Tag #155361 - Interview #103735 (Nikolay Schwartz Biography)

In 1950 my sister Yelisaveta found me. Once a woman came to see me at home. I was at work and she left a package and a note for me. There was a knitted vest in the package and the address of this woman in the note. She lived in Khust [50 km from Uzhgorod, 670 km from Kiev]. I went to see her and she told me that this was a gift from my sister. They were in Hemsjo, in a camp in Sweden together. She told me the story of my sister Yelisaveta. She was taken to Auschwitz. During a selection process she added 5 years to her age. The Germans sent her to a work camp in Auschwitz. My sister was reluctant to talk about details of this period. I know that once she was sent to a gas chamber. The prisoners were naked waiting for the gas to be pumped inside, when all of a sudden the door opened and a German officer told them to come outside. There were Polish Jews working near the gas chamber. They gave my sister and other prisoners some rags to cover their bodies. The prisoners returned to their barrack. When in spring 1945 the soviet and American armies started their attack, fascists exterminated weaker and sickly prisoners, and the remaining prisoners of the Auschwitz camp, including my sister, were sent to Mauthausen. And few days later American troops liberated the camp. My sister decided there was no way she returned home.