Life for us Jews in Hungary in general and for my family in particular wasn't exactly a bed of roses even before the Nazi occupation. Hungary was a military and ideological ally of Nazi Germany. After the Anschluss of Austria in March, 1938, vicious, discriminatory laws against the Jews were enacted and little by little we were stripped most of our civil and human rights.

For my sister Klári and brother Leslie the most devastating was the edict called "Numerus Nullus" whereby Jewish students were not permitted into universities. My father had a metal and scrap-iron yard. With the start of the war in September 1939, the authorities revoked my father's business license because iron & metal became war material and Jews were no longer permitted to handle it. Nobody, in authority, cared how a family of nine could exist without any income.

Life for us Jews became more and more difficult with all the anti-Jewish laws and regulations but our lives were not yet threatened and somehow we were surviving - against all odds.

On that fateful day, on March 19, 1944, I remember standing at the window with some members of my family, behind the curtains and watched in horror as the German Nazi troops were roaring in on motorcycles.  A nauseating fear gripped my young stomach at that moment and have not left me for decades to come.

 Passover of 1944  was the last Jewish Holiday my parents and four of my seven siblings spent together.  

My three brothers were already gone - conscripted for forced labour, attached to the Hungarian army as virtual slaves. (Munkaszolgálatos.)  No uniform no gun.  These forced "labourers" became the cannon fodder for the Hungarian army.  The danger of their work was of such magnitude that of the 50,000 Jewish men who were sent to the Ukrainian front only 7,000 returned.

 I fondly recall the times when mouth watering aromas would permeate the air from the constant making of preserves of varied vegetables and fruits. The making of smoked meats and other goodies - to provide for the winter in a world where ready made, store-bought food was non-existent or would have been shunned by proud home makers like my mother was. My family, my friends, my school, my home -- were the eminently safe and happy world of my young childhood.

When the ghettos were established, all members of our extended family moved in with us and into my two uncles' homes. There seemed to be people everywhere. We were terribly overcrowded, especially at night when we all had to lie down somewhere to sleep. Wall to wall people.  Of course, the toilet facilities became totally inadequate.  As a community, our isolation from the rest of the population  in the city, was complete for they built a wall around the ghetto.  We were permitted to leave the ghetto for two hours every day to do grocery shopping.  However, this permit was for the late afternoon when most of the stores were empty of goods.

I remember we were all miserable.  The women tried to make meals with the meager supplies but it was never enough. Lack of adequate food and medical supply, lack of freedom, lack of privacy made life seem more and more hopeless every day.  However, little did we know how well off we were in comparison of what was to come later on.

We had some unexpected, clandestine help in the ghetto from some very kind people who were reluctant to identify themselves.  They brought us much needed food, especially for children,  in the darkness of the night.  I believe they were Jehovah's Witnesses.  They dared to follow their conscience and refused to be bullied into indifference or hatred.

One horrible day it happened. It really came to pass.. The dreaded deportation, in cattle cars. I still see many of our neighbours lining the streets watching and laughing (there was the odd tear here and there) as we were led through the city to the brick factory. People with whom our parents were friendly for thirty some odd years how could they turn adversaries in a mere couple of years, some in a few months?  It was difficult for my young mind to understand this and it is still incomprehensible.  As we learned after the war, many of these neighbours could hardly wait for our forced departure and looted our homes.

The "journey" in the cattle car took 4 days. How can one adequately describe the "inside" of the cattle car packed with 78 people? My father as a pious Jew, prayed  but judging from the expression on his face, I am sure he felt betrayed by his God. My mother cried, my 18 months old baby nephew, Péter, who was very sick, whined constantly for food we didn't have and all 78 of us wished for some water that no one supplied. The atmosphere in the cattle car, definitely foreshadowed something ominous to come. 

For at the end of the "journey" we arrived at the hellhole of the world, a death camp called:  Auschwitz- Birkenau, in Nazi occupied Poland.

The two men, prisoners themselves in striped clothing, whose job it was to get us all out of the cattle cars, kept shouting "los, los, heraus, schneller," were also telling the young women, who were with children, in a whisper: "give the children to the grandmothers" and kept repeating it. There was no time to explain  why, just this urging to heed their warning.  I didn't notice any woman, including my sister-in-law who was holding her infant son, handing them over to their own mothers. 

As we disembarked, we were instantly separated from the men, and that was the last time I saw my father. Children 14 and  under, regardless of their gender,  were ordered to go with their mothers. Then came the infamous selection, by the "thumbs".

High ranking SS officers using their thumbs only to indicate who goes where. To the left: women with children, pregnant women, older women (45 and up). To the right only the young women like my three sisters and myself.

In a split second I was torn from my mother without understanding what was happening or having a chance to say good bye.  We didn't know we had to say good bye.   At 15 1/2 this was pretty devastating and there is still a void in my life not having had that last hug and kiss.

However, I was lucky for I had my three older sisters with me, at least for a little while. 

Shortly after our arrival and the deadly "selection", in an ugly gray looking building the Nazis called "the sauna"  we were ordered to undress - totally - they stripped us of our clothing,  shaved of all our hair and all bodily hairs.  We felt humiliated and degraded by being forced to stand naked in front of all those SS men and women.  Then we were allowed to have two minutes of cold shower, driven outside wet as we were, and thrown a dress (really a piece of rag) to wear.  Fitted or not, we couldn't complain. 

After this ordeal, we were marched to the camp that became our "home" for a few months.  This was called, B/III or Mexico, the name the prisoners gave this most primitive of camps in Birkenau.  This camp did not have running water or proper toilet facilities.  The barracks had no bunk beds - we, hundreds of women in each barrack, slept on the wooden floors, tightly packed like sardines in a can.  If, one wanted to turn over the whole row had to turn.

I remember we, my sisters: Évi, Klári, Erzsébet (Böshke) and I, cried through that first night along with all the others.  I cannot recall crying again till after the war.  

Then the day I feared most, arrived! It happened!  The four of us sisters were, unfortunately, in two stages, separated.  First Klári (22) and Évi (18) were taken from Birkenau and till after the war I had no idea what happened to them. (Neither did they know what happened to me.)  Months later, I was selected and torn from my last remaining sister, Erzsébet,  during another selection.  As I learned much later, the selected group I was in,  was earmarked for gassing.  I was deathly ill that day, with high fever and diarrhea.  I did not comprehend what was happening around me.  But Erzsébet, knew.   I could see the sadness in her eyes the way she looked at me, for the last time but I didn't comprehend -  why.  

I learned after the war, that eventually, when the Nazis started to evacuate  Auschwitz-Birkenau,  she too was sent to Stutthof concentration camp.  There, she miraculously met up with Évi and Klári.  Now the three of them were together and I was all alone.   Reportedly, she told Évi and Klári that I had been gassed.

I surmised, many years after the war, that most likely, the entire  "selected"  group and I. we owe our  lives to a number of  courageous women and men.  The women, as members of the resistance in Auschwitz,  managed to smuggle out explosives from the factory, Union Werke, where they worked.   They  gave it to the men who worked at the gas chambers in the Sondercommando. The men, reportedly,  made a very primitive bomb in a sardine can with the explosive powder the women gave them and managed to blow up crematorium IV and the adjacent gas chamber.  Killing a number of German SS guards.   After this incident the gassing of prisoners stopped for a few days.  That was our luck.  I understand the gassing  resumed again and continued till mid November 1944.

My sister Erzsébet, of course, was unaware that instead of being gassed, our entire, selected group was directed to another camp for overnight and next day shipped to a concentration camp called Bergen-Belsen.  Here, while in the beginning, conditions were better then in Birkenau, very quickly the situation deteriorated and large scale starvation set in.  At this point, I reached the ripe old age of 16 and was all alone.

The Feig sisters, Sári and Edith, whom I knew personally from home, took pity on my solitude and at my request, I became their lagerschwester (camp sister). From then on, we looked after each other. Mainly Sári, who was about seven years older, looked after us. The three of us shared absolutely every scrap of food.  In a death camp it was very important to know that someone cared whether you wake up in the morning.  Without the help and care of  Sári and Edith I would not have survived, I am sure of that.

In January 1945, from Bergen Belsen, 500 of us, were taken to work in a Junkers airplane factory, in Aschersleben, somewhere near Leipzig, in Germany.  Twelve hours of slave labouring per day was very tough for our, by now, greatly weakened constitution.  But, in comparison with death camps, the accommodation seemed palatial.  It was January 1945 when we arrived and bitter cold even if one was properly clothed  -- which we weren't.  Blissfully, the barracks were heated with huge, round, hot water pipes running through the rooms. We each had single bunk beds, with thin straw "mattresses" and many bedbugs for sleep-mates.  The quality and the quantity of the food was also better, while still not enough.  We used to marvel at the bits and pieces of meet and potato swimming in the thin soup.

My foreman, in the factory was a French war prisoner called, Argo. 80% of all those who worked there were prisoners of one kind or another. All from Nazi occupied, oppressed Europe. There were small contingents of Nazi collaborators too, who came as " freiwilling arbeiter" (volunteers) to help the Nazi war effort.   Some were from Belgium and some were, mainly women, from the Ukraine.  Argo enlightened me who is who. Who I should trust and who I should not. Every time he wanted to indicate to me that something hopeful is happening, very, very quietly he'd sing the Marseilles.  We had to be very careful.  We, the Jewish prisoners, were constantly watched by female SS overseers, (aufseherins) from the upper galleries.

We worked here till sometime in April 1945.   Unexpectedly, early, one  Saturday morning  the American Air Force came, the bombardments started and the factory was destroyed within hours - levelled with the ground.  Watching the bombs fall was a beautiful sight.  Obviously the war was coming, slowly, too slowly for us, to an end -- so we thought and hoped.

Once the factory was in ruins, we had no work.  All our SS guards have disappeared overnight. Then the order came to be transported to Buchenwald.   The  high ranking SS officer who was suppose to carry out the order, did not. Instead he ordered us to go on a "march" to nowhere. We had to pack up our meagre belongings, line up, get to the highway and march.  Just march ! march ! he ordered and "supplied" us with guards and he too disappeared.

I have no idea how long this march lasted. Maybe twelve days or  maybe less.  We had no calendar.  All I know is that we marched and starved, starved and marched for there was no supply of anything for us..  I have no idea how Sári, Edith and I managed to survive.  We lived and acted like animals.  Raiding garbage cans, begging, ate rotten vegetables dug from the fields.   I remember an overwhelming desire to eat and not move my body -- ever again.   Just eat and rest and get rid of the lice covering my clothes and body.  Those were my very modest wishes.  As the days wore on, my feet were bloodier and bloodier,  for all I had was wooden clogs held together by a piece of canvas and a piece of cord.

Those who couldn't keep up were left by the wayside to die.  Finally, this group of emaciated, dirty, utterly hopeless, bedraggled group of Jewish women were liberated, inadvertently, on May 5, 1945, by the American Army in a small town called: Düben.  I believe, we numbered less than 200 of the original 500.

We were not the only "marchers" on the roads in Nazi Germany.  Every day we saw "marchers" like ourselves, in striped clothing, dragging themselves on the other side of the road, going in opposite direction.  There was this unbelievable, no-rhyme-or-reason, marching  in Nazi Germany during the last few weeks before the end of the war and the Holocaust.

One day, however, while marching, we saw a group of soldiers, on the other side of the highway, marching and being brutally beaten, with huge horsewhips, by their numerous SS soldier-captors.  I am glad that in spite of our terrible condition and hopelessness,  we remained humane enough to be horrified by what we saw.  We stopped briefly to watch for these were different soldiers - they were all black men in various, tattered uniforms.  Some wore white turbans.  We were amazed - we never saw people like these before.

Today I know they were black soldiers from the colonies of the British commonwealth and some from the French colonies. They came to help their white "brethren" to fight the Nazis in Europe.  Far from their cities, towns and villages and families.   I am eternally thankful to all those soldiers, from all over the globe, who were willing to give their lives, if need be, to see this world freed from Nazism.

The joy of  liberation! We comprehended its significance only in terms of that moment's misery --  what it will do for our bodily needs.

To get rid of of our filthy lice-infested clothing.  To wash ourselves and our growing hair.  To feel clean towels against our bodies. To wear clean clothing - yet again - as we used to, it seemed, a hundred years ago. To attend to our bloodied, infected or swollen feet.  To sleep in a real bed with clean bed linen. To  eat and eat and eat, knowing  that tomorrow we can eat again.  To be free of fear!  All normal every day activities for most people but of which we were deprived far too long.

After we became "born-again" human beings, the anguish set in.  We started to think about the future. The question we all asked, I asked: "What now"?  "Do I still belong to anyone or, at 16, am I all alone on this earth?"  It was a heart-wrenching question we all wrestled with.  Where is the rest of my large family?  In search of them I decided to go back to Hungary and so did Sári and Edith.  We went back - home(?). There I found the youngest of my three brothers, László (Leslie).  He was still in very  week physical condition, but he was there, he was alive.  I went back to school trying to block out all that I experienced in the camps, that no one wanted to believe at that point.

The three youngest of my, once large, family survived. After a two year stay in the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp, near Hanover, in Germany, we managed to emigrate to Canada in 1948 , as needle trade workers.  We lived up to our contractual agreement.  I went back to school and retrained myself for office work.  I became a loyal and useful Canadian citizen.  My adjustment and acculturation to Canada is another story for another day.

Eventually, I married a wonderful, Canadian born man, Sidney Jessel Cohen, and we have a daughter, Michelle Elizabeth and a son, Jonathan Alexander.   My sister and brother never married and unfortunately, they  both died, years ago, of  cancer.  I no longer have anyone to share my childhood memories with.  A special kind of void that nothing can fill any more.

The memory of the death camps and being victims of the Nazi Holocaust never fades.  However, through the decades, I accomplished a lot. Built a new life with new skills, learned to love and be loved again and found even happiness.