Inge the Younger

Transcription

[ Multiple Speakers ] >> 15,000 children were imprisoned at Terezin, a Nazi concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. Inge Auerbacher was part of the meager 1 percent who survived. For years, she suffered from tuberculosis as a result of the terrible conditions during her captivity. She immigrated to the U.S. in 1946, and became a successful chemist and an accomplished writer. She's the author of six books, including <i>I Am a Star: Child of the Holocaust</i>, and has been honored with numerous awards. As the community of survivors dwindles, Auerbacher speaks throughout the world on the Holocaust, tolerance, and human rights. Here's our conversation with Inge Auerbacher. Inge Auerbacher, thank you so much for joining us. >> It's an honor to be with you today. >> Like all stories, yours has a beginning, middle, and an end, and I'd like to start by talking about your life before the Holocaust. >> Sure. I was born in a little village in Southwestern Germany called Kippenheim. Very near the French/Swiss border. A village of about 2,000 people, 60 Jewish families, and I'm the last Jewish child to be born there. And we were a wonderful community. Yes, the Jewish community was a little bit isolated, we took care of ourselves, but it didn't mean that we had not good relations with the Christian neighbors. And there was no real hospital there, it was almost -- closed at that time, so I was born in my own house, in my parent's bedroom, and there was only one doctor. And he wasn't Jewish, and he already belonged to the Nazi party, to the SS actually. But he still took very good care of his Jewish patients. Later on, he did some terrible things, probably the euthanasia program, killing people with mental and physical difficulty, and he was jailed for many, many years, but, to me, he gave me life. I cannot say any bad things about him. >> It wasn't until about 1938 that you started to feel, really feel, anti-Semitism. Describe what that was like in the eyes of a child. Because, by then, you were 4 or 5-years-old. >> Yeah, not even, not even. I spent a great deal of time also with my grandparents, from my, the parents of my mother, in an even smaller village, so I was partially in Kippenheim and partially in that village. And the first real feeling I had of Jewish hatred was in November 9th and 10th, Kristallnacht. The first major riot against the Jewish people in modern times, and the right to place in Germany and in Austria. I was not even 3-years-old. Grandparents came to see us many times. We went there. They came to us. And grandpa was very religious, me, I came from an Orthodox family. Modern Orthodox. Grandpa went to the synagogue in the morning to say his morning prayers, it was November 10th in Kippenheim. It was a two-day riot, and he was taken from his prayers, wearing his prayer shawl, ripped from all of that, and sent to the Dachau concentration camp. Then the police came to our house and arrested my father, and sent him also to Dachau, all boys and men, from the age of 16 on, were sent to concentration camps on November 9th and 10th. By us, it was Dachau. >> And, in fact, your grandfather. Your grandfather and father were actually released from Dachau, which is amazing. >> Yeah, but, yeah, but, what I, what is even more strange, my father fought in World War I. And he was wounded badly, in his shoulder. >> A decorated soldier. >> Yes, he had the Iron Cross. And when he reached Dachau, they said you can throw everything away, it doesn't mean anything, you can throw your cross away. They were treated very badly, they had to give up their clothing, wear the blue and white striped pajamas, no underwear, stand at attention for hours in the bitter cold, and if somebody even wanted to blow their nose, they were hosed down with ice cold water. And at home, back at home, the riot was absolutely terrible. All the Jewish houses and businesses were attacked, all the windows were broken. I was standing with my grandmother and mother in the living room, glass all over the place, and one of the hoodlums looked through the broken window and he said, "oh, the chandelier's still hanging," and he threw a big rock through the window. My mother just pulled me away, and then we were hiding in the backyard shed, until the riot was over. >> Your father believed all of this would, would blow over, while some of your family members actually immigrated to Brazil, your father had such faith and such love for Germany that he thought this would blow over and you would be okay, that all changed in, in 1939. 