Holocaust Day 2022 / Survival Stories by EuroDemos

HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY 27TH JANUARY 2022

Andra & Tatiana Bucci 'The star of Andra and Tati' is the story told in the first animated short film produced in Europe dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust which tells of two Jewish girls - Tatiana and Andra Bucci.

They are arrested in Rijeka one morning in March 1944 together with all the members of the family who are in the house. Nazis and fascists take everything away. To betray their family (and not only) a person who worked in the synagogue.

The two girls were respectively six and four years old.

Once in the concentration camp they are mistaken for twins: therefore, potentially useful for Mengele's experiments, the "Doctor Death" in the service of Nazi eugenics. They were saved, perhaps, because they were daughters of a Catholic father, or perhaps because a Blockova became attached to them and decided to protect them.

In February 1945, the two girls were released and transferred to an orphanage in Prague. Later in Lingfield, England.

Until in December 1946, after being identified, they were taken to Rome to be reunited with their mother, who also survived Auschwitz.

Since 2004 they have accompanied schools on visits to places of remembrance.

In January 2019 they publish "Noi, bambine ad Auschwitz".

SURVIVORS' STORIES OF THE HOLOCAUST

BY EURODEMOS YOUTH MOBILITY NGO

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HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY 27TH JANUARY 2022

STELLA KNOBEL AND HER TEDDY BEAR "MISHU" Stella Knobel was only 7 years old when she received the teddy bear as a gift from her father Marton, a medical officer in the Polish army.

After Poland's capitulation in 1939, the Knobel family reached Czortków across the newly formed border into Soviet-controlled territory.

A few months after their arrival they were deported along with other Polish refugees when they refused Soviet citizenship.

And then Siberia and the exile in London.

And again as a refugee in Uzbekistan.

Until arriving in Iran in March 1943 where Stella and her mother Anna joined the group of "Children of Tehran" and headed to Eretz Israel to start a new life.

With a basket, five dollars and the Mishu teddy bear.

SURVIVORS' STORIES OF THE HOLOCAUST

BY EURODEMOS YOUTH MOBILITY NGO

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HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY 27TH JANUARY 2022

Buba Weisz Sajovits A-11147. That alphanumeric code was tattooed into her memory, a phrase he would later use as the title of his memoir, "Tattooed in My Memory." Decades later, when he was already over 60 years old, she decided to dedicate herself to painting and soon the images of his past gained more force.

In her hometown of Cluj-Napoca—or Kolozsvár, for its Hungarian-speaking residents—in Transylvania, she was a champion sprinter at her school. On May 31, 1944, she, along with Icu, her parents, Bernard and Lotte, as well as the rest of the Jewish population were deported to Auschwitz in cattle cars, a journey of humiliation and hunger that lasted five days. Buba, who was 18 at the time, saw her parents for the last time on the night they arrived.

Buba was assigned a factory job. This gave her access to extra food rations, which she shared with her cotmates.

Nine days before the Red Army freed the Auschwitz captives, Buba and her sister were among 56,000 prisoners forced to march 56 kilometers in the dead of winter.

She and Icu were liberated from the Bergen-Belsen camp on April 15 by the British Army.

In one of her paintings Buba appears alone, with his head in her skinny arms, the barbed wire still in front of her, the fireplace, still burning behind her, not far from her.

“I wondered what I should do with the freedom that had just been given to me,” Buba thought. "My world had been shattered." What better than this image to understand what life could mean to someone who had lost so much?

SURVIVORS' STORIES OF THE HOLOCAUST

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HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY 27TH JANUARY 2022

Sami Modiano Sami, born in 1930 in Rhodes, at the time an Italian colony, was a happy child, until one morning in October 1938 the world collapsed on him when, following Mussolini's racial laws, he was expelled from the third grade because he was a Jew. Then from a child "who looked to the future" he felt transformed into "a waste to be removed".

After the roundup of the Jews of Rhodes on 18 July 1944, Sami, just turned 14, was loaded by the Nazis with his father Jakob and his seventeen-year-old sister Lucia on cargo boats for livestock, destined for the extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Of those 1,767 people who left Rhodes, only 163 would return.

In the concentration camp Sami lost his sister and then his father, but thanks to the last words of his father “Hold on, Sami! You have to do it! ”, He miraculously resisted until the liberation of the camp from the Russians on January 27, 1945.

For many years Sami has refused to tell the experience of himself, also experiencing a certain sense of guilt for having survived while others have not had the same fate.

