Alžběta Zdražilová

“Our only way of killing time was delousing ourselves. One shirt day and night, full of lice, in your shirt, in your head, everywhere. And this was happening all the time, everybody was delousing themselves, if they wanted to look a bit better. For what I have seen outside of the door of our block… a woman lying there, lice swarming all over her, and those lice were gnawing at her body! She was already dead, but her body was all eaten by lice, you would not believe something like that would be possible! And therefore we kept delousing ourselves all the time, and this was also where the camp-fever I had came from.”

“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.”