1938. His, his shop, his business was taken from him. >> Everything. We lost our citizenship. I might have been a citizen maybe 9 months of my life when we became stateless. And, well, and somehow, they were allowed to come home again, my father and my grandfather. My mother had bought some bogus tickets to some South American country, it was really nothing. And she somehow got my father out and my grandfather out of the camp. Yes, out of Dachau. And then, of course, it was quite clear we have to leave. We just were too late to try to get out. >> By then, other countries were not accepting Jews. >> Nothing, nothing. And we probably had a number to come to America, my mother's brother already had gotten into America, to New York, and it might have taken 10 years, the number we had, Brazil was closing up everything, but we still tried. We sold our house at a very cheap price, and moved in with my grandparents, hoping, with all our hearts, to get out. My grandfather didn't want to go. He said, I'm born here, I want to die here. >> And he did. >> And he did. Yes he did. >> You have with you the actual yellow star that you were forced to sew on your jacket in 1941, you were a young, you were 6-years-old? >> I'm 6-years-old. Anybody from the age of 6 on had to wear the yellow star, which came on a yellow sheet, like a cloth, very poor cloth, you had to pay for them. We had to pay for the damage of Kristallnacht, and we had to pay for the trip to the camp, and you still see the thread on it, that I ripped off the star, May 8th, 1945, when I was deported and everybody had to wear their star. >> Your father told you, because you were talking about this long bus ride you were taking to the Jewish School that you were forced to go to. >> A train. >> Train? >> Train ride, yeah. >> By yourself at 6, and your father told you... >> Sit on the, on the left side that you can naturally cover up your star, but there was one hero in my mind. A German woman, a Christian woman, who came up and saw this little girl, she, she didn't want to be just a bystander. So, this is the whole thing about the bystanders. [Inaudible] they are equally guilty, but this woman had a soul, a heart. When she walked out of the train, she put a little bag of rolls next to me. That was my one, number one hero, and I have another one, even bigger than that. My grandmother had a maid who was also her friend for more than 20 years. >> Terese? >> Teresa. She came in the middle of the night to save two photo albums and our set of prayer books, which was very important to us, and a few knick knacks, and when we came back, we said we want to go to Teresa. They said she's no longer alive. When the Americans came through that area, they knocked on the door, they thought everybody had ammunition, they would shoot out, and they shot through the door, killing her instantly. She would even come in the middle of night sometimes. She had a key to the Jewish cemetery, it was locked, and she would put some food behind my grandfather's tombstone. >> So that you could go pick it up later? >> Yes. And I will say in the village of Jebenhausen, a village of 1,000 people, at one time it was 40 percent Jewish, there was a baron who permitted them to settle there over 200 years ago, they had to pay higher taxes, and they had to live in one street, separate from the Christian, but, of course, later on they went together and they went to America, but my family, the Lauchheimer family, were the only family still left in that community. And I will say that the Christians treated us, for the most part, righteously. I had only Christian friends, some of them I still have today. Elizabeth, who was my very first girlfriend ever is still my girlfriend today. Her mother was my mother's girlfriend. >> And she was Christian? >> Yes, absolutely. >> Tell us a, a little bit about life in Terezin, where you, and both of your parents, were, for three years? >> Yes, yes. They were actually the first transports from Rothenburg, where in '41, to a place called Riga in Latvia, and we were in the transport. And my father wrote a letter to the gestapo, the secret police, had pictures taken of his wounds. And somehow we got out, but not my beloved grandmother. Now, in the home state, where I was born, the Jews were taken out in 1940 already, to a place in the Pyrenees, up in France, border of Spain and France, called the Basque region, so all the Jews in Baton [phonetic], the state of Baton, were taken out, so it was clear of Jews. [Inaudible], already in 1940, in October, they were taken there. So, had we been there at that time, we would have been transported. >> It's miraculous that, that you and both of your parents survived. When, when you write in, in three of your books that talk about this experience, 15,000 children, Jewish children were imprisoned in Terezin concentration camp, and of that, perhaps about 100 survived. >> Yeah, a little bit more, but if I can backtrack a little bit, if I may, how such a transport was put together, our transport was very close to 1,200 people, and I was the youngest, I was 7-years-old, and all the little towns would gather their people to make up this whole transport, which was at least 1,000, ours was very close to 1,200, and, which took place in Stuttgart, the capital of Wurttemberg, but before that, they got the people into the places, to take them from there, [inaudible], a bigger city, and we had to assemble in the school gymnasium, open, everything. We were, of course, we got the directive which stated so many things, you can't get out of the transport no matter how sick you are, no knives, no sharp implements, no forks, nothing, and a