Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker The Local Europe ABVästmannagatan 43113 25 StockholmSweden 15 or only seven months when they were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau began their lives again and had children themselves some 40 survivors of the German Nazi camps agreed to talk to AFP as the world prepares to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 27th 2025 the most notorious of the extermination camps The date also serves as International Holocaust Remembrance Day Canada to South Africa they sat in front of our cameras to tell their stories grandchildren and great grandchildren - proof of their victory over absolute evil Some were speaking publicly for the first time others have long recounted the horrors visited upon them Many wondered what would be remembered of what happened to them when they are gone "I am part of the very last generation," said 86-year-old Evelyn Askolovitch who was four when she was taken from her home in France to the camps and survived Bergen-Belsen "How did the world allow Auschwitz?" asked 95-year-old Marta Neuwirth from Santiago She was 15 when she was sent from Hungary to the largest and most notorious Nazi death camp in occupied Poland Around one million Jews as well as Roma and members of the Polish resistance were murdered there between 1940 and its liberation by the Red Army on January 27 Most went straight to the gas chambers as soon as they arrived Six million Jews in total were slaughtered who survived Ravensbruck and Flossenburg camps in Germany as well as Mauthausen in Austria "Even now I don't know why they hate us so much," said the 97-year-old who was born in Budapest and now lives in Canada READ ALSO: What I've learned from living in Germany, the country my family once fled All have had to try to make sense of life after watching their parents go to the gas chambers their brothers and sisters die of hunger or exhaustion or discover at the end of the war that their families had been wiped out has difficulty talking about what happened without crying The Parisian was dragged off a lorry destined for the gas chamber in Birkenau at the last minute she insisted she would continue to give witness "Will they believe us when we talk about this when she is not there." a 92-year-old Israeli Auschwitz survivor born in Bratislava Austria and the Czech Republic for years to tell his story "so the younger generations never forget what happened" braved the Polish winter last month to go back to Birkenau with French high school students She was keeping a promise she made in 1944 to her dying sister Fanny who -- laid out on the straw coughing up blood -- asked her with her last breath to "tell what happened to us.. "We shouldn't have died for nothing," echoed 97-year-old Eva Shainblum in Montreal who was deported to the same enormous death camp next to Auschwitz from what is today Romania when she was 16 Almost all of her family were exterminated What we now forgot is that for years no one wanted to hear about the Shoah 1970 and a remarkable act of contrition by German Chancellor Willy Brandt for survivors' stories to be listened to By kneeling in front of a monument to the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and begging forgiveness for his people he helped create a space for their suffering to be heard the brutality of the SS and the cold efficiency of industrial mass murder still haunt the survivors who talked to AFP Many had already been traumatised by their nightmarish journey to the camps inside locked cattle trucks "like animals" children and old people with just a bucket No water or even a bit of bread," said Albrecht Weinberg prisoners in uniforms with sticks shouted 'Out Out!' The old people fell out of the wagon -- there was a heap of them on the ground - and the young came out on top of them." The dehumanisation still marks Polish-born Canadian Nate Leipciger In a few "minutes we were transformed from being free people to being incarcerated in a concentration camp with numbers on our arms" and you lost all your ability to function as a human being." the fragile and the children were sent straight to their deaths and at the end of it was a table with several SS soldiers," recalled 100-year-old Hungarian-born Canadian Ted Bolgar The soldiers "looked at you and waved you right or left who sorted the clothes taken from inmates at Auschwitz saw columns of naked women arriving "day and night" from convoys that "arrived from everywhere" "They made them throw their clothes on the ground they thought they were going to have a shower.. They went big and healthy straight to the ovens." Bolgar's sister and mother were gassed as soon as they arrived He and his father were sent the other way during the selection when he told them he was an electrician Those not killed straight away became slaves at the mercy of the SS butchers and their underlings so brutal that sometimes three people died of exhaustion in one day," said Weinberg who was put to work burying cables under