever they wished or could get to.
Recently I have been wondering about Peter.
“….he looked after me – the tall fellow. He told me his story: he was robbing a bank, so he said, on a motorbike, and they were chasing the robbers, and he said: ‘Over there! Over there!’ So they didn’t believe him. They arrested him.”
I have been wondering what kind of person he could have been, to plan and embark on a bank robbery, and then, in Auschwitz, to make it his mission to protect and look after a young Jewish boy. My father assumed that his own father had asked him to do so, but Peter must have wanted to help Abraham regardless. He obviously hadn’t been susceptible to Goebbels’ anti-Semitic crushingly heavy-duty brainwashing and propaganda campaign.
Having lost his father, and without Peter to protect him, it seems Abraham wasn’t completely alone: during his first “death march”, he walked alongside a Hungarian doctor who kept himself alive with pills for as long as he could. Abraham, having been based on the only farm in Auschwitz-Birkenau, (along with his father who had declared his trade as “farmer”), had to walk with the horses and carts containing agricultural machinery which he and the other prisoners helped to push.
“We were in Birchashof farm complex, and the Germans decided they were going to save the machinery and take it to Germany with their horses, carts, and many soldiers with dogs. And it was winter, December, 1944…. or maybe even the beginning of 1945….
“So there was a long line of people, about four or six abreast…I remember it was about six….and that line must have been miles long because they had been evacuated from other camps at the same time. Only we were at the end of the line because we had these carriages, horses, carts, machinery….and we were marching – starting to push it. Now it appears that the Russians were advancing pretty quickly, so we were going day and night….. And anybody who couldn’t keep up just sat down and he was shot. There were soldiers at the back who would shoot them. Nobody could escape. Every time somebody sat down you would hear a shot after, as we passed. And in any case, as we were at the back, there were other transports in front of us, who had marched before us, half an hour or so earlier, and the sides were littered with dead prisoners shot all along the line.”
“While we were marching, walking, the soldiers would take it in turn to sit on the carts and have their sleep. As we were pushing uphill …..there was a road once upon a time there, but there was a little track – a snow track – we had to push the carts uphill, and there were always the Germans with their truncheons: “Los! Los! Aufgang! Los! Los! Los!”, and hitting, always hitting – some of them were just hitting in any case for no reason at all….that if you were on the outside of the line, you had a very good chance of being hit….and one hit of that on the head, you’d fall down, you’d stumble, you’d stay there, you wouldn’t get up anymore. In any case, many people couldn’t keep up so they just sat down, they just gave up.” (1984 interview)
“We were marching for two weeks. At that time, all the horses…had to be shot. The horses couldn’t march any more either. They can’t go on forever….People couldn’t push anymore.” (1989 interview)
During the last stretch of the journey to Buchenwald, the surviving prisoners were squeezed into open-top train carriages, exposed to the elements. At the last stop before being forced onto these carriages, Abraham’s Hungarian doctor companion encouraged him to try to grab some carrots from the kitchen, which he managed to do without being shot, as others were. In the absence of any other food, these carrots kept him alive.
“Now I’m going to give you an episode which sticks out in my mind. Now where I come from there were two brothers. They were hardy people – they were selling coal….they must have been 19 or 20 – and to carry coal in sacks to sell – so they were really used to hardship. There were two brothers, and they were with me on one of these open trucks…. railway carriages. After a number of days – since the total travel was only about two weeks – without food – all we had was snow for water – one of the brothers died. Then all of a sudden, somebody saw the other brother eating the flesh of his brother. And then he was pointed out: ‘Look what’s happening! Look what’s happening!” And this person all of a sudden stood up – we were all huddled together in an open carriage – stood up as if to walk on all of them: “I’m going home for Shabbes! I’m going home for Shabbesl!” As if to walk over the people, as if nobody was there. And the guard shot him. Others died, but more calmly. Just fell asleep and they never woke up. But that was something which…. It’s not that he was shot – that he was ‘going home’, that his mind had gone. [It’s] that he had eaten of his brother.”