Since he started visiting schools he has sworn to let the world know what has happened so that, when direct testimony is no longer possible, it will be up to the young people to play their part in transmitting the message of memory.

He also wrote a book: "Tana Libera Tutti".

SURVIVORS' STORIES OF THE HOLOCAUST

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HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY 27TH JANUARY 2022

Premysl Dobias Premysl Dobias was born in Turnov, Czechosovakia, now in the Czech Republic, near Prague. His only sister still lives there. He had a happy childhood in Turnov and then he studied abroad in France and England. Life changed drastically in Prague after the Munich agreement and subsequent dismemberment of Czechoslovakia.

Although not Jewish himself, Prem noted with concern the measures taken against the Jews. ‘It took place almost immediately, all the Jews had to register and wear yellow bands with the Star of David.’

Prem became involved with a resistance group that was trying to smuggle Jews through Slovakia and Hungary to relative safety in Italy. For this activity, he was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo, then sent for further interrogation in other prisons and eventually to Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.

There, he worked in the infamous quarry, where prisoners weakened by hunger had to climb a flight of 186 steps carrying heavy blocks of granite, while being beaten and hurried along by the SS. Prem was used by the Nazis to test experimental vaccines, and was forced to assist as prisoners were killed with phenol. At one point, Prem found himself selected for gassing in a mobile van. Another friend who worked in the camp office approached the officer in charge, claiming to have an order from the Commandant to release Prem because he was needed as an interpreter. The bluff worked, and Prem was spared.

In the final days of the war, the SS abandoned the camp, leaving it in the hands of the police from nearby Vienna. On May 5th, 1945, Mauthausen was liberated

by American forces.

He then moved to London in 1947.

SURVIVORS' STORIES OF THE HOLOCAUST

BY EURODEMOS YOUTH MOBILITY NGO

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HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY 27TH JANUARY 2022

Maria Ossowski Maria Ossowski was a Polish civilian living in Zakopane, Poland when the Second World War began. During the war, non-Jewish Poles were conscripted into forced labour in Germany and Maria’s parents sent her to live with family in Warsaw in an attempt to save her from being called up.

In Warsaw, Maria and her aunt helped Jewish children by providing them with whatever food and clothing they could. She was suspected of being part of the Polish Resistance and arrested in 1943. She was deported to Auschwitz in May 1944.

Maria dug drainage ditches and was then moved to an outcamp, where conditions were better.

As the Soviet Army neared Auschwitz in January 1945, the camp was evacuated and Maria was taken to the Ravensbrück and Buchenwald too. Shortly after, Buchenwald was also evacuated, but Maria escaped during the journey. She hid in a forest for two weeks before being discovered by farm labourers working nearby.

Disguised in civilian clothing and claiming to be a German refugee, Maria joined the workers until the Soviet Army arrived in April 1945.

After the war, Maria met her husband Alex. Together they joined the Polish Army under British command and the, after the war, they settled in Britain.

SURVIVORS' STORIES OF THE HOLOCAUST

BY EURODEMOS YOUTH MOBILITY NGO

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HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY 27TH JANUARY 2022

Josef Cipin Jozef Cipin was born in Bánovce nad Bebravou, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), in 1934. He and his family experienced rising antisemitic persecution as Slovakia declared independence and aligned itself with Nazi Germany.

So they tried evading the Nazis and hiding out with the partisans.

In 1941, Jozef’s father, a carpenter, was sent to be the lead builder of the Nováky forced labour camp.

In 1942, when the Gestapo caught him up, Jozef was interrogated and deported to the Terezin camp - his mother and two of his sisters were sent to join him as prisoner workers in the same camp.

On August 29, 1944, Jozef and his family were liberated during the Slovak National Uprising by Slovak partisans. He hid with his family in partisan villages and in the mountains.

Eventually, Jozef was recaptured and taken to the Sereď forced labour camp. On March 9, 1945, he was sent to the Kinderheim, children’s home, in the Theresienstadt ghetto and concentration camp, where he was liberated by Soviet soldiers on May 9, 1945.

After living Czechoslovakia, he moved to Canada, where he lives.

He managed to survive the Holocaust and nowadays he is contributing to share his memories to younger generations.

SURVIVORS' STORIES OF THE HOLOCAUST

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HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY 27TH JANUARY 2022

Lucy Salani In 2009, Gabriella Romano wrote the biography “My name is Lucy. Italy in the twentieth century In the memories of a transsexual "and" Being Lucy "are two books dedicated to Lucy Salani.