bed roll, metal dishes, and I remember one of the guards, we had to open everything on the table, he saw I had a little Dutch boy pin, and he ripped it off of me, he yelled in the swabian dialect, [speaking in foreign language], meaning, you won't need this where you're going to. I'm a little girl, 7-years-old, and I had my doll in my arm, I was not going to part with my doll. Because that was a memory of my grandmother, who knew where she was. And he ripped her from me too. He looked inside her hollow body to see if I was carrying anything, and I wasn't, and I kind of fought for my doll back, and he gave her back to me, and that's how I arrived in Terezin. We were on the train for at least two days. It was still a passenger train. Very crowded. You couldn't get out. And we arrived in a little town called Bauschwitz [assumed spelling] and told to drop everything except your bed roll, a little knapsack, metal dishes, and I'm carrying my doll for dear life, and marched into the camp. We had many old people on the -- >> And very few children. >> I don't remember seeing any. I -- maybe there was another one, I don't remember, but I definitely was the youngest in that transport, 7-years-old, and we arrived in Terezin or Theresienstadt, which was actually a fortress town, built around 1780 by Emperor Joseph the Second in memory of his mother, Maria Teresio, it was like an army garrison, built with red brick barracks, red brick walls, barbed wire, and wooden fences, and it was a place where the intelligencia of Europe was sent, the highly-decorated war veterans. The, famous doctors, lawyers, artists, they put them in one place, perhaps to show the world, they're all in one place and nothing's going to happen, but every single person there had the death sentence on their head, every single person. >> You write about the International Red Cross coming, and, and the farce that was created to, to let them, to allow them to leave thinking that things were entirely different than, than reality. >> Terezin was like a place you put cattle. You keep them awhile and then you slaughter them. The next step would be -- >> It was the anti-chamber for, for -- >> Auschwitz, and almost everybody was sent out, after the International Red Cross inspection, which made a theatrical production of the whole place. They printed money, which you couldn't buy anything with it, to signs, to school, to playground, none of these things really existed, even a play was done, and, and they didn't show them the crematory. Now, we didn't have gas chambers there at the time. They were being built. They were not completed yet. Eichmann who was in charge of the Jewish question was there many times, I saw him. Whenever he came, another transport out. And especially after the International Red Cross inspection, almost the whole camp was sent to Auschwitz. Out of the 140,000 people, between 1941 and 45, two-thirds would be shipped to the killing centers, like Auschwitz. Close to a third died there, over 30, about 34,000 died there of malnutrition, disease, I mean, mice, rats, bed bugs, and fleas. Those were our constant companions. Of course. >> And, and, in fact, you contracted tuberculosis in the concentration camps. You suffered from scarlet fever, from measles, from mumps, how you survived is actually miraculous. >> And you know that I actually prayed for this disease. >> For TV. >> Yes, because there was a girl in our compound, most men, women, and children had to live separate, but they could still see each other. That this, disabled war veterans lived in this separate area, very crowded, just like everybody else, but. >> Two door bed, two, if you had a bed at all. >> Well, bunk beds. You know, many people in the room, and for two out of the three years, we shared a tiny room, without a window, with a family from Berlin. They had a daughter named Ruth. Her father was also a war veteran and disabled. He had a limp. >> And she was Christian. >> And, well, the father was half-Jewish, the mother totally, in the eyes of the Nazi's, she was Jewish, but she was brought up as a devout Christian, and she was sent to Auschwitz, that was devastating for me, and she died in Auschwitz as a devout Christian because of her Jewish heritage. And around us, we had children, the, the children of these parents, like mine, we would see one man had his leg missing, or two missing, an arm missing, a bullet wound in the head, still draining, and one girl, we were told don't go near her. She has a terrible disease, but she was getting a little bit more food, maybe an extra piece of bread. And, of course, we played with her, and I prayed to God at that time. I am so hungry. I need to get a little more food, please God, let me have what this girl has. >> Tuberculosis? >> Tuberculosis. >> Which plagued you. >> Yes, for many years, many years. >> In fact, when you finally were liberated, one year later, you and your family made it to the United States. In fact, you talk about that spring of 1945, being reborn. >> Yes, it is May 8th, 1945, May 8th is celebrated every year, wherever I go, all the teachers know already, we celebrate