Read Online DEKEL, LUCETTE MATALON LAGNADO SHEILA COHN by CHILDREN OF THE FLAMES - Free Book Online
Authors: CHILDREN OF THE FLAMES
Ads: Link
of the lines marching to the gas chambers.
MAGDA SPIEGEL: Mengele pointed to Zyl and asked me,
“Are you the twin of this man?”
I said yes.
Then, Mengele noticed my child. “Who is this little boy?” he asked.
“He is my son,” I answered.
“Please leave the boy with your mother,” Mengele told me very nicely.
With the aid of Verschuer, Mengele obtained a position as an SS doctor at Auschwitz. Verschuer even helped Mengele win grants to undertake two research projects at the camp. He was to begin in April 1943.
What a splendid laboratory Auschwitz promised to be! Unique in the world of science, it offered unlimited possibilities for work… for medicine … for experiments. At last, the chance to do the kind of research Mengele had dreamed of. At Auschwitz, there would be nothing to stand in his way.
HEDVAH AND LEAN STERN: Mother was determined to hold on to us. She hid us under her skirt.
But at the last minute, she told us,
“Go to Dr. Mengele. He is asking for twins. Go and we will meet by the gate.
“Wait for me, children, wait for me,” she cried. “We will meet again by the gate.”
two.
AUSCHWITZ MOVIE.
MAGDA SPIEGEL.
A few hours after arriving at Auschwitz, I asked some people,
“Where is my little boy?” My son was only seven years old. I was very worried about him.
“You see these chimneys?” they replied, pointing toward the crematoriums. “Your child is there. Your parents are there. Your entire family is there. And one day, you will also be there.”
This was told to me the same day I had come-the same day.
Dr. Mengele was the only person who was always standing there when the trains came. He was constantly making selections.
The sky was red-red- the whole sky was red!
It was the last year of the transports, and the Germans were putting masses-masses and masses-of people into the crematorium.
It was like watching a movie.
Even early in the morning, the sky over Auschwitz looked opaque and foreboding, as if it were covered by a vast blood-soaked sheet. An oppressive smell permeated the air-soot and burning flesh, fumes from the crematoriums, and smoke from the arriving trains.
After the trains had pulled in and the cattle-car doors were opened, exhausted cargoes of Jews tumbled out. As SS men shouted,
“Faster!
Faster!,” hordes of people were pushed tllis way and that by the uniformed guards. Women cried as their husbands were taken away from them. Old men clutched their wives in a final embrace. Small children huddled closer to their parents, sad and subdued. And the Nazis stomped around, cracking their whips on anyone who stood in their way, and even on those who were merely standing.
VERA BLAU: When I arrived at Auschwitz in April 1944, my first impression was that it was very crowded.
My twin sister, Rachel, and I were eleven years old. We had come with our mother and little brother, and both of us started crying when we were separated from them. Then a woman from Czechoslovakia came over to us. She had been in Auschwitz a long time.
“Do not cry, children, do not cry,” she said to us. “You see, they are burning your parents.”
I did not believe her. I did not want to believe her.
What is universally known today as Auschwitz is in fact something of a misnomer. Auschwitz was the slave-labor camp in which murder was an everyday phenomenon, but, in fact, the Polish place name became the umbrella word for several camps. Although the slaves largely labored at Auschwitz, it was at Birkenau, a couple of miles away, that many of them were executed. And although the world lexicon came to equate Auschwitz with the gas chambers, it was Birkenau that was the actual extermination center. It was Birkenau where the ovens never stopped flaming and where SS physicians regularly dispatched inmates to the crematorium; and it was Birkenau where Dr. Mengele worked in his laboratory, and where his beloved twins were bar racked and where so many of them inevitably
MAGDA SPIEGEL: Mengele pointed to Zyl and asked me,
“Are you the twin of this man?”
I said yes.
Then, Mengele noticed my child. “Who is this little boy?” he asked.
“He is my son,” I answered.
“Please leave the boy with your mother,” Mengele told me very nicely.
With the aid of Verschuer, Mengele obtained a position as an SS doctor at Auschwitz. Verschuer even helped Mengele win grants to undertake two research projects at the camp. He was to begin in April 1943.
What a splendid laboratory Auschwitz promised to be! Unique in the world of science, it offered unlimited possibilities for work… for medicine … for experiments. At last, the chance to do the kind of research Mengele had dreamed of. At Auschwitz, there would be nothing to stand in his way.
HEDVAH AND LEAN STERN: Mother was determined to hold on to us. She hid us under her skirt.
But at the last minute, she told us,
“Go to Dr. Mengele. He is asking for twins. Go and we will meet by the gate.
“Wait for me, children, wait for me,” she cried. “We will meet again by the gate.”
two.
AUSCHWITZ MOVIE.
MAGDA SPIEGEL.
A few hours after arriving at Auschwitz, I asked some people,
“Where is my little boy?” My son was only seven years old. I was very worried about him.
“You see these chimneys?” they replied, pointing toward the crematoriums. “Your child is there. Your parents are there. Your entire family is there. And one day, you will also be there.”
This was told to me the same day I had come-the same day.
Dr. Mengele was the only person who was always standing there when the trains came. He was constantly making selections.
The sky was red-red- the whole sky was red!
It was the last year of the transports, and the Germans were putting masses-masses and masses-of people into the crematorium.
It was like watching a movie.
Even early in the morning, the sky over Auschwitz looked opaque and foreboding, as if it were covered by a vast blood-soaked sheet. An oppressive smell permeated the air-soot and burning flesh, fumes from the crematoriums, and smoke from the arriving trains.
After the trains had pulled in and the cattle-car doors were opened, exhausted cargoes of Jews tumbled out. As SS men shouted,
“Faster!
Faster!,” hordes of people were pushed tllis way and that by the uniformed guards. Women cried as their husbands were taken away from them. Old men clutched their wives in a final embrace. Small children huddled closer to their parents, sad and subdued. And the Nazis stomped around, cracking their whips on anyone who stood in their way, and even on those who were merely standing.
VERA BLAU: When I arrived at Auschwitz in April 1944, my first impression was that it was very crowded.
My twin sister, Rachel, and I were eleven years old. We had come with our mother and little brother, and both of us started crying when we were separated from them. Then a woman from Czechoslovakia came over to us. She had been in Auschwitz a long time.
“Do not cry, children, do not cry,” she said to us. “You see, they are burning your parents.”
I did not believe her. I did not want to believe her.
What is universally known today as Auschwitz is in fact something of a misnomer. Auschwitz was the slave-labor camp in which murder was an everyday phenomenon, but, in fact, the Polish place name became the umbrella word for several camps. Although the slaves largely labored at Auschwitz, it was at Birkenau, a couple of miles away, that many of them were executed. And although the world lexicon came to equate Auschwitz with the gas chambers, it was Birkenau that was the actual extermination center. It was Birkenau where the ovens never stopped flaming and where SS physicians regularly dispatched inmates to the crematorium; and it was Birkenau where Dr. Mengele worked in his laboratory, and where his beloved twins were bar racked and where so many of them inevitably
Similar Books