She is one of the few direct witnesses to the persecutions suffered by transsexuals and homosexuals during the Second World War. Lucy was born in 1924 in Fossano into an anti-fascist family of Emilian origins. Since she was a child she has always felt like a woman.

Here came the call from the army: Lucy Salani tries to escape draft by declaring herself homosexual, but she is not believed. After the armistice of 1943, she deserted and tried to return to her family. After a few weeks hiding in the countryside, she is found by the Nazis.

She declares herself homosexual, but she, hunted down by the Germans and forced to live by expedients, she is captured weeks later and sentenced to death. However, the court grants her pardon, and sends her to Dachau, Germany.

“I stayed in that camp for six months” - says the woman - “and the day the Germans realized it was over they piled us up in the center of the camp and started shooting.

I was wounded in the leg and passed out, the Americans found me among the corpses… And so I returned home to Italy ”.

In 2021, the story of Lucy is drawn with the film "There is only a breath of life".

SURVIVORS' STORIES OF THE HOLOCAUST

BY EURODEMOS YOUTH MOBILITY NGO

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HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY 27TH JANUARY 2022

Irena Sendler When World War II broke out, Irena Sendler was a 29-year-old social worker, employed in the Welfare Department of the Warsaw Municipality.

Irena Sendler took advantage of her position to help Jews, but this became practically impossible when the ghetto was sealed in November 1940.

Assuming great personal danger, she devised methods to enter the Warsaw ghetto and render aid to dying Jews. She managed to obtain a permit from the municipality that allowed her to enter the ghetto to inspect the sanitary conditions. Inside the ghetto she made contact with activists from Jewish welfare organizations and began to assist them. She helped smuggle Jews out of the ghetto and set up hiding places for them.

When the Jewish Aid Council (Zegota) was formed, Irena Sendler became one of the main activists. The organization took care of thousands of Jews who were trying to survive in hiding, finding hiding places for them and paying for their food and medical care.

In September 1943, four months after the complete destruction of the Warsaw ghetto, Sendler was appointed director of Zegota's Jewish Children's Care department. Under the clandestine name of Jolanta she took advantage of her contacts with orphanages and institutions for foundlings to send them Jewish boys. The exact number of children saved by Irena Sendler and her associates is unknown.

On October 20, 1943, she was arrested. She previously managed to hide incriminating evidence, such as the code addresses of the children in Zegota's care and significant sums of money to pay those who helped Jews. She was sentenced to death and sent to the infamous Pawiak prison, but underground activists managed to bribe some guards and get her released. The close encounter with death did not deter her. After being released in February 1944 and despite the fact that she knew that the authorities were still watching her, she continued her clandestine activities. Due to the danger, she was forced to remain anonymous. Because of this she was unable to attend her mother's funeral.

SURVIVORS' STORIES OF THE HOLOCAUST

BY EURODEMOS YOUTH MOBILITY NGO

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HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY 27TH JANUARY 2022

Arek Hersh Arek was attending a Jewish school, as he was a Jew. He had a happy childhood but clearly remembers experiencing antisemitism in Poland.

When the German army invaded Poland Arek's family fled their home and went to Łódz - 65km walking 3 days on foot.

Towards the end of 1941 the authorities came to take Arek's father to a work camp: he was able to survive the camp at Otoschno in Nazi-occupied Poland.

In 1942 Arek was sent back to the ghetto and then taken to a church in Sieradz with other people. He managed to escape to a line of people who were being taken back to the ghetto. His family of him, with the majority of others at the church, were taken to the death camp at Chełmno where they were murdered.

In 1944 the Germans decided to close the Łódz ghetto as the Russian army was approaching. Those in the ghetto were taken on a two-day journey to AuschwitzBirkenau, including 15-year-old Arek who was amongst 185 children from an orphanage.

Upon arrival at Auschwitz, he was tattooed with the number B7608. After this Arek lost his name and identity from him. From that moment on he was only referred to by his number of him.

By January 1945 the remaining prisoners were taken on a forced march which lasted 3 days, with no food and only their striped uniforms as protection against the deep snow and icy temperatures. Those who survived the march arrived Buchenwald. After a few months in Buchenwald Arek and 3000 others were loaded onto open wagons to Theresienstadt - Czechoslovakia. Of the 3000 who had set off, only 600 arrived alive. Arek was liberated from Theresienstadt on 9th May 1945 by the Russian army.

Arek was brought to England in a group of 300 children in August 1945.

SURVIVORS' STORIES OF THE HOLOCAUST

BY EURODEMOS YOUTH MOBILITY NGO

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