I wanted to finish conservatory. I left for Prague and on the first day there met my husband. Fourteen days later I was married. And that's how my entire musical career came to an end.
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Displaying 24391 - 24420 of 50826 results
Gabriela Brodska
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They liberated us during the death march. There were ninety of us girls.
The older prisoners were saying that there were various transports, several hours, two-day ones. The several-hour ones consisted of them loading people up and circling Auschwitz round and round, but the end station was a gas chamber.
They took my shoes, because I still had my own, from home. They were these solid shoes. Well, in their place I got these black high-heeled ballroom shoes. By then I had been standing outside for three or four days. So I took off my shoes outside. We also got socks, one gray and one purple. The way we were dressed wasn't fit for even a circus. In the morning of the fourth day they woke us up, and we set off by foot, on a march.
We marched off and stopped in Brezinka in front of the gas chamber. It didn't look like one, there were heavy iron gates and above it grass, but we knew what it was. That was the longest night of my life. How long we stood there, I don't know. I was 20, 20 1/2, and I was asking myself what I had done to have to die such a horrible death at the age of twenty, while I so terribly want to live! We hugged and kissed each other. We promised each other that while we're still able to breathe we'll hold each other by the hand, so that we won't be so alone as we're dying.
My first question was: 'Edita, please tell me, what that Camp H is?" 'H, Camp Himmel [heavenly camp], [after saying these words Mrs. Brodska lifted her hands to the heavens - B.P.]. And that's where our mothers and children are.' She said, 'You didn't know about it, what did you think?!' So that's how I found out about it. That's why the endless weeping and that eternal pain! I felt that my mother must have died such a horrible death!
My mother's hand trembled and she said, 'Oh my God, they're splitting people up over there!' She noticed that there was a doctor standing there, a doctor that is, that had also taken the Hippocratic oath, and on one side and the other, SS men and SS women... My mother noticed - I didn't even see them - that standing on the right side were young women and that older people were going off to the left. My mother wasn't old, she was 48, but her hair was completely white. She let go of me and inconspicuously nudged me. She said, 'Go there, with the young people!' I just managed to kiss her hand and said to her, 'Mommy dear, be strong!' This was all as if in a dream, I stood there and realized that I'm not holding my mother by the hand.
We arrived in Auschwitz on 13th June. I went to the left and my mother to the right. Back then I didn't know what that meant. We were without water, there were about ninety of us in one wagon and they gave us one pail of water. We had food with us, but didn't eat at all. Our mouths were so dry that we couldn't swallow.
And then to Auschwitz. The trip took a week, and then we arrived. In Auschwitz each minute had sixty seconds of horror. At that time my brother was already in a work camp. Unfortunately he didn't survive the war.
In March the Germans occupied all of Hungary [see 19th March 1944] [15]. In April or at the beginning of May we went to the ghetto. The ghetto was in Roznava. They emptied three or four buildings next to each other, and that's where we were. I went to work in a brick factory, it was terribly hard work. I went there to get away from that place [the ghetto]. I felt like I was being strangled there. I wanted to get out amongst people, see the streets and see people.
. I then wrote him from home; I had his relatives' address, because I used to send him letters there. And that aunt of his wrote me what had happened, well, it was a harsh blow for me.
Before the war I had a fiance; he was my brother's classmate from high school.
My brother had a bar mitzvah, by then our father was no longer alive. I know that it was very touching. On Saturday afternoon the adults were invited, our rabbi, that was still that old rabbi.
While Grandpa was still alive we kept kosher, but afterwards we didn't. At our place we ate mainly poultry and we kept geese for the goose-fat. Geese and poultry and once in a while some beef. No pork, but when I went on some trip my mother would make me schnitzels from pork meat. Otherwise, at home, I guess they didn't care for it too much, there was more poultry. Our mother fasted at Yom Kippur, but we didn't have to.
We also cleaned house before Passover, but it was only normal spring cleaning. I definitely ate leavened bread. We bought matzah, after all, traditions are traditions. We also had a Christmas tree. Yes, Chanukkah, we observed that too. Then came Christmas and we had a tree and presents.
My parents attended synagogue only during holidays.
My parents had many Christian friends; there may have been more of them than those from Jewish families. We were very assimilated. I perceived Judaism solely as a religion.