Auschwitz "I cannot find words to describe the ferocity and the savagery" of the kapos at Birkenau -- the prisoners recruited to lord it over the other inmates -- said Frenchwoman Ginette Kolinka And then there were the medical experiments Romanian-born American Sami Steigmann became a human guinea pig in the Mogilev-Podolsky camp near the border between today's Ukraine and Moldova "I'm in constant pain every single second," said the 85-year-old Nor has the pain dimmed for Hirsz Litmanowicz sent at 11 with his brother to Auschwitz-Birkenau Later transferred to Sachsenhausen in Germany they tested a hepatitis B vaccine on his skeletal body His brother died in the camps but he survived "because I was chosen for these experiments not him I wasn't even able to say goodbye or hold him to me," said the Polish-born Peruvian and a grandfather of six and great grandfather of eight he admitted that he "feels the pain of what I endured more now than in the past "I had a twin sister," said Polish-born Canadian Pinchas Gutter They were both sent to Majdanek camp when he was 11 He was separated from Sabrina the moment they stepped into that "apocalyptic hell" That beautiful braid is now the only visual memory he has of Sabrina "It is extremely hurtful to me," the old man said 88 -- who was six when he was sent to the Theresienstadt (Terezin) camp in what is now the Czech Republic -- holds to what his murdered father "taught me before we were deported: to face life" It was her mother's heroic strength which saved Prague-born Israeli Eva Erben who was also in Theresienstadt before being sent to Auschwitz "She talked about what we would do when he went home; what we would buy what clothes we'd wear when we visited people and how we would have our teeth repaired." She died in the snow on the "death march" to Germany and Austria when the Nazis emptied the camps as the Soviet army approached Nate Leipciger said that "I did not expect that it would be so important to talk about the Holocaust 80 years later but it has become so because of the terrible rise in anti-Semitism around the world." It has been particularly resurgent since the 2023 October 7th attacks by the Islamist movement Hamas on Israel which set off the war in Gaza that is still raging Leipciger sees other parallels too with the 1930s "No one was willing to take us in as refugees" either though the difference today is "we have Israel" Many survivors are also frightened by the rise of the far-right across Europe "These are dark times," said Erich Richard Finsches horrified by the historic victory of the Freedom Party (FPOe) in his native Austria He believes that voters are being duped just as they were by Austrian-born Adolf Hitler in the 1930s READ ALSO: What would a far-right FPÖ-led government mean for Austria? The fear of the world forgetting torments many of them Pinchas Gutter worries that the Holocaust "will get drowned out" by the weight of history "I'm worried about the new generation because they don't have the patience to listen," she said "They have this machine (smartphone) that they are on day and night I see even with my grandchildren," she said READ ALSO: 'Never again is now': Germany's Scholz vows to protect Jews "For decades they said we talked about it too much.. but the more generations pass the less they seem to know about what happened," worried Hungarian Judit Varga Hoffmann who was only seven months old when she was put in the Klooga concentration camp in Estonia fears that after the death of the last survivors "no memory of it will probably remain" "There is a phrase in the Talmud (the source of Jewish law and theology) that says 'He who forgets his past is condemned to relive it'," said Catherine Chalfine Algerian-born Auschwitz survivor Gabriel Benichour at 98 is no longer able to testify for himself Seeing her Roma culture and language fade adds to the suffering of Vienna-born Rosa Schneeberger "The Sinti are disappearing," the 88-year-old who was sent to the Lackenbach "gypsy" camp in Austria when she was five "Most died during the war" and there are not enough survivors to keep the community going the survivors hold to hope and a faith in life that sustained them through the worst a human can endure You can only be awed listening to Gyorgyi Nemes who finished her interview in Montreal by saying who lost her whole family - 23 people - in the Holocaust to stand on my feet and say what a beautiful world." It is that absolute necessity for resilience and resistance that the survivors return to again and again as they call for peace and tolerance and an end to hate "To always have hope of surviving and to fight for that," said 97-year-old Argentinian Raquel Lily Soriano Alhadeff and escaped from a Dachau satellite camp just before it was liberated "We must pass the torch to the young," declared Marek Dunin-Wasowicz and survived the death marches at 15 to testify 75 years later in the trial of the SS guard Bruno Dey Born in Ravensbruck 46 days before its liberation the Frenchman's very existence is