ùîòå æàú äæ÷ðéí
åäàæéðå ëì éåùáé äàøõ
ääéúä æàú áéîéëí
åàí áéîé àáåúéëí:
òìéä ìáðéëí ñôøå
åáðéëí ìáðéäí
åáðéäí ìãåø àçø,
éåàì – ôø÷ à' 1-4
Hear this, ye old
men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land. Hath this been in your days,
or even in the days of your fathers?
Tell ye your
children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children
another
generation.
Joel Chapter I (1-3)
Testimony of Shosh Bechar (Edith
Potok), Balassagyarmat , Hungary
Testimony of Edith Potok a member in Kibbutz Evron (in 1990
was Shosh Bechar). She is from
A joint initiative of Judy Cohen and Ada
Holtzman to translate Holocaust testimonies from Hebrew and postthem on the
Internet. We both also edited the translation. It was translated from the
original Hebrew by Nachum Abraham,
Judy Cohen's
"Women and the Holocaust"
Potok's testimony under "Personal
Reflections"
Balassagyarmat, a midsize city in
I was
fourteen years old when WWII started. The Hungarian police arrested my father
accusing him of being a communist. He disappeared forever. My mother was fired
from her work. Due to the difficulties we faced at the time, we moved to the
city of
One
morning in April 1944, they announced, to us Jews, that we’re being transported
to a labor camp. We were brought to the train station. With screaming and
beating they forced us into the cattle cars. The one and only window, in each
cattle car had barbed wire on it. The car was filled completely with people
without any room at all. At each stop they would bring in a small container, a
little bit of water. The conditions were excruciatingly inhumane. The train
sped on for many days till we got to a large gate, on it was written: “Arbeit
Macht Frei" ("work liberates"). We had arrived to
I was
a young and naive girl, or, maybe because of being extremely tired, emotionally
exhausted from the abrupt change, I was in a state of a shock. I did not
understand what was going on. I did not know then that we arrived at a death
camp.
The
car doors opened. Around the quay German soldiers and German policewomen were
standing. They were pushing, hitting and shouting. “Schneller"!
"Schneller"! (Faster! Faster!).
The trains were emptied out. We were placed in rows. My mother, who was
in her early forties, was holding hands with my four-year-old sister. In all
the turmoil we were (suddenly to delete) separated. My Mother and my little
sister disappeared from my life forever.
My
younger sister and I stayed very close to each other. Our row was marched to
the nearest camp, called Birkenau. There was a massive lineup of women
concentrated in a field. One after the other people were pushed into a wooden
barrack. Inside, German soldiers were sitting. We entered and were
ordered to strip off all our clothing. Very quickly we were standing there
naked. All of a sudden some men came running into the room with scissors in
their hands. Quickly and in a crude manner they sheared and shaved the hair
from our heads and from the other parts of our bodies. A huge number of women
were pushed into the showers. After the shower an order was yelled out: “open
your legs!” We were sprayed with D.D.T.
I, as
a young girl, stood there naked, sprayed and shaved from all the hair on my
body. I stopped being what I was. I was changed into an oppressed and degraded
creature. In the end of the disinfection procedure I received a huge nightgown
made from flannel. Barefooted, we were moved to cell-block number 3, which was
a very large block, especially assigned to women.
I
cried a lot. I heard that the Germans are very cruel. I did not know that
people, who just a little while ago, were normal people, could be turned into
animals, and have a sadistic desire to oppress and degrade a young girl like
me. I did not know then, that there are even higher and more severe degrees of
cruelties. I wept. My sister and I slept clinging to each other at
nights. The German supervisors walked around with whips in their hands. From
time to time they brought in a pale of water. In a desperate crazy run to drink
just a touch of water, there was huge commotion within the block, which caused
the supervisor to come inside with her whip. They whipped the women’s backs. In
the afternoons they used to bring a barrel filled with a green mixture that
tasted like medicine. In the mixture there was some chemical that stops the
female menstruation cycle. That was our lunch.
In
the fenced courtyard of our barrack, elderly women walked around, and around,
their behavior and their screams indicated insanity. These were the women whose
children were taken away from them. From our barrack we saw the never-ending
fire from the chimney of the crematoriums. We breathed the sweetish stench of
burning flesh.
