From Theresienstadt to Auschwitz-Birkenau

Map of the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps

A few days later, Sonja and other women whose husbands had been transferred were told they were going to join them.  They boarded the transport and after seventy-two hours, the train finally jolted to a stop.

They felt stiff and filthy. They were dehydrated and exhausted. Outside, they heard dogs barking. The bolt outside was disengaged and the door slid open. Bright searchlights focused on the opening. Men were shouting instructions in Polish and German. “Raus, raus.”

“Get off the train and leave your stuff in the train.” “Leave your luggage behind! Line up in rows of five! Leave all your belongings on the train!”

Sonja stood in the doorway and hesitated. The bright searchlights blinded her.

“Leave your luggage on the train.” A feel of gloom engulfed her. What was Herman doing here? Where is he? They promised. “Surrender your watches and rings.”

Armed guards pushed them into a line that moved steadily towards six or seven men sitting behind a table. One man was wearing a doctor’s coat. With a snap of his finger, he sent thousands of people to die. It might well have been the infamous and ruthless Dr. Mengele, also known as the Angel of Death.

A woman ahead of Sonja in line turned and said, “They’re asking if you are healthy and if you can work.” The doctor looked at a grandmother and her grandchildren and motioned them to a waiting truck to their left. The mother of the children was motioned to the right, and she asked if she could join her mother and her children.

“You’ll see them tonight,” he answered politely. “See you later, Mom,” she called after her mother. “Take good care of the children.”

Unloading prisoners, Auschwitz 2 (Birkenau) Concentration Camp, Oswiecim, Poland

“I’ve worked hard enough in Theresienstadt. I want to save my energy. I don’t want to work,” said the woman in front of her to the doctor. The doctor put her at ease and assured her that she didn’t have to work at all, if she didn’t want to. He motioned her to the truck.

When her eyes adjusted, she saw the barbed wire, the barking dogs, and the men in striped black and white prison garb, yelling at the women. She noticed a woman behind barbed wire dressed in black rags and a dirty headscarf, holding her hands out in front of her.

“What does she want?” Sonja asked. “She’s Polish, she’s asking for food,” someone whispered. Again, the woman held her hands up.

“Food, food, please?” she cried in Polish. Suddenly, they heard a gunshot. The woman fell backward and Sonja saw that she wasn’t wearing any underwear.

“Oh, my God, what is this place? This must be hell,” she whispered. It was Sonja’s turn. She stepped forward and stood eye-to-eye with the doctor.

“Are you healthy?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to work?”

“Yes.”

He sent her to the right. Of the nearly thousand women on her transport, only fifty or sixty passed the selection. All the others were sent to die. An hour later, most of the women that had come on the same train were dead. Gassed. Murdered.

Escorted by guards and barking dogs, Sonja’s group walked into concentration camp Auschwitz. They were taken to an area and told to undress. It was freezing cold; they were filthy and looking forward to a hot shower.

A pregnant woman took off her coat and started to undress. “What are you doing here?” A guard asked her politely, when he noticed she was pregnant. He called his young assistant. “This young lady here is in the wrong place. Take her to where she belongs.”

Her mother asked if she could go with her daughter.

“Yes, of course, you may.” He smiled. The assistant took both of them to the gas chamber. They used dull razors and did a quick and rough job, leaving cuts and traces of blood on all of them. Their head, their armpits, their legs, and their pubic areas were shaved. Next, they were taken to a shower room and told to wait. It was just a few drops of icy water, but it was water.

Naked and wet, they were rushed out of the shower and into to a barracks crammed with giant piles of used clothes, almost reaching the ceiling. The Camp Police kept yelling, “Take three pieces only and stand in line. Three pieces only and hurry!”

Sonja grabbed a torn, thin, summer dress and a flannel overall for underneath the dress. She snatched an old dirty coat with a cross stitched on its back. A woman who took an extra shirt got a beating and dropped the shirt. Sonja found two left shoes that were two sizes too small, but it’s all she had time for.

By now, it was two o’clock in the morning. What are they going to do with us? I need to find Herman. They were ordered to stand in rows of ten. All of a sudden, she was part of an enormous convoy comprised of one thousand women in one hundred rows of ten. Where did they all come from? It seemed unreal. Suddenly, she started itching really badly. Her clothes were full with fleas. Guards watched from the towers as the one thousand powerless women were escorted out of the camp. It was two o’clock in the morning.

An hour later, they marched through the gates of Birkenau. The women were exhausted and discouraged. Searchlights illuminated endless rows of wooden barracks dissected by muddy walkways. There was a foul, pungent odor in the air that they couldn’t place. A woman in the outside row asked a guard, “What is that smell?” “That’s the bakery,” he laughed, knowing the smell came from the ovens burning the bodies of the people who were killed in the gas chambers.

The thousand women entered a wooden barracks and found themselves in an enormous warehouse-type space filled with about four hundred triple bunk beds. Three women shared a bed and instead of a mattress, they slept on jute bags filled with sand, gravel, and straw. It was so tight that when one of them turned, the other two had to turn too.