When we left Holland, I had taken only two changes of clothes, one toothbrush, no books or other possessions. Most of the day, we worked as slave labor in the factory, making bullets for German soldiers. Often we had to wait there for hours, no matter the weather. Every morning, I had to get up at 5 and wake the rest. Conditions were extremely crowded and unsanitary. There were about 500 women and girls in my barracks. After the war, I heard he had committed suicide. The commandant said, “If I could help you, I would, but I would lose my head.” About once every three weeks, he would ask to see me. I said I wanted to leave Bergen-Belsen, maybe go to Palestine. He asked to talk to me privately and wanted to know what I had heard of my uncle. This coincidence probably helped save my life. It turned out that the Nazi commandant of the camp was from my home town in Germany and had studied with my uncle in Strasbourg. I was terrified of this order, but had no choice. I said, “I’m not strong enough to be barracks leader.” They said that would be disobeying a command. When I left, I weighed 78.Īfter I arrived at the Bergen-Belsen barracks, I was told I was to be the barracks leader. When I went in, I weighed more than 125 pounds. I stayed for about three years before it was liberated in the spring of 1945. There were no ovens at Bergen-Belsen instead the Nazis killed us with starvation and disease. My husband and I could not hide so easily, and in 1941 we were sent first to Westerbork, a transit camp where we stayed about a year, and later to Bergen-Belsen, a work and transit camp, from where thousands of innocent people were sent to extermination camps. As the Nazis closed in, we sent one daughter abroad with relatives and the other into hiding with my sister and her children in The Hague. Then Hitler came to power, and like many other Jews, we fled to Holland. I was born in Germany in 1897, got married and had two children in the 1920s. With the help of Jonathan Alter of NEWSWEEK, here’s a bit of mine:
I decided to overcome my long reluctance to revisit terrible times. Willard Scott mentioned my name on television. I TURNED 100 YEARS OLD IN APRIL AND HAD A BEAUTIFUL birthday party surrounded by my grandchildren, great grandchildren and other family members. At the age of 100, remembering the horrors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration campĪs Printed in July 21, 1997 Edition of Newsweek© Magazine
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