Judith Steinberg

In Paks…all children learned some kind of instrument and playing sports. This was very broad-minded, sort of orthodox in a proper sense. You had to be. You lived in a small town with all our Christian neighbours. We were like sister, brothers, we just accepted each other. It was very peaceful. I can only remember nice things for upbringing and non-Jewish neighbours.

no pre war anti semitism in Paks

I met a Hungarian-Jewish writer there. She was quite famous, lovely, she was just deported. And she told us that, you know you got only one choice: Do as you are told. Fight for survival. Or you touch those wiring and it will kill you… The fence with electric wire… if you want to die you go onto this wire, but you officially are not allowed to do it. Unofficially you can go and die, if the guard is not around. Because somebody was trying to do this, the Germans shut it because they had this tower where the guard, German guard SS was watching us, not one, few of them. So, gradually, we just adjusted, this is the way of life. She said, ‘If you have guts, don’t kill yourself, you never know, we might survive. Because what they are doing here, it’s beyond comprehension.’ I said, ‘It’s, nobody ever will understand or. Somebody has to be very lucky to survive it.’ That was a very sweet voice, and very clever woman. She happened to be on the same bunk in the barrack like I was. She gave us, we gave each other some encouragement: ‘We are going to see our family!’

Choices in Auschwitz

If you found kindness after many terrible things happened to you there, you can make your life better if you want to. And you accept your fellow men on an equal level and respect everyone. And I think life is precious, and we should respect one another, and we can, if we want to live in peace.

life is precious

I got back to my home town to see what was going on. My cousin had gone to the gas chambers, her husband survived in one of the camps. I asked him to take me back to my home. I wouldn’t go there alone because they were soldiers & I would not face them alone. I want to find some photographs, some memories or something. He said to the Russian army: let us come in to to have a look at home. She wants to take some souvenirs, some pictures or something. So I went in. Oh the sight of it, they were cooking there & used my father’s Hebrew books for fire & there was some left. My cousin said ‘Be nice to this girl, she is Jewish, the camps, you know', he tried to explain it to the Russians. But they were ruthless with young girls. I couldn’t find anything… my school report half of it in the back yard. They used your valuable things for their fire & lot of things the German took. What shocked me: there were 2 Russian women soldiers, it was summer & they had nothing on, on top. Washing themselves, you know. So embarrassing. I told my cousin, ‘Just get that few books!’ even though they didn’t want us to take my father’s seforim because they need it for fire, to make cooking, they cooked in our house. I said this is a holy book. Holy book? They don’t believe in this sort of thing.

Returning home after concentration camp

They take you to a part outside [in Auschwitz], they called it ‘Canada’ for some reason, where the valuables were all sorted. Somebody told me: ‘You got the easy job!' She said ‘I had to take out the gold teeth from the dead!' There was lots of gold teeth from the people who died. ‘We had to look in their mouths & take out the gold.’ Oh my God!’ I said. You just don’t complain, do your job. Sort out the shoes. Sort out this. The glasses go in there, sort them. So we did that. We just carried on.

Sorting out the possessions of the dead at Auschwitz

Few days before the liberation we couldn’t see the guards. It’s only it’s only two guards left. So they, they ran away because they came quicker than expected. And the French prisoners who knew something about these mechanical things, dismantled the mines. The mines were there to blow us up. And it was pure luck because things came quicker, the Russians, than they expected because they had no time to do it. So obviously when the real day arrived, when the Russians put their foot up to the camp, and that really something I’ll never forget. First of all, we were able to come together properly with the French prisoners and hugging and celebrating, we even nearly collapsing on the floor, no energy but we are free, free. And the interesting thing was, this Russian army, there was a Russian Jewish officer. He knew a bit of Yiddish, you know, because the parents, the new Russian generation did not speak Yiddish but he was an older man and, you know, it’s going back now 60 years and the parents couldn’t speak Russian properly, or whatever. These people spoke Yiddish and he knew. And he was telling us a story, you see they were, had to come through Poland, great part of Poland, and their was one of the Polish town, it was famous of Jewish population. And when he come to this Polish place, where the Polish and Russian language is a bit similar, and he asked the Polish resident, ‘Can I see some Jewish people? I am Jewish and I want to see some sister, brothers in Poland! There were a lot of people here, living here.’ And this Polish man... said to him, ‘Come with me, I will show you where your brother, sisters are!’, and he took him to out of the town and he said, ‘Can you see that hillside? There is about over ten thousand buried there! That’s where your sister brothers. And which are not there, they took them away and they never came back.’ And he just burst into tears after that. ‘I am going to find these Germans, what they’ve done to our people. That is despicable and I will not have it.’ And he was telling us this story and crying. And they were themselves very short of food and medicine but whatever he could get from the soldiers to share it with us, he would. And then we got together with these French political prisoners and we went to town, to Liebau which is a few kilometres. And the Russian had this jeep, you know, they took us, I was one of the, I spoke German, a couple of others, so we went to town. We got to find food and clothes, we want things. You know, it was a very funny thing; we got into this Liebau with the French prisoners. I had to speak ’cause I speak German, and some other girls spoke German and we went and we said who we were and we were out there, we were working in this factory. And we are from Hungary, from France, from here from there. And, and they didn’t now anything about this factory, and there was a German woman when I told her the story we went to this terrible place in Auschwitz, and they kill people, they, they were stunned and she was crying. I said, what had they done to us? ‘My husband is missing. One of my sons is crippled, his legs been shot off. And one of his brother, and the brother died and she is all alone and she didn’t know there was such a horrible thing going on with the Jewish people. And she said, ‘There were some Jewish people in Liebau and I didn’t know that. But I didn’t know where they were gone? Nobody knew what happened to the Jewish people? Now you come and tell us that in our doorstep such a horrible thing is happening.’ They couldn’t believe it. And she hardly had anything but whatever she had, she had to give it to us. You know, and, and she was really, you could see, she was in tears and sorry because they wake up, not only Hitler, dragged in their men and lost their lives and they suffering and the glory gone and all the promises what they are going to have, they just got poverty and broken families and Jewish people had been destroyed like this. They couldn’t believe it. The facts came out, the, the true events came to light. And and it was a joke what they did. They put up this big yellow star, this French prisoners, to say we are Jewish. We are Jews, they, they, we are proud of our star, they made us feel disgraceful but we are proud of our star and they put up these yellow stars and went to town. And when we got back to the camp because we were no time to, there was there was no time to just moving because we were so broken and tired and hungry. And as we got a bit more food and medicine, so slowly, slowly we got better. We stayed in this place, not too long, possibly two three weeks and one day, the four of us went to walk in the in the nearby forest, lovely walks there, and there was hiding the man who run the factory, like the manager, Mr Lasky was his name. And they called the factory Lasky. And he had one artificial leg, couldn’t go very far and the French prisoner said, ‘I kill him, I kill him!’ And I said, ‘You are not one of them, you don’t kill him! Let him be there, perhaps he’ll have a taste of starvation.’ And he was begging for us. He says, ‘What he says? He says, he beg we give him some food. I said, ‘We don’t have any. We are hungry ourselves. I told him because he couldn’t speak French and the French prisoner couldn’t speak German. And I won’t let him kill him. He wanted to kill him. I said, ‘No!’ His name was Jean, and he was a dentist by profession. He couldn’t speak, very few German words he knew but couldn’t sort of make a sentence sort of conversation. He knew what the Germans used the words, ‘Work harder!’ or this or the name of the food, but he didn’t speak German properly.

Liberation of Liebau