The Hungarian doctor did not survive this stage of the journey. My father noted that about 10% of the prisoners on the death march from Auschwitz survived the journey to Buchenwald.
Upon arrival at Buchenwald:
“We get food there, and it seems to be a bit better than the others, but every day I see people pulling carts – skeletons – dead people – to the crematoria to burn – all the time they’re pulling them, pulling them. Therefore this event of people dying there like flies seems to be an occurrence wherever we were. However I’m told: ‘Look, you’re a young boy, you’re under 16, you can stay in the children’s ward. And you will be all right.’ I said: ‘No. I’m 18 and I want to go to work.’ I thought to myself: If I work I’m all right. If I don’t work, I’m useless and we die…I was healthier when I left Buchenwald than when I had arrived there. Because we did have regular food. And not only that, the person who was serving the food, seeing I need a little bit extra, he gave me the extra little bit…he just gave me the bit which just had a bit of meat in it. These are these little perks which made the difference between people surviving or not.”
From Buchenwald, Abraham was taken to Rhemsdorf to work in a factory which was serving the German war effort, and which was being bombed by the British, day and night.
“…There were 30,000 prisoners, and for the first time I saw American prisoners, British prisoners, Russian prisoners….all there, trying to work, trying to … rebuild the factory after it had been bombed. And the bombs kept falling almost any time.”
“So there [in Rhemsdorf] they did give us food simply because we were doing a useful job….so to speak, but not very much of it. People still kept dying all the time. There were always the ‘musulman’. The ‘musulman’ is the person who was skin and bone.”
In the case of the American, British and Russian prisoners of war, however, “…we were not together. They were looked after better…..they were demoralised, but they seemed to have been fed well. But there’s no comparison.”
In Rhemsdorf, he found his brother, David who was carrying out carpentry work.
“…the point is, he was there. That is important. And now we were two together.”
The allies were advancing.
“We were told again that we were going to be evacuated, and I saw people were running to the kitchen to find some food for the journey. I also ran to the kitchen, and I found, and I took, three carrots, and I ran away. But others managed to get shot for their troubles. I did get away with three carrots.: Now, we were put on the trains….after one or two days, their locomotive was bombed….The train came to a sudden halt, and as the aeroplanes came and our guards were frightened, they ran away. And many of us, prisoners, started to run away into the woods, only to be rounded up by local Germans – old people and young people, and most of those running into the woods – not knowing where to go – they were all shot by the local people, local Hitler Jugend. All young people were taught how to handle guns in Germany. Therefore I don’t think anybody will have escaped that.”
“After that we had to walk, and we were walking….I think a couple of weeks ….maybe even longer – through German towns and villages, and most of our shoes had long worn out. Some had rags [on their feet]. We did stop now and then, for a bit of soup….”
“They didn’t shoot the prisoners in the towns, but as soon as we got a certain distance from a small town or a village, we’d stop, and those they thought unable to continue were shot. Or they would just take a group of people and shoot them in any case because they wanted to reduce some of the guards. Some of the guards wanted to go away. Some said they wanted to go to the front to fight, others who had other reasons. So since there were too few guards, they reduced the number of people in the march.”
During this “death march” to Theresienstadt, Abraham and David shared the carrots Abraham had managed to take from the kitchen at Rhemsdorf – one between them each day:
“…and it kept us going: half a carrot for me, half a carrot for my brother, and it makes all the difference between whether you live a few days longer or not – whether you make it or not.”
They would eat grass along the way, and then would get stomach cramps, and want to sit down and give up. If they had done so, they would have been shot by the German guards. But neither of them would allow the other to give up – mercifully, it seems, their stomach cramps were not simultaneously severe. David and Abraham enabled each other to survive the “death march” from Buchenwald to Theresienstadt, which alone, each would not have survived.
