Between April and July 1944, 440,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz. According to the U.S. Holocaust Museum, the SS sent about 320,000 of them immediately to the gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The other 110,000 were sent into forced labor somewhere in the Auschwitz concentration camp complex or to other camps in Germany and Austria. The Hungarian Jews made up the last transports into Auschwitz-Birkenau before the camps fell to the Soviets in January 1945.
Maria S. was 15 years old when she and her family were forced onto a transport train headed towards Poland. She remembers standing on the ramp inside Birkenau waiting for a man she identifies today as Dr. Josef Mengele (the notorious Nazi angel of death) to make his selections: who would live and who would die? Maria had been warned to lie about her age, to say that she was 17 or 18, so that she wouldn't be seen as a useless child who would be gassed immediately. Maria, her mother, her sister and aunt were spared in that first selection. Her father was not. He was a Jew and a political dissident, and he was taken directly to the gas chamber.
Sometime early on in her imprisonment in Birkenau, Maria contracted rheumatic fever. She was gravely ill, but her mother and aunt knew that it would be fatal to ask for medical help. To do so would be to condemn her to death, to point out to the SS that she was no longer useful. Instead, they nursed her back to health as best they could, physically supporting her during long daily roll calls, somehow disguising the fact that she was weak and sick. She recovered in time for what would be their luckiest moment. The SS needed a couple hundred female prisoners to work in a factory associated with an Auschwitz satellite camp, and Maria and all of her female relatives were selected to be a part of that group. The work was likely hard, but the conditions must have been at least somewhat better than they had been in the death camp. And then it was January 1945.
The Soviet army was advancing, and German defeat seemed imminent. While the majority of prisoners in Auschwitz-Birkenau embarked on a forced march out of the camps and towards Germany on foot and in bitter winter conditions, Maria and her family were loaded onto a train and transported by rail in that direction. This was her second lucky break. The death marches were brutal: sick and malnourished prisoners in nothing but thin, I'll-fitting camp uniforms died by the thousands on these marches. Somewhere on that train trip from Poland and Germany, the train stopped and was attacked by the Allies, who killed all but one SS guard. Seeing that he was outnumbered, the guard gave up his post, thereby freeing all of the prisoners. Maria's final lucky break resulted in survival. With her family, she made it back to her hometown, and then, in time, to Detroit, MI where distant family sponsored them so that they could immigrate. In time, she met and married another Holocaust survivor and moved to southwest Ohio. She had two daughters and, eventually, a granddaughter named Amanda. Amanda is a student in my Holocaust literature class.
Two classes ago, Amanda told me about her grandmother and asked me if she could bring her to class someday. Of course, I said yes. She explained that Maria was suffering from some dementia now, and that she'd bring her mom and aunt to help her tell her survival story, and last Thursday, they came. Maria, her daughters and her granddaughter sat at the front of the room--a real testimony to survival, these three generations. Maria said a little bit, but she mostly relied on her daughters to tell her story. Her presence was powerful for me and my students, turning the things we've read about all quarter into flesh and blood. At one point, Maria rolled up the sleeve of her wool sweater to show my students the number the Nazis had tattooed on her arm during her first hours in Auschwitz.
As she was getting ready to go, one of my kind students presented her with a bunch of flowers she had been thoughtful enough to pick up on her way to class. Maria was so touched by this. She hugged the student and then she made her way around one side of the classroom, shaking hands with the students there and receiving their thank yous. I stood by the door and watched the rest of the class stand, nearly in unison, and move toward her with outstretched hands: each of them wanted to shake her hand and thank her. There was something so moving to me in that moment--something I can't quite put into words; I feel certain that this is a moment that will stay with me forever. Maria hugged me twice before leaving with her daughters. I think she appreciated the visit, and I'm glad for that. Mostly, though, I'm honored to have had the opportunity to meet her and to hear her story, and I'm so grateful that she could come to my class. Sometimes the most educational moments have very little to do with the professor.
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