‘I escaped death seven times. I don’t know why I survived’

To commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Holocaust’s largest and deadliest concentration camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, or Claims Conference, has launched “I Survived Auschwitz: Remember This”, a digital campaign highlighting the stories of 80 Holocaust survivors. The JC spoke to three of them.

Rachel Levy, 95, was born in Czechoslovakia. She was marched from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen where she remained until the camp was liberated by the British army in1945. After the war, she was sent to Millisle in Northern Ireland before settling in London.

I wish I knew how I survived. Nobody can answer that.

My father was taken when they came one night and collected all the young men in the village and we never, ever heard from my father again. We knew he died in the forced labour camps but we never had any word from him at all. Then some time later, they came for the rest of us.

We were taken to a ghetto. We stayed there, my mother, my younger siblings, my big brother, and we didn’t know what was happening as children. I don’t even remember how many weeks went by before we were told we were going to be put on a train, which turned out to be these carriages for animals, not for people. On the train we stood in these bare carriages with some buckets around. We couldn’t see where we were going and as children we just hung on to my mother. There were old people, young people, sick people, and we all had to stand the whole time. The children were crying. It was hell. Then we arrived somewhere, which turned out to be Auschwitz. I was 13. My brother was two years older than me, and he was silent all the way. In fact, he was silent most of the rest of his life.

When we got out the Gestapo were there to meet us and they separated my mother from my brother and me. We stood there looking at my mother, holding our baby brother who wasn’t even three yet. My mother pushed us towards the other line and kept saying, ‘shtark, shtark,’ which means ‘strong’ in Yiddish but it’s a similar word in German. And that was the last time we saw her and my two little sisters and my baby brother.

Once, just prior to the war getting near, while we were being counted Mengele opened the doors of the block and he chose me and my friend Zelde to go stand at the side. That was a bad sign because we knew that they were choosing people to go to the gas chamber, which by then of course we knew about. They took us in a group of girls right towards the gates to leave the camp – those infamous gates. We stood there waiting when, near the kitchens, people came out carrying soup in great big urns, and somebody made a commotion. I don’t know who started it, but as the commotion continued people started moving around, and we heard gunshots. Zelde got hold of my hand and she pulled me. We hung onto the lunch people carrying the soup and we scurried back to the block. By some sort of miracle, we escaped going through those gates. By this time, the block was home; we were safe in the block.

After the war, I lived in south London in a hostel and then in a private home with a family in Herne Hill and I lived with them until I got married. My husband never knew anything because I couldn’t talk then. It took fifty years for me to open up. Even now it’s still difficult, it’s still nightmarish. It opens up lots of wounds.

Renée Feller, 94, was born in Czechoslovakia and sent to Auschwitz in 1944. After a few months, she was selected to work at Geislingen but, with the Allies approaching, Renée was placed on a train, and was back in Czechoslovakia when the US Army liberated her. She moved to New York after the war and became a rabbi at the age of 70.

We were taken from my hometown in cattle trains to Auschwitz when I was 13 and my brother was about a year and a half younger. The trains were pitch dark, so I couldn’t see anyone. I just kept quiet because that was one of my survival techniques: to be quiet, not to be noticed. That was what worked for me all through the Holocaust. It was a long trip from my hometown to Auschwitz. When we finally got off the train, I heard a man’s voice instructing some young people: ‘tell them you’re older.’ So when we got to where the SS people ask questions, I told them I was 18. While I was sent to the left my brother, who was quite frail-looking, was sent to the right, which I knew instinctively would take him to a bad place. I didn’t know what to do; I just looked out for myself. For many, many decades of my life I’ve felt very guilty that I didn’t do anything to save my little brother.  I was the older sister who always used to boss him around when we were at home, but he always protected me, and I protected him too. But at that moment, there was nothing I could do to save him.

 I didn't tell my children about what I went through until many, many years later, because I thought I was doing them a favour by keeping it hidden, that it was better if they didn’t know. Of course, I was stupid. I didn't realise that it was important to talk about it, but I began seeing therapists twice a week and learned to open up. I became ordained as a rabbi at the age of 70 and on my website, I noted that I am a Holocaust survivor; this ended up being the reason the majority of couples I married came to me to officiate their wedding.

Becoming a rabbi was an unconscious thing at first; I didn’t know why I wanted to become a rabbi. But later on I realised it was because I wanted to be out there, to not hide anymore. All my life, especially after the Holocaust, I hid. I never told my children, I never told anybody. Through the decades it’s gotten easier to speak about it but it’s still not easy. It’s like a fantasy; very often it feels like a dream.

Bronia Brandman, 93, was born in Poland. Bronia was liberated from the Neustadt-Gleve camp by the American and Russian armies in May 1945 after surviving the death march from Auschwitz. After the war, she moved to New York and became a public school teacher.