I didn't come by a lot of religion at home, because though my parents observed holidays, it was more out of respect for their parents and traditions than from some sort of religious conviction. Irrespective of the fact that I attended a Catholic convent school and didn't have even one Jewish girlfriend. My friends were from among my classmates. Once this one girl came to visit me [the student that did this interview] and kept asking me how I perceive my Jewish identity.
Back then there were five grades of public school and three of council school. I attended public school at the convent. Right after I finished council school, I left for Bratislava and they accepted me into second year at the conservatory.
My father was such a Hungarian patriot that when they played the Hungarian anthem, my father would stand at attention and tears would stream down his face. I never became attached to that Hungarian nation, because I was born in democratic Czechoslovakia and the class differences there [in Hungary] were so big.
But that was already right after 1939, and right at that time I began to realize that I belonged to the Jewish community. Because expressions of anti-Semitism were already very strong, we could already feel it. The Jewish youth withdrew into its shell and so it brought us together, that we only met amongst ourselves. Well, and it was for these children that we made those puppets and performed plays for them. We tried to somehow culturally occupy ourselves, because we didn't go to the movies any more.
I can't tell you exactly how many Jews lived in Roznava, but they took about 350 to 400 of us from the ghetto. [Editor's note: on 1st December 1930, 634 inhabitants of the Roznava district identified themselves as having Jewish nationality. In the actual town of Roznava there lived at that time 425 Jews.] There was a synagogue [built in Moorish style, in the year 1893] in town, in fact a very nice one. Not big, but nice.
My father was a real democrat. I think that he also voted for the Social Democrats.
Our apartment was spacious, three rooms, and on the ground floor there was also one apartment. We of course lived above. The stairs led up to this hall. In the summer we ate there, because it was comfortable, cool. It had these tiles. There was a nice, large kitchen and three rooms. The bathroom was large; I used to go there to read forbidden books.
Our mother spoke Slovak with us and our father Hungarian. Between each other they spoke Hungarian. Our mother didn't learn Hungarian until they moved to Roznava. Up until then she spoke only Slovak. My mother tongue is Slovak and Hungarian too, after my father. We spoke both. Our mother spoke only Slovak to us as a matter of principle, so that we wouldn't forget. And our father made a point of only speaking Hungarian with us. Our father, however, spoke Czech well, because during the war he had served with guys from Bohemia and Moravia, so he learned Czech there.
Friedrich Falevich
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When we came to the ghetto, we managed to settle down in a small wooden house with 40 tenants in it already. The Germans established the Jewish committee [Judenrat] [18], to manage life in the ghetto.
We, boys, used to run away from the ghetto every now and then. We left our stars behind and ran away through a trap-way. What we saw in the town was horrifying. There were wooden gallows posts installed along the central street in Slutsk, a circa 200-meter stretch along the street, and there were always dead bodies hanging on them. People were hanged for whatever fault, and not only Jews.
People were hanged even for trying to give a piece of bread or some flour to inmates of the ghetto. Jews were hanged, if they were noticed walking without a star. The gallows made a horrible sight, and we returned to the ghetto exhausted by what we had seen.
People were hanged even for trying to give a piece of bread or some flour to inmates of the ghetto. Jews were hanged, if they were noticed walking without a star. The gallows made a horrible sight, and we returned to the ghetto exhausted by what we had seen.
Mama went to work at the power plant. The power plant operated on turf produced at the turf factory in Slutsk. The factory also dried the turf supplied to our boiler. Turf was delivered by rail from Radichevo to Slutsk. Mama worked at the loading/unloading ramp at the factory. She also took my brother and me to work. We were digging the turf with sharp knives.
In August 1942 one Jewish prisoner-of-war told Mama that they were plotting an escape to the woods from Radichevo where they were hoping to find partisans. This man promised Mama that the three of us would also join them. They were planning an escape for the end of August. On the set date we arrived at Radichevo and found out that the group had already gone leaving us behind.
On Sunday morning Uliana brought embroidered shirts that farmers used to wear, and we put them on. Mama also put on a peasant dress and a white kerchief that Belarusian women wore. Uliana harnessed the horse, and we climbed the wagon and moved on. We were riding in the middle of the day and nobody paid any attention. We stopped every now and then to feed the horse or have some water to drink. People were going back from the church and there were policemen all around, drinking and enjoying themselves.