The cattle car doors opened onto the Auschwitz platform and Hedy Markowitz, abruptly separated from her mother and younger brothers, was pushed along a walkway. She was first detained at a building where two Jewish prisoners shaved her head, and was then ushered into another building and ordered to undress. She took off the pink and blue plaid suit that her mother’s friend had sewn for her 16th birthday.
Gitta Seidner — known at the time by the Christian name Jannine Spinette — was abruptly awakened around 4:30 a.m. by a large commotion outside her farmhouse bedroom in Waterloo, Belgium. \”No, no, no. What do you want with my goddaughter?\” she heard her godmother, Alice Spinette, say. SS soldiers then kicked open the door and pulled the crying girl from her bed. \”She\’s not Jewish,\” Alice insisted. The soldiers didn\’t listen. They ordered Alice to get Gitta dressed and drove them to SS headquarters in Brussels.
Jack Seror didn’t know what to do. He was 25 and knew he had to leave Salonika; it wasn’t safe for Jews. And now a contact from the Greek resistance had come to fetch him. Jack stood with his parents in their living room, crying. They hugged, kissed and hugged some more. “We have to leave,” the contact said. Half of Jack wanted to stay with his parents; the other half wanted to escape. Finally, his father, with tears in his eyes, said, “Go. And remember, if you survive, to say Kaddish for us.”
The morning stillness was shattered in the German village of Ober-Ramstadt, as people started running through the streets, crying out that the synagogue was burning. Julius Bendorf, 23, could see the flames from his house. Later, around 1 p.m., a group of men broke into his father’s butcher shop at the front of the family’s house. The Nazis had already closed down the shop, as they had all Jewish businesses, but the intruders destroyed the counters, scales and other equipment. “These were men we knew really well, who bought meat from us,” Julius remembered. The men then entered the family’s living quarters, but Julius, his parents and brother had already escaped through the back door. The next day, the family returned to find their feather bedding shredded, their food tossed on the floor and the house in shambles. It was Kristallnacht, Nov. 9, 1938, and, as Julius said, “It all happened so fast.”
“Raus, raus!” (Out, out!) Jack Adelstein — then Janek Eidelstein, 4 years old — was abruptly awakened by a dozen SS soldiers and Polish farmers. He was sleeping in a cave in a dense forest outside Krasnik, Poland, where he was hiding with his father, brother and an older sister.
In early October 1943, a day or two after Rosh Hashanah, Julia Moshe — née Conti — was walking to her bookkeeping job at the Atlas Watch Co. in Volos, Greece, when she heard footsteps behind her. “Mademoiselle, don’t turn around your head,” a male voice warned. “Yesterday SS soldiers came to city hall asking for a list of the Jewish people.” Julia started trembling. She recalled her mother’s words, “If the Germans come here, it’s OK if they take us.” Julia gave notice at work and hurried home. “Please don’t say no,” she begged her mother. “We have to go from here.”
“I don’t know where I am.” After three days and nights in a cramped cattle car, Miriam Rothstein — neé Farkas — was thrust onto the Auschwitz-Birkenau platform. Her sister Margaret and Margaret’s three children were sent to one side, her brother Baruch to another. Where was Rachel?
Albert Rosa spied his older sister Luna across the chain-link fence. He remembered her as beautiful, with big, blue eyes and long, dark hair. Now she was skinny and filthy, her head shaved. “It broke my heart,” he said. Albert had been at Auschwitz only three weeks and had given up two days’ rations to persuade a bunkmate to trade uniforms and work details so he could see his sister.
Liselotte Hanock — née Ortner — was sent by her grandmother to buy food on a cold, rainy November afternoon in 1944. She was wearing only a light raincoat when she left her yellow-star apartment in Budapest — a de facto ghetto, where she lived with her paternal grandparents and two other families. Suddenly, she was approached by a group of Arrow Cross soldiers — boys 16 to 18 years old carrying rifles. “Come with us,” they said. Liselotte, who was just 11, knew not to resist.
Ernest Braunstein was walking back to his barracks at the Bor labor camp, in Yugoslavia, when he spotted a man suspended from a post by his wrists, which had been tied tightly behind the man’s back. He had passed out, and Ernest brought him water. A guard, witnessing the interaction, gave Ernest the same punishment. When Ernest blacked out from the pain, the guard lowered him, revived him and hung him again, repeatedly. After three hours, Ernest estimates, he was sent back to his barracks, where his friends surreptitiously fed him until he recovered. To this day, he can lift his right arm only to his shoulder.
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