In 1942 the Jews were ordered to meet in the schoolyard, and my father thought this sounded final, that the Germans may never let us go home again.

 We all had hiding places, and my parents decided that three of my sisters would hide. One, my oldest brother, was already in the slave labour camp. So my other brother Tolek and me and my parents reported to the schoolyard. We were guarded by Germans who pointed their guns at us, and also by dogs that were trained to tear you apart. As hours went on, we realised we were not returning home. We realised that this was our final day on Earth.

My mother, after a few hours standing there broiling in the sun, whispered to me to run. I had been a smuggler before, so I was quite experienced. But I knew that if I ran, there would be a volley of bullets coming in my direction. I knew I should not run. I decided to walk out very, very assuredly and slowly as if this was exactly what I was supposed to be doing, and nobody stopped me. To this day, I don't understand why not. And so, I walked out, and that was the last time I saw my parents and my brother Tolek.

 This was the first of seven times that I escaped death. The next time, when we came to Auschwitz a year later, I was 12. We had to pass Dr. Mengele, the butcher of Auschwitz, who just pointed a finger one way or another to determine your fate. And he pointed Mila, my older sister, to the line where I could see it was all young people who were capable of working. He pointed me and my two little sisters to the left side, which was to the gas chamber. Without thinking for one second, I decided to run to join Mila's line. And as soon as I got there, I saw my two little sisters walking alone in the direction of the gas chamber. But it was too late.

After that, the reason I survived was Bozenka, the Jewish nurse who risked her life to save me five times.

Soon after we arrived in Auschwitz, Mila, who was eight years older than me and was my idol, came down with typhus. I worshipped Mila. I thought that next to God, there was Mila, that she was the perfect human being.

When you were sick, you had to be removed to the infirmary. We knew that going there was a final stop, but I did not want to part from Mila, so I went with her. One day, when Mila and I were lying naked under a blanket that was stained with blood and pus, Bozenka called me aside and told me that all of the inmates in the infirmary would be sent to the gas chamber, and she arranged to transfer me to a Christian barrack where Mengele would not come. Should I allow myself to be saved or do I stay to support my sick sister? And how do I face Mila with that knowledge? How was I going to look her in the eyes and tell her she was going to die?  I decided ultimately to allow myself to be saved, and I have not forgiven myself the rest of my life. For a long time I thought that I was a bad person, that I didn't deserve to live.

Overall, I escaped death seven times. The editor of a religious newspaper that wrote about me years ago said I survived with God’s help, but you did not think of God in my situation. You could not imagine that God would be part of the annihilation of six million people in such horrible ways.

Testimony from Eli Abt, who passed away in October 2024 at the age of 95.

By 1938, when I was nine, we were already banned from using the park benches, reserved for so-called “Aryans” only.

On the morning of November 10 after Kristallnacht, my mother, younger sister and I picked our way through streets littered with shards of plate glass from Jewish shopfronts, to help retrieve what we could from the wreck of our little Pinhas Synagogue in the Hoefchenstrasse. (My father happened to be in Berlin at the time and had fortunately managed to evade arrest.)

We passed the vandalised Storch Synagogue, its windows smashed and its contents heaped outside, as well as the burning Neue Synagogue, the second largest in Germany, with fire appliances in attendance merely to ensure the flames would not spread to adjoining property. Our own prayer room, situated on the first floor of a residential building, was a scene of utter devastation. The Torah scrolls were lying on the floor tattered and urinated on, the benches upturned and prayer books flung in all directions. It is an image seared into my memory. I remember my mother weeping bitterly over a newspaper headline announcing a fine of 1 billion reichsmarks imposed on the German Jewish community for the damage inflicted on its own property.

For some reason we had to abandon our home after Kristallnacht to occupy rooms in my father’s school. I recall one of his colleagues returning through the school gate from Buchenwald, haggard almost beyond recognition.

While walking with my mother in a park in December, a Hitler Youth, ignoring her screams, attacked and flung me into the snow. Fortunately I managed to escape unhurt, but the opportunities for our escape as a family were now vanishing rapidly.

In March 1939, my eight-year-old sister, Ruth, received a Youth Aliyah permit for entry to Eretz Yisrael. She was put by my father on a train to Trieste, with a placard around her neck asking that she be helped find the right ship to Haifa where she would be met by an uncle. Fiercely independent even at that young age, she arrived there safely eight days later.

In April my parents were advised I had been granted Kindertransport permit number 5156 through the efforts of my father’s colleague Erich Klibansky, head of the Jawne school in Cologne.

I recall our group of parents and children being addressed on a station platform in Berlin with my father holding me tight on his lap before I boarded the train.

I remember nothing of the journey to Hook of Holland, nor the Channel crossing to Harwich, but do recall someone trying valiantly to welcome us to Britain in impenetrable German at Liverpool Street station.