Alžběta Zdražilová

“When I got a bit better, I saw my mom in that window. I would always cry: ´Mom, Mom!´ and run to the window. Later they told me that they had to tie me up, so that I would not fall down from that window, for it was quite high. When I recovered….” Interviewer: “How long did it take for you to recover from camp-fever?” A.Z:. “Well, till May, so it took almost six weeks. A long, really long time, and Magda stayed there because of me, because some transports were already leaving. Transports bound for Czechoslovakia, Poland, the transport trains, wagons with people who were found in concentration camps, they found many people. And she waited till I got better, that’s obvious, and I eventually somehow recovered: my weight was 32 kg, and I was sixteen. And bald, without hair, but alive! They treated my legs also, I had them in terrible shape, because of the frost and ice, and the wounds on my legs were now partly healed. Then we boarded a transport, so we got on a train in Bydžov, I still have our documents from there, my sister had obtained the papers for us to prove our identity and origin, and my sister met this Markovič (her future husband) at one of the railway stations, I don’t remember where exactly, for I was still very exhausted and sleepy. So they met and he told her he was going to Krnov, so we went to Krnov as well. But we arrived there later, because we had made a stop in Humenné before, but we did not find any family members there. We went to Hungary. I will tell you one great story about Hungary, where I had had two aunts, Honiko and Elenka, my mother’s sisters, none of them survived. They were no longer alive, but their children, the son, who was a doctor, was now studying, and another studied to become a solicitor, and the two sons allegedly escaped to America. So hopefully they saved themselves, but I don’t know whether they are alive, the Red Cross searched for them, but did not find them, so I don’t know, but people there, when we asked, told us that they had survived. And when I recovered and we settled in Krnov, we kept going to Budapest to look for our family, we went to different places trying to locate at least some relatives, we did not know where our father was, we had no idea where our dad was. My mother was in Auschwitz, but we did not know anything about our father. So we were in Hungary, in the town of Gorojte, where aunt Etelka had lived, and the house had been bombed. There was a heap of ruins, just ruins where the house had been. And I and my sister still wore this clothing with stripes, because nobody gave us any other clothes, and with scarves on our heads, because we did not have hair, or at least I did not. So we walked around this ruin and cried, we both cried and then we saw a Russian soldier walking by. And because in that village, in Prinica or what it was called, where I was in a hospital and my sister, and my sister lived together with others in a house, a barrack, and the Russians had been coming in and raping them, one by one, they raped all the girls, including my sister. They were all raped, and then they reported it, so the commander put a guard at the door, but the guard did the same thing, she could resist if there was just one soldier, but when three or four stormed in, you were not able to do anything, it was terrible. And so we were very afraid of them. And now, when we spotted a Russian, a soldier in a Russian uniform, Magda said: ´Come, we have to run, there is nobody else around, don’t let anything happen.´ So we started to run away, and the soldier called out: ´Hey, hey, wait!´ And he shouted in Hungarian, which was… A Russian uniform and speaks Hungarian. So my sister said: ´Wait, we wait and see, were are two against one.´ And now imagine that, this soldier who was calling us was my brother Vojta, who was looking for our aunt at the same address where we went. And he was walking through Budapest and trying to find out something about his aunts. And suddenly he saw two girls, he did not recognize me, but Magda was older and although she was terribly thin, he recognized our mother’s features in her face, and he said: ´Jesus, that must be Magda!´ Oh my, what a meeting that was, I cannot even describe that! All three of us cried and cried till the evening.”

“And then when they finally transported us from that Stutthof, we were actually happy that we were leaving. We did not know where they were taking us, but happy that we were leaving. And so we got to Auschwitz.” Interviewer: “Do you remember the arrival? The day when you arrived there?” A.Z.: “Of course. I remember exactly the journey in that wagon, we rode for three or four days, because they train would often make stops somewhere, we could not go to a toilet, when you needed, you had to go to the corner in the wagon. And the wagon was so full that nobody even fell down, because we were leaning on the person next to us, we were lined like sardines in a tin. And then the train finally stopped and the door opened, and the screaming started: ´Raus, raus!´ and rushing us…. they had clubs and they were shouting at us to get off the train. Half of us remained lying there in the wagon, they were dead, and the three of us, Magda, mommy and I jumped out, we were still able to walk, and they made us run along the railway tracks. We had to leave all our belongings, were not allowed to take anything, and they ran us to that gate where SSmen stood. They said Mengele was there, but I, being a child then, did not notice. Later, when I saw his photographs, I would perhaps recognize him, but at that moment I did not pay much attention to him. I was terribly afraid, we fiercely held hands with my mommy and my sister and we did not know what would follow, but we were seized by fear. And when we came to them, with a stick he showed my mother there, and the two of us on the other side. We did not know what would happen, but I remember, as we walked on the other side, we looked back and my mom’s head was still turned in our direction, and her eyes – after sixty seventy years I still see her eyes vividly in front of me, her eyes were big, mommy’s eyes were big, brown, and frightened, staring at us….This remained in my memory. Then they made us run again, ´los! los!´ to some enclosure, like the one you use for cattle on a pasture. Behind a fence, where else with us… And we remained in that enclosure till they emptied the wagons. There were many of them, it was a long train, with families, not only Jewish, but there were also political prisoners and others. Then they rushed us into one large room, cut our hair, strip naked, cut our hair, I had had long hair, up to my waist. They cut everybody’s hair, took everything, if you had a ring on your finger, they took everything, and again made us run toward a gate. It was a wooden gate, but in reality it was only a corridor, and at that moment we knew it was bad, for we saw the chimney there. We did not know what it was for, but we began to fear. And we stood by that gate all the night, all the day till the evening….Stood there naked, the fact is it was in July, July of 1944.”

“But then we learnt about it, those who had been in Auschwitz for a longer time, those who were carrying and burying the dead and who were bringing us our food…sometime some of them would mention it. They told us what had happened: that the International Red Cross made an inspection visit of the camp, investigating the suspicion that they were killing people there and they were claiming this was not true, that no such thing was happening, so the Red Cross went to Auschwitz to see what is being done to people there, and in that moment, an immediate ban was put on the cremations and everything. So that was why we stayed there, and we could not go there, because of the inspection. But my mother… they did have time to cremate her. And the other part of the people, those who remained, were also… the very same day. We could smell that all the night, the smell of skin and hair. We did not know what it was, but those who had been there longer and knew, then told us.”

But toward the end there were perhaps 200 of us, I don’t know exactly, counting by the line which was getting shorter and shorter. And one night, we could hear shooting as the Russians were already approaching, that night we were all exhausted, I was running high fever and the girls did not know what to do with me, so my sister and Růženka, a friend of mine with whom I kept close all that time, decided to do something. So they left me there and went away, and I don’t know how they managed it, but they pulled one desk from the fence and thus made a hole through which we could squeeze. It had to be kept secret, in a less visible part of the fence, we pretended to be sitting nearby. And they came for me, held me under my arms and let’s go…So we squeezed through that opening, it was around midnight, pitch dark, only the moon was shining brightly, and it was freezing. So the two girls kept dragging me, and we walked and walked, and my feet did not even touch the ground, they half carried me. And luckily, we came to a place. There was a hayloft, it was locked, but they already knew how to displace one bar, so we climbed in and covered ourselves with hay. We fell asleep immediately. Early in the morning, this was strange, because I remember that the girls were scared because somebody began opening the door, there was a latch with a padlock. And somebody was opening the door. We tried to hide in the hay… And a man, probably the owner of this hayloft, came in to take some hay and he saw us immediately, it’s interesting that he spotted us right away. He came to us, looked at us, and left. We knew this was the end, because meanwhile, in the morning there were not only the three of us in that hayloft. Nearly half of the girls had crawled through that hole. And in the morning they began the search, let dogs loose and were looking for us everywhere. And were trying to round us up, because we had run away. And we said…well, not me, I did not care anymore, I had camp-fever. And they decided that it was too bad, that we could not do anything at all, and if they ran away they would leave me there. But the man came back alone about half an hour later and I have never eaten anything so good in my whole life: he brought …white coffee in a big jug and bread. When I remember it today, I still feel sick. Because I have never eaten anything better. So nothing happened, without a word he placed there that big jug and the bag with bread, loaded the hay and left. The girls jumped upon it, and we drank, we drank that delicious white coffee. I did not eat the bread, but they did, we ate it all, and then waited for it to get over, for the SSmen were still searching the area and trying to get us. Then, around noon, it all became silent. I was sleeping, I was in feverish agony, and the girls were still looking out through the cracks between the wood to see what was going on. And suddenly one of them exclaimed: ´Soldiers are coming!´”