a birthday of my liberation. I lost 8 years of schooling, I never finished -- >> Because of tuberculosis? >> No, not only that. When I started the first grade, I had to go to a Jewish school and travel very far with a train, I did that by myself as a 6-year-old, and -- >> This is in Germany, after liberation. >> In Germany! No, before, before I was sent away, and then it stopped. School stopped after 6 months, but I could read, write, and do a little math already. But, when we came to America, I, I was in the hospital, there was very little schooling in bed. I was in bed for 2 years, hardly ever getting off the bed. Total bed rest, there was no other cure, and that didn't cure me. And finally, my parents took me home. They said, it's enough already. And, I was even sicker right afterwards, and then this new drug came to be. >> Streptomycin. >> Streptomycin, which saved my life at that time, but it wasn't the entire answer either. But, at 15, I started my real school career. I went to college after that and I got sick again. And by that time, I had to leave again another year. I finished high school in 3 instead of 4 years, I didn't want to be the oldest one, and so then new drugs came out, I had to take 26 pills a day, plus two shots of streptomycin, and, of course, I got cured, thank god! >> You've been back to Terezin. What is, what was it like to see that place again? >> The first time I went back was 1966. I wanted to retrace my life. >> You were 31? >> Yeah. And, I didn't tell my parents that I was going to go there, and it looked almost the same as I left it. I found the house, people were living there again. It looked terrible. I've been back many times since then. Today, it is being rebuilt, the whole town is being rebuilt, but it is a very sad town. And I remember it was raining the first day I went back, the first time, and there were children running around, and I, I was devastated. I said, where are the children who were here? >> And I think it was in 2000, Ile Vizel [assumed spelling], spoke before the German parliament, it was the beginning of the Holocaust Remembrance Day, and he said, "I come before you without bitterness or hatred," which, to me, was absolutely amazing, but then he said, he asked them, "why have the German people not asked the Jewish population for forgiveness?" And sometime later, they actually came, he said this would change the world. I, I'd like to talk about forgiveness. >> Right. Well, it, it, that's a very difficult problem. They have asked me, I, for forgiveness, they have. I have many friends today in Germany, and I go every year, sometimes twice, to speak to the point of exhaustion from Berlin all the way down to Trier, the oldest city in Germany, which is the furthest south. Clergy has said, you come back, you forgive us, I said no. I believe that the people who actually did the killing, I, the one who killed my grandmother. >> Shot dead in a forest. >> Yeah, well I went to see those places. It, it was just horrible. I went to see it a few years ago, these mass graves, and for all intents and purposes, I should be in one of them. And Riga the Birkernieki forest has, I think, 52 mass graves between 50 and 80,000 people are in there. It's a memorial now, and I, all my friends are there, my, my grandmother etc. And, I don't think everybody was involved in this, but most were. I believe in reconciliation, especially with the young people, and I speak to thousands over there. My German is still good. And forgiveness of this? No. Of, of the actual people who did it, no. That is, in the Jewish faith, if it is premeditated murder, then only the person who was killed can forgive. Of course, it's a personal thing. But I don't have to be a hater. I have reconciled my life for this, especially with the younger people. >> How concerned are you with the dwindling numbers of Holocaust survivors that we could forget? >> Well, it's, you know, it, it, people can read it in books. They are many films, but, of course, you have the Holocaust deniers today, who can say, well, the books, they're telling stories, it may not be true. The movies, it's Hollywood. And as long as the survivors are still alive, you can touch them, you can ask them questions, and it makes it much more real. Yes, the time will come that there will be none left. And, Spielberg did a very marvelous job in the interviews that he permitted to be done, many, many thousands, I did one too, and, perhaps, that will help. You know, because you hear it from the actual person. >> Firsthand. >> Firsthand. >> Inge Auerbacher, thank you so much for talking with us. >> Thank you so much. >> I hope you enjoyed our conversation with Inge Auerbacher. Comcast subscribers can watch this program anytime on Penn State On Demand. Find out how through our website, conversations.psu.edu, where you'll also find excerpts from Auerbacher's books. I'm Patty Satalia, we hope you'll join us for our next conversation from Penn States. [ Music ] >> Production funding provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by viewers like you, thank you. >> This has been a production of WPSU.