Part of the story of my father’s survival is a Czech woman who gave him bread when the “death march” was proceeding through Czechoslovakia. While they had been marched through Germany, my father recalled that women, old people and children – the Hitler Youth – would smash bottles at the prisoners’ bare or rag-bound feet in order that they should tread in the broken glass.
By contrast, when they were being marched through Czechoslovakia, the Czech people were throwing bread. However, for every piece of bread thrown, there was such a scramble that the bread would get broken into little pieces and no-one would get any. One of “The Boys” said it was a form of sadism: that bystanders were deriving amusement from these scenes. Whatever the case, one woman wanted to be sure that my father received bread, and ran out to place it firmly in his hands, even though the German guards were threatening to shoot anyone who gave food to the prisoners. The Czechwoman who wanted my father to live, to the extent that she risked her life to make sure he got his piece of bread, then had a rifle butt slammed down on her head by a German guard as she was running back out of the line of prisoners.
When I was in Prague in the summer of 1998, one day, as I stood waiting for my friend to turn up, an elderly woman kept staring at me. When my friend arrived, he noticed how she was staring at me. I wondered: was she the one who helped my father? Did she recognize my father in me? Recently, it dawned on me that the woman who had given my father bread probably never got up again after the rifle butt crashed down on her head. I had always assumed that she had lived on, but it seems, in all likelihood, she gave her life to make sure my father got some bread. That the last thing she did in her life was to hand my father the bread, and then try to run back out of the line of prisoners.
This act of hers obviously made an enormous impression on young Abraham. The German Nazi Reich was focused on hunting him; its military machinery was designed to exterminate him and other Jews; German women, elderly people and children smashed bottles under his feet; and suddenly, here was someone, a gentile, who not only wanted him to live, but probably gave her own life to this purpose.
As with Peter, I have recently been trying to imagine this woman and the kind of life she came from. For her, we do not even have a name. Probably she was fairly young, as she was depending on her speed and agility to get swiftly in and out of the line of prisoners, and out of reach of the guards, which she didn’t succeed in doing. A kind-hearted, brave and defiant young woman, as the Czechs in general were defiant at having their country occupied by the Nazi imposters.
The Hungarian Jewish doctor who had walked alongside Abraham during the first “death march” had told him: “After the War, when there is food, don’t eat too much. Just have a piece of bread and a piece of cheese.” Once he was liberated from Theresienstadt, and able to go out of the concentration camp and find food, Abraham remembered the words of the doctor. Abraham was obviously someone who took advice very seriously – whether to say he was 18, or to eat moderately after starvation. Others found food and died from eating more than their starved systems could take. One of Abraham’s uncles, having survived up to that point, went out and found a piece of fat which he ate, and then, after everything he had gone through, contracted typhoid and died.
“People still kept dying, because it doesn’t end at a certain point. People got used to not eating. They couldn’t take food anymore. And when they got food, a little bit of food, [they] got typhoid. [They] died of it.”
Abraham, as advised, ate a piece of bread and a piece of cheese. As long as I remember, my father always ate in moderation, despite having been so severely starved at such a young age. After Yom Kippur, he would break the Fast with bread and cheese.
The net result of all these factors is that – against all the odds – my father survived.
“…..one day we saw the first Russian motorcyclist, and that was the end of the war. And we weren’t allowed out straight away, but as soon as we heard there were no more Germans, some of us found a hole to climb out of Theresienstadt, and there were strawberries there. Some of us had some strawberries.”
An interviewer once asked my father: What kept you going mentally? And my father replied:
“Oh – the war will end and then everything will be fine, and one day I’ll have enough bread, butter and milk…. If I keep alive long enough, the war will end and I’ll still be there.”
