Holocaust survivor in Dudley tells her story.

Express & Star

Dudley College hosted their annual Holocaust address, with a survivor there to talk to students and public about her journey in life.

Transcript

00:00my father could do, because it had become the law.

00:05And at the end of the first month after the Auschwitz,

00:12a Nazi family came to our home and said,

00:17you have a week to get out.

00:21This is our home now.

00:24And there was nothing my parents could do

00:27because it had become the law.

00:31So from then on, we were homeless,

00:34and my dad didn't have a job, I had to go to school.

00:38And we kind of camped out wherever we could.

00:42Anybody who had a room to spare for a week,

00:45or a weekend sometimes, a month,

00:49we would just wait from place to place.

00:52And there were other laws.

00:55Jews were no longer allowed to shop in certain shops,

01:00and only allowed to shop in other shops

01:03from certain times of day.

01:06Jews were not allowed to go to any public places.

01:09We weren't allowed to go to a cinema,

01:11or a theater, or a concert.

01:15Jews were not allowed to go swimming.

01:16Jews were not allowed to go ice skating.

01:19Jews were not allowed to go to the public park.

01:22We and I were no longer allowed to play in the park,

01:25and we were no longer allowed to go ice skating or swim.

01:30Life became scary.

01:34Because we never knew what was going to happen next.

01:39And one of the things that was happening next

01:43was that we had to register.

01:45Wherever we were staying, we had to register

01:49with the local Nazi police.

01:53And that was because the thugs,

01:55the Nazi thugs of the party, of the Nazi party,

02:00the SA they were called, the brown shirts,

02:06they were ordered every night to go to places

02:10where Jews had registered they were staying,

02:13and they would take the men, sometimes the women,

02:16but mainly the men, out of their beds

02:20in the middle of the night,

02:21and they would take them down into the street

02:23and make them scrub the pavements

02:27and clean the public lavatories,

02:31sometimes with a toothbrush.

02:36Now, you could not get more humiliated,

02:40and he took that shirt off, and he raised it up,

02:45and then he never really hurt them,

02:48but he pretended to hurt them.

02:52And that used to make all the other children laugh,

02:56and the worst thing was, it made the teachers laugh.

03:01So, I'm sure you can imagine that life at school

03:06for a Jewish child was not a party.

03:12I love the lessons he took during the school year.

03:17And then, that was something called Kristallnacht,

03:25the November Poveron, when all the synagogues

03:32in Vienna and Berlin, and in all the big cities

03:37in both countries were set on fire,

03:40and all the windows were smashed,

03:44all the windows were smashed of any Jewish properties

03:47or anything that was left that they thought was Jewish,

03:50and it was set on fire.

03:52And at the time, we were staying in somebody else's flat,

03:56in a block of flats, and I can't remember

04:00whether it was the second or the third floor,

04:02but we were high up, and we heard this eerie noise.

04:08We didn't know what it was, and we went to the window,

04:14and we saw flames, and then we opened the windows,

04:17smelled smoke, and it was a long time

04:20before we realized that the windows were being smashed,

04:25and residences and synagogues were set on fire.

04:31It was such a terrifying event

04:35that the rest of the world took notice.

04:39They saw what was happening, and they either could not

04:43or would not dismember any father, my aunt and uncle,

04:47but they began, our own mother lived with them as well.

04:53So there were four of them, and it was more difficult

04:57for four people to get visas or permission

05:01to any other country than it was for three people.

05:05They had also tried from the beginning after the Auschwitz

05:10to try and get visas, but it had been more difficult

05:15because there were four of them, and one of them

05:18was considered to be an old woman.

05:23They had almost completed all those papers

05:27and all those things, and they did have visas

05:30to come to England.

05:32They were about to come.

05:34We were expecting them, and then the Second World War

05:39broke out, and all the borders were closed.

05:43There was no way for people to move between two countries

05:49that were at war with each other, and of course,

05:52England had declared war on Austria as well as on Germany.

05:58So they were truly stuck.

06:02They could no longer leave.

06:07And they were taken first to a kind of collection point

06:15for Jews where they were shoved together,

06:19and my grandmother, our grandmother, died there

06:24very quickly.

06:26And Bubi and his parents were then sent to Auschwitz,

06:35and my aunt was gassed on arrival.

06:43Bubi and his father were then made to be slave laborers,

06:50and they were sent from one place to another,

06:54and only Bubi survived that.

06:59And as the Allies began to advance towards the end

07:04of the war and liberated camps, Bubi was sent

07:08from one camp to another, and he finished up

07:13in a small sub-camp called Gunskirchen,

07:18where they were sending prisoners who could no longer work,

07:26and they had no longer the facility to gas them.

07:32So they dumped them into this small kind of place

07:37that had enough space for, I think it was 3,000 people,

07:44and maybe 30,000 people.

07:48And he was liberated on May the 5th, 1945,

07:57and the American officer who liberated the camp

08:02wrote his impression in a diary,

08:10and Charlotte is going to read it, because I can't.

08:15We entered the first building, which was originally built

08:21for 300 prisoners, and now housed approximately 3,000.

08:28Row upon row of living skeletons jammed so close together

08:34that it was impossible for them to move,

08:37even if they could have generated enough strength to do so.

08:43The place was crawling with lice.

08:48A little girl, doubled up with the pains of starvation,

08:54cried pitifully for help.

08:57A dead man rotted beside her.

09:02An English-speaking Jew from Ohio hummed,

09:05the Yanks are coming, and then burst out crying.

09:11Few of those remaining alive could stand on their feet.

09:17A rabbi tripped over a dead body

09:20as he lifted his face towards heaven.

09:24I could not understand what he said, but it was a prayer.

09:34To be was one of those skeletons that could not be moved.

09:40He could no longer stand.

09:43He was taken to a nearby hospital, where he died,

09:48about two days before his 17th birthday.

09:56Now, he and his family were four of the six million

10:07who were murdered.

10:11Six million is, as somebody said to me this morning,

10:16it's a number, it's a funny word.

10:18What's six million mean?

10:19Six million, what does it mean?

10:23Would you please be kind enough to stand?

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