Marking Humanity: Stories, Poems, & Essays by Holocaust Survivors. Shlomit Editor Kriger
the day the German armed forces surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. For the western Allies, World War II officially ended in Europe on the next day, May 8 (V-E Day), while Soviet forces announced their “Victory Day” on May 9, 1945.
When Anglo-American and Soviet troops entered the concentration camps, they discovered piles of corpses, bones, and human ashes—testimony to Nazi mass murder. Soldiers also found thousands of survivors—Jews and non-Jews—suffering from starvation and disease. For survivors, the prospect of rebuilding their lives was daunting.
In the aftermath of the Holocaust, many of the survivors found shelter in displaced persons (DP) camps administered by the Allied powers. Between 1948 and 1951, almost 700,000 Jews immigrated to Israel, including 136,000 Jewish displaced persons from Europe. Other Jewish DPs immigrated to the United States and other nations. The last DP camp closed in 1957. The crimes committed during the Holocaust devastated most European Jewish communities and eliminated hundreds of Jewish communities in occupied Eastern Europe entirely.
Camp inmates on bunks at the time of liberation in Buchenwald, Germany.
Children next to a barbed wire fence in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland.
Jews standing on the platform after alighting from a train in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland, May 1944.
A general view of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, April 1945.
P olitical prisoners in the camp yard in Oranienburg, Germany, 1933.
Roll call at a detention camp in Kistarcsa, Hungary, 1944.
Prisoners demonstrating the transferring of bodies to the crematorium in Dachau, Germany, 1945.
German civilians forced to walk by a row of corpses in Volary, Czechoslovakia, May 1945.
Eva Brown
Eva Brown was born in Hungary in August 1927. She was the middle child born to a rabbi and his wife, and she had three brothers and three sisters. During the Holocaust, her father was sent to a labour camp, while the rest of the family lived in the Putnok ghetto. They were later sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, where her mother and seven-year-old brother were sent directly to the gas chamber. Eva’s identity was reduced to a number—A17923.
Following the war, Eva reunited with her father, but she learned that 60 members of her family had been murdered. In 1948 she immigrated to the United States. She was married for 50 years.
For eight years Eva served as a speaker at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. She lived in California until she passed away in December 2010 and is survived by her two daughters and a granddaughter.
An Address to Students
Commencement Speech at El Camino College in Torrance, California, June 2006
Eva Brown
When I was asked to be a keynote speaker at your graduation, I was immediately overcome by amazement and dread. I was amazed that I, a foreigner with a Grade 6 education, was chosen to inspire you, but I dreaded that I would not be able to do so.
I have spent a lot of time worrying about what I could possibly say to you that would mark this momentous occasion. What would you take away from this? Our differences are so great. You are at least 60 years my junior and have at least 14 years of education. You have mastered the electronic world of computers, digital cameras, and cell phones. I can hunt and peck on a typewriter, take photos with my old-fashioned film camera, and would never give up my rotary phone. But the biggest difference is our education; you are graduating from El Camino College, and I graduated from Auschwitz. If your enemies are your teachers, then I have learned so much from the Nazis.
To understand my message, you must first know my story. Seventy-nine years ago, I was the middle child born to a rabbi and his wife in a very small town in Hungary. My childhood was spent with my six siblings. Life was simple and carefree; we played, went to school, and celebrated holidays. But in the midst of this normalcy, German boots were marching across Europe.
In 1944 Hungary was invaded and my life was turned upside down as my father was taken away to a labour camp. My mother, younger siblings, and I were sent to the Putnok ghetto. Struggling with hunger and exhaustion, we did not think things could get worse until the cattle cars came and took us to Auschwitz—a place of unimaginable horrors and atrocities and ferocious beauty and tenacity of the human spirit. It is a bizarre coincidence that this occurred on June 9, exactly 62 years ago today, on a Friday night.
As I watched my mother and seven-year-old brother go to the gas chamber, I could not understand the depravity and madness of human beings that was reflected in Hitler’s “Final Solution.” Everyone’s past was erased. No distinction was made between doctors, lawyers, teachers, shoemakers, and honours students; each identity was reduced to a blue number tattooed on our forearms.
I found solace in the compassion of the Nazi guard that brought me food and a blanket to shield me from the bitter cold. I learned that to make myself valuable was to live. At 16 years of age, I had expected to be dating, going to school, and planning a dazzling future. Instead, I concentrated on discovering talents that would keep me alive: giving manicures, haircuts, and massages to my captors. I became an experimental scientist of my own body and mind. I learned to stay awake during the daily 4:00 AM head count that lasted three hours. I carefully balanced my food intake and energy output so I was able to finish all my work. Death was certain for those who fell asleep or fell behind in their assignments.
Even under these most dehumanizing conditions, we had choices. Some committed suicide by throwing themselves onto the electric barbed wires; others overcame starvation and sickness by sheer force of will in their determination to live. We prayed and comforted each other and vowed to make sure that one day the world would know what had happened to us.
I learned psychology—especially the art of denial and distance. I dreamt of my future; looking beyond the smoke from the gas chambers, I planned my life. I would find my family, get married, buy a house, and have children. I selected my wardrobe and menus; visions of shiny silk dresses, warm woolen coats, stuffed goose, and rich pastries filled my head as I removed gold teeth from dead prisoners. I named my smiling healthy children as I clipped the German officers’ mustaches, and I danced with my dashing husband as I filed their nails. I designed my living room and chose wallpaper for my bedroom as I worked outside in my bare feet as icy rain and snow soaked me.
After the liberation,