a miracle Babies born in the camps were killed straight away "It's for you the young to take things in hand," he said "to listen to those who have given you a conscience Please log in to leave a comment This article was published more than 12 years ago Rose Lewin was the last surviving sibling of 11 children She was born Rose Weiss in a village in Hungary in 1919 Her father was a poor cobbler who had lost his first wife in childbirth found work as a seamstress and sent money home to the family she was taken to Bergen-Belsen and held there for several months until the concentration camps were liberated in the spring of 1945 She had typhus and was severely malnourished She was hospitalized and fed with bread and margarine She never ate margarine again; she could smell it in food a mile away She met Yuzek Lewin at night school learning to speak English When told that palliative caregivers were coming to make her more comfortable at home she protested: "My home is very comfortable." were the beneficiaries of excellent mothering candour and an interest in everything they did and experienced She was able to tease out what was good about a situation or the way her children were raising their kids She talked to people and listened to every word they said She sewed clothes and fed some more people She made life better for every person she touched: her kids the teller at the bank and the waitress at White Spot In a phone conversation six months before she died she said something she had said hundreds of times: "How did I get to be so old I'm almost 93." But then she said something I'd never heard When people invited her to a party they would say You're the life of the party." I don't know if my mother really was the life of those parties but she was the life of my party and she was the life of our family party; she was the life of her grandchildren's party I said to her: "You know we really love you." She looked at me and said: "I was a really good mother." she created an 11th Commandment: "Honour Thy Children." and her children worked very hard in turn to honour their children who will carry that forward to the next generation See the guidelines to share the life story of someone you've recently lost Report an editorial error Report a technical issue Editorial code of conduct Welcome to The Globe and Mail’s comment community. This is a space where subscribers can engage with each other and Globe staff. Non-subscribers can read and sort comments but will not be able to engage with them in any way. Click here to subscribe If you would like to write a letter to the editor, please forward it to letters@globeandmail.com. Readers can also interact with The Globe on Facebook and Twitter Welcome to The Globe and Mail’s comment community This is a space where subscribers can engage with each other and Globe staff We aim to create a safe and valuable space for discussion and debate If you do not see your comment posted immediately it is being reviewed by the moderation team and may appear shortly We aim to have all comments reviewed in a timely manner Comments that violate our community guidelines will not be posted UPDATED: Read our community guidelines here We have closed comments on this story for legal reasons or for abuse. For more information on our commenting policies and how our community-based moderation works, please read our Community Guidelines and our Terms and Conditions The measure does not apply to passenger cars but heavy traffic at the exit points sometimes causes congestion but vehicles are sometimes congested at the exit points due to heavy traffic As we wrote today Bus drivers’ strike could cause huge chaos in Hungary on Monday Traffic is also heavy on the roads leading to Budapest the section between Tardos and Bikol on the road between Süttő and Vértestolna is still impassable due to trees and tree felling The village of Pilisszentlélek is raining on this section Overcast, cloudy, and foggy in the capital and east of the Danube, with drizzle in the Szombathely and Csorna areas, Útinform says The pavement of expressways and main and secondary roads is mostly salty and sometimes wet due to preventive protection Visibility is moderate in the northern central hills in the central areas of the Great Plain and in the Tárnok area with visibility between 100-300 m.Fog patches near Bicske and Szentendre make driving difficult Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok and Csongrád-Csanád counties while elsewhere the winds are light or calm Temperatures vary between -2 and +6 degrees C As we wrote before, paid parking zones in Budapest are in total disarray and website in this browser for the next time I comment Y"},"category":false,"taxonomy":{"active":false,"name":"category"}},"markup":{"custom_html":true,"wpp-start":"","wpp-end":"<\/ul>","title-start":"","title-end":"<\/h2>","post-html":"{thumb} {title} {stats}<\/span>{excerpt}<\/p><\/li>"},"theme":{"name":""}} You have successfully joined our subscriber list © 2025 DailyNewsHungary | All rights reserved