Having survived all that he survived, he then faced the task of living the rest of his life having experienced and witnessed the horrors of Auschwitz and the “death marches”. This, it seems, he achieved largely through music. In Munich DP Camp where he spent a year waiting to go to Palestine before deciding, instead, to join his brother, David, in England, he sourced two lots of food rations. He would exchange the extra food (with the exception of chocolate which, as far as he was concerned, was not extra and not exchangeable!) for piano and violin lessons from teachers who taught at the Handel Conservatorium. In a letter to the Jewish Refugees Committee in September 1950, requesting help with fees for continuing his piano studies at the Toynbee Hall, he wrote:
“I began to play the piano at Handel Conservatoire in Munich four years ago. There, not possessing a piano, I walked every morning three miles to the street-car where I continued my journey, by street-car, for another 30 minutes to the Conservatoire, and there I was allowed to practice on one of the College pianos (if I bribed the school-keeper) until 9 a.m., when lessons started.
“Since then I have been keeping up my studies in music.”
In fact, my father’s recently released dossier kept by the Jewish Refugees Committee during his early years in the UK, is full of documentation relating to the urgent nature, and great priority, of his need for piano lessons (and his depression before accessing these), a piano to practise on, piano repairs, further training in piano.
Abraham’s brother, Zruli, while he was in the DP camp together with Abraham, studied opera at the Handel Conservatorium, and my father seemed disappointed that he did not become a major opera singer, which he felt was within the range of Zruli’s abilities and talent.
I have no doubt that it was largely through playing the piano that my father returned to humanity, received healing, experienced the sublime, and rose from the ashes.
Thus, my father survived. Because of someone who accepted his insistence that he was 18 when he looked and was in fact only 13; and thanks to Peter – the German bank robber; thanks to his fluency in German and Hungarian; thanks to the advice of the Hungarian doctor and to my father’s strict observance of his words; thanks to the person serving food at Buchenwald; thanks to joining forces with his brother, David; thanks to an unknown heroic Czech woman; thanks to the carrots he found; thanks to his ability to eat in moderation even after having been so severely starved; thanks to the piano, and to Schubert, Chopin, Mozart, Beethoven, Grieg, Mussorgsky, Manuel de Falla; thanks to his physical and mental constitution and his will to live. And with all this, essentially, thanksto remotest chance, and luck, my father survived.
* * *
Note: Except where otherwise stated, quotes are from interviews conducted with Abraham Herman in May 1984 and March 1989.
Postscript: From an interview in 1984, my father talking about his time in a DP camp in Munich: “And for studying I had extra rations. Now I had two lots of food , and for two lots of food I could pay for some of my private lessons in food, to a German music teacher, because music was not provided as part of the learning. All the other lessons I had free….I attended Handel’s Conservatorium …….there was a woman teacher who gave private [violin] lessons in exchange for tinned food…..She invited me to her home and she had very many musical instruments: violins and others. So I said: “You have very many musical instruments. Where do you get them from?” She said: “Oh, my nephew was an officer in Poland. Whenever he came home on leave, he always brought me something.” And I remember particularly that she showed me: “This is an Amati,” and then she mentioned the others….. And if you think about it, there must have been between thirty to forty musical instruments in that room, it will give you some indication of what was going on.
“Well, after that I left her. I didn’t go back to her anymore. I didn’t want to know her….”
“So I went down [to]…a place who arranged the administration of people leaving. So I said: ‘Look, I think I should go to England now.'”
Map showing route of train journey from Mukaceveo (Munkacs) to Auschwitz. (Martin Gilbert: Atlas of the Holocaust [197])
Maps showing route of Death March and train evacuation from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Buchenwald (Martin Gilbert: Atlas of the Holocaust [216-7])
Map showing route of Death March from Rehmsdorf to Theresienstadt (Martin Gilbert: Atlas of the Holocaust [230]/. According to Abe’s brother, David, they crossed the border from Germany into Czechoslovakia at the Czech town of Chomutov (David Herman: David’s Story).
Marilyn Herman 