“I can still hear the worst moment of all in my ears. In December, we arrived to Auschwitz; and before us the so-called September transport. It is generally known that all people from this transport were gassed during the night from 8 to 9 March. It took the whole night and up until today – I assume I have strong acoustic perception – I can hear it. It was such a terrible night: commands, shouting, dogs barking, people crying, car engines... All of that together and it took the whole night. In the morning, we learned all of them went up the chimney. To this day, I hear and feel the car sounds, shouting of the SS-officers and all the horror, which lasted the whole night. There were close to 4 000 people. This is how many they managed to exterminate.”
“Our survival time was set for six months. As we arrived in December, we expected to be gassed in June or July. Then, a miracle happened. I am not sharing the information anyone can read, now. Some instant order came in to spare labor force to do debris clearing in Germany. It was in 1944. The Germans were no longer at their peak. Selections began taking place with Dr. Mengele pointing left or right; that is well known. All three of us passed the selection and survived. We survived Auschwitz. When they herded us in a train, we were still not convinced that we were actually going for work. Only when the train passed a certain point, we came to believe we’d not end up in those chimneys.”
“Then came February. The air raids became all the more intense; the front line was nearing. At times, we would learn that somewhere in the East, the war was over. An order came in to liquidate the smaller camps and to merge the groups of prisoners. We were about to go to the biggest hell of all – Bergen-Belsen. There were no people there anymore, just skeletons and corpses. No more plank beds, nothing. We’d just sit and wait. The camp wasn’t supplied because the war was practically over and the Germans were fleeing. Then on 15 April something had arrived and the loudspeaker said in Polish – because the prisoners were mostly Poles: ‘Uwaga, uwaga – attention, attention,’ and then they announced the war was over. A great number of people who had survived all the horror and fury up until then, died soon after.”
“I have no idea about the timing. I know that the train had arrived, the door opened, and then shouting, dogs, shouting and more shouting. Raus, raus! It was like in a mental hospital. Two barrels for urinating, a couple dead bodies around, children crying. It was crazy. I don’t know what came up then. There were commands, we walked, I don’t even know how. There were the Polish women who began tattooing us. Ever since, we hadn’t had a name but became a number. Mine is 70 886.”
"Bergen-Belsen was the final station. As the battlefront was coming closer, there were no more supplies being shipped into the camp and thus a huge percentage of people died just shortly before the end of the war or immediately after it. There was no more place to lie down. You could barely find a place to sit among the corpses. It was the end of the world. It was a miracle that some people managed to survive it. We were liberated by the British army on April 15, 1945. They had no idea that the camp was so huge."
"I know that there was a faint sound of the radio coming from a distance and someone said 'well, the war is over in Prague'. But we didn't care at all. When you have a fever, you're not even able to think clearly. All of this information only came to us afterwards. It's really incredible that the end of that terrible war seemed like a voice from beyond the grave to us."
"The transport from Hradec - it will be seventy years now [2012 – note by the ed.] – was in December and the year before that was a time of anticipation. We were waiting for the day the call-up papers will arrive. We were all vaccinated and the families were making provisions for the journey. They were stockpiling roux and lard. I remember that we had a beautiful, hand-knotted carpet, and that we exchanged it for a goose. Because the majority thought that after all it would be good to have some food supplies additions and that the food will last for a while."
"Exactly after a year in Theresienstadt, in December 1943, [we went] to Auschwitz, where we lived from December to July. Maybe you've heard about the March, or the September transport. We've witnessed it since we were together in the family camp and we knew that our period, as was the case of the September transport, in turn, was fixed at six months, which should have been in June or July. To this day, I will never understand why so very few people actually jumped into the electric fences in order to end that terrible misery. The desire to live is incredibly strong, even if there was merely a tiny drop of hope that it may develop differently. People died, but rather from exhaustion and disease, but only a very small percentage of the people actually killed themselves by touching the fence."
They reported the end of the war on the radio but we didn’t care at all
Kamila Sieglová, roz. Frischmannová
photo: Dobový archiv pamětnice, současné foto A. Jelínková
photo: Dobový archiv pamětnice, současné foto A. Jelínková
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Mrs. Kamila Sieglová was born in July 1925 in Hradec Králové in the family of Anna and Rudolf Frischmann, being the first of two daughters. The Jewish family was fully assimilated, they spoke Czech and the daughters attended Czech schools. Her father, who was running a mill together with his brother, suddenly died of a stroke in January 1942. Like other Jewish families in the Protectorate, the Frischmann family was adversely affected by the series of prohibitions and restrictions, like expulsion from school, forced migration, etc. The mother of Kamila Sieglová and her two daughters were summoned for the transport to the Theresienstadt ghetto in December 1942. A year later, they were transferred in cattle cars to Auschwitz - they were sent to the family camp in Birkenau with the second transport. In June 1944 – after six months – they left the hell of Auschwitz and together ended up in a camp in Hamburg. In Hamburg, their occupation was mainly to clear away the rubble after the air raids. Her sister Ruth was severely injured in Hamburg during one of the raids. In early March 1945, they were transferred for a last time, this time to Bergen-Belsen, from where they were liberated on April 15, 1945. However, her sister Ruth succumbed to her injuries in May 1945. Kamila Sieglová and her mother returned to Hradec Králové after the war. Kamila graduated from the Faculty of Education and worked as a teacher. Mrs. Kamila Sieglová is a widow and she presently still lives in Hradec Králové.
