Hana Weingarten, roz. Wertheimerová

“You are an adult, and so I can tell you this. We were completely naked, without trousers. Five persons lined up in a row like soldiers. We had to walk in front of those Germans who were looking at us and say how old we were and what our occupation was. My mom told me: ´Say that you work in agriculture.´ Agriculture shows strength. I said that I was sixteen. If I had said fourteen, they would not have selected me, and mom said she was thirty-nine. By chance they sent us to the correct side. We got to Hamburg, to Germany, where we worked very hard. We built roads, and we were working for the German army and in factories. What I remember from that time was that I was always hungry and tired. The two things that have never left me.”

“As far as I remember when we took train to Hamburg in July, we also travelled in a cattle car, but it was terribly hot. In every car there was a German who stood on a guard, so the door were open. Suddenly I saw how people lived. I quite forgot how people lived normally. I could see children on bikes, blankets in windows, I could see normal people from the train. It was then I realised that I had forgotten all of my life I had used to have and was fully occupied by the life I had then.”

“After the six years that we have been waiting for the war to end, for us it should have been a reason to celebrate. But it was no celebration. We were so sick and weak that we didn’t understand that the war was over. Many moms, forty-year-old women, died there after the liberation. My mom also died there in May. We were liberated on April 15. I was so sick that I didn’t know what was happening to us. They came there with several doctors; they had no medicine nor food for us. I was there for two more months before I got a little bit better and was able to be on my own. The Englishmen told us they would transport us wherever we wanted.”

“A German arrived and instead of sending us in the gas he said that people who could work should be used in Germany, as German men were in the army and they had a shortage of labourers. They said: ‘We’ll do a selection and will select those who can work and send them to Germany. We can always kill them afterwards.’ All who were between sixteen and forty were to go. I was not sixteen yet, of course, I was fourteen. My mother was forty-one but they didn’t have the documents. My mum asked me: ‘What do you want to do? Do you want to go or do you want to stay here?’ I said: ‘I want to go away.’ But unfortunately my grandmother could not go, as he was sixty and could not say she was forty. I said I was sixteen and my mum said she was forty and in this way we got out of Auschwitz and went to work in Hamburg.”

“When we arrived to Auschwitz, we were in the “family camp.” The transport which had arrived there from Terezín in December was already there. We were the May transport, and they were the December transport. I had girlfriends among them, with whom I shared the room. All of a sudden I could see chimneys, and in my opinion, I was thirteen or fourteen years old, those chimneys belonged to some factory. I knew factories that had chimneys. The girls who had been there since December spoke clearly. They said it was gas, they were burning people there, and they would go there in six months just like the previous transport and we would then follow them. I didn’t know what they were talking about, but I was saying: This cannot happen to me. This war against us cannot go on for so long. We haven’t done anything wrong and therefore I expected every day that the war would end.”

“I myself stayed in Bergen-Belsen till June, until I healed. Then the English sent us wherever we wanted to go. A part of us wanted to go to Sweden but I said I wanted to go to Prague, so they didn’t take us to Prague, but they took us to Pilsen, since Prague was occupied by the Russians, but Pilsen by the Americans. From Pilsen I took a train to Prague. Naturally I had no money, no luggage, but people when they saw me, they understood where I was coming from and many people gave me food on the train. So without any money I travelled to Prague and in Prague I went to Wilson’s Station and from there I walked to Žitná street, where I knew our Mařka lived, the woman who was not Jew and worked with us. She was there indeed and she told me she wouldn’t have recognised me in the street but of course she was like my second mum and took great care of me when I arrived.”

“Everything was all right until the time when Hitler entered Znojmo. We escaped, but we thought that it would be nothing serious and that we would come back again, but it was a mistake. We took very few things. My mom woke me up and told me: ´We are going to Jihlava to our uncle for a week and then we come back.´ We believed it, and my mom believed it too. My mom was a very optimistic person, and we inherited this from her. Obviously, we have not returned to Znojmo anymore.”

“I was a friend with those children, there was the Tchelet Iavan movement where we went. My sister took me there and friends… I remember playing with play-doh. I knew something about Palestine, that it was an interesting country and so on. It was in fact a Zionist movement but I was too small to understand this then. But I also attended physical exercise in Maccabi. We