The first thing that came to me from Auschwitz when I got off the cattle car with my mother was a sickening stench.
He was five years old.
“What does it smell like?” I asked my mother, and she pointed to the smoke coming from the chimneys: “It’s the stench of burning bodies.”
Did his mother always tell him the truth?
Yes. They told us to undress and I asked him why: “If we are not healthy we will end up in the chimneys”. He always explained everything to me and always told me the truth.
…
When they killed my grandmother he told me: “They shot the grandmother and killed her”. When a woman was murdered in front of our eyes, he forced me to see it: “See what happens if you don’t do what I tell you? They shoot you Learn it.”
And how did you live those truths?
My mother wanted me to live in reality and take care of myself, that saved me. Knowing the truth is better than constantly wondering what’s going on and not understanding anything. I understood the difference between life and death.
What memories do you have of that childhood?
A terrible hunger that no one who hasn’t been through it can understand, and many dead everywhere, because in our barracks, both when I was with my mother and when they took me to the children’s barracks, if you got sick they killed you; at that age I already knew how to hide if I got sick.
How did he live that horror?
I didn’t know anything else, I was one year old when the war broke out, I thought that all Jewish children lived like me, and I saw how people were gassed and killed every day, it was normal.
Were the other children as aware?
I had a friend there who knew nothing about reality and suffered from terrible nightmares. He survived and committed suicide at the age of 75. When we left there he didn’t remember anything and he went crazy.
Is there anything keeping you awake today?
Yes, books like mine and obviously what is happening in Israel, all the dead on both sides, all the hatred in the world and anti-Semitism, again, no!
What was the world of children like there?
Children playing with death, we made cruel jokes: “I saw your parents”. ” It’s not true”. “Come to the window”, and we pointed to the smoke. Children learn everything. One day they gave us a good breakfast and we already knew what it meant.
The gas chamber?
Yes, but no one cared because there was food that was the most important thing. Days before, they took the children from the shack next door. I believed that all Jewish children had to go to the gas chamber, I didn’t even know there was a world outside of Auschwitz.
Do you remember the day?
Yes, the women shouted at us where we were going and I told them: “To the gas chamber”, and they all started screaming and crying. “What’s wrong with you? – I told them – all Jewish children must go to the crematorium”.
Childish logic?
Yes, after a while they asked us to get dressed, we never knew what happened. Years later, when I was already in the United States at the age of 12, I met children who told me that at the age of six they took piano lessons and they didn’t like it. While some are murdered, others go to the cinema; I still have a hard time understanding it.
It’s just not understandable.
I am a Zionist, but the world must mourn what is happening on both sides.
You never cried?
No, I am still unable to cry, even when my husband died my tears did not come. In Auschwitz the most important thing was to last one more day and I was lucky. They used to kill the children when they arrived, but we arrived on Sunday and they didn’t put the fifth gas chamber on, and something happened that day that they were going to gas us. You didn’t work there, you went there to die.
I understand.
In the streets there were carts full of half-dead people to take to the crematorium.
How did you escape Auschwitz?
You have to give luck a hand. My mother escaped and hid me among the corpses when the Nazis were already fleeing and trying to erase all traces of their crimes.
What have you understood as a therapist?
That we all have our traumas and that it should not be compared.
Has he overcome his trauma?
He always accompanies me, but I felt the obligation to speak for those children; in my village there were hundreds and only five survived. I don’t feel guilt but I do feel responsibility, I want us to be aware of what hate can do if it is not stopped.
Wasn’t he angry with God?
At the last religious celebration I told him: “Tell me your sins and I’ll tell you mine.” I have a complex relationship with God, sometimes I get very angry with him.