Every
morning there was a roll-call. We stood three in rows. After the counting
we received liquid, that they called coffee. Before sundown we got a slice of
bread. The neighbor camp to ours was the gypsy camp. In our block there were
only female Jews. Many of the women got sick. The symptoms were high
fever, boil and blisters on their tongues. The sick were taken away, never to
return. Those who were responsible for our destiny everyday in every hour were
the “Kapos”, who were Polish and also Jewish women. The major force behind
their aggressive behavior towards us was their fear of the German supervisors
above them. We did not work.
Months
past and one day a large group of us girls, were taken to the showers. We had
to get outside naked. Outside, stood a handsome officer and he selected a group
of girls, my sister and me, included. Today I know that, he was Dr. Joseph
Mengele. I received a coat and wooden shoes. We traveled for three or four days
in the train, until we got to Aldendorf, a forced labor camp in the forest. We
left
Seven
kilometers from the camp there was an artillery factory. Every morning we went
to work there. I was preparing the mixture to fill the hand grenades, bombs and
torpedoes. We worked together with political prisoners. This was hard physical
labor that was highly supervised and guarded. We went to work in all weather
conditions. We got a glass of milk and reasonable amount of food. In this place
there were showers too.
We
were highly watched and there were punishments as well if need be: shaving our
hair and twenty-four hours in isolation. We worked until it was dark. Although
we had better living conditions our constant dream was to eat bread without any
limit. My sister who was short and skinny would sometimes get chocolate pieces
from the Germans. I recall one extraordinary event, under those circumstances,
that happened once. One of the women died. The Germans brought her body to a
cemetery in the closest town. A few girls from the camp were allowed to join in
on the burial ceremony.
After
a while, I was transferred to an easier work. I stood at a table and I filled
grenades. We did not know anything about what was happening outside the camp
and the factory. One day they told us we are moving. At
The
march was horrible. The number of women decreased from barn to barn. Many fell
by the wayside and a few kept hiding in the barns and did not continue to walk.
One
day I could not walk anymore. We decided, my sister and I, and two other girls,
to hide in a barn and not to continue. We were incredibly frightened. We knew
if they were going to find us, our lives would be over just upon the threshold
of liberation. We hid deep in stacks of hay. In the morning we heard the
Germans looking for the escapees. They stabbed and prodded with pitchforks at
the stacks of hay and one stab barely missed my leg. One German woman used the
flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other. They searched and re-searched
but did not find us. We lay in the hay for three days and all our whatever strength we had left, was gone. We heard the
sounds of the chains of moving tanks but we did not know who they were.
One of
us in the haystack went out of the barn and she came back crying: “tanks with
stars!” We realized that the Americans are already in the neighborhood. We left
the barn in total exhaustion. The Americans took us to a hotel in the nearby
town, giving us new clothes and food. Those who could not resist the temptation
of real food ate too much too quickly and got severe diarrhea. We found out
that the convoy of prisoners we left behind, walked another forty kilometers
until their German guards ran away.
I was
liberated in April 1945, and we all stayed under the protection of the American
soldiers until the month of August. One day we heard on the radio in a
searching relatives program the name of my brother and that he is looking for
his two sisters. He called out our names. I broke into tears.
We
were liberated but we did not find a safe place that felt like home. Problems
and difficulties still faced us. We were five girls in the hotel room. One day
my sister and three other girls went to a party with some American soldiers in
a nearby city. In the early morning, on the way back, they had a car accident.
Everyone was injured. My sister lay in the hospital for two months and I sat
beside her the whole time.
The
American hospitality ended and we were on our way “home”. Many of the refugees
were constantly moving on. In every train station thousands would wait just to
be able to leave. When a train arrived, the people ran, pushed, screamed without mercy, only to find a seat. For the most
part my sister and I traveled in a transport train. Once we even sat on top of
a stack of coal and beneath every bridge we needed to hold on tightly to the
black coal so the bridge would not cut off our heads. We traveled this way for
one month, when we finally reached
In
the station, I was told, that my youth (childhood) friend was waiting everyday
in the train station in
However,
I became pregnant. In that state they would not allow me to immigrate to
In a
difficult and dangerous journey, we arrived to
We were
in jail in the heart of the sea for four weeks but our boat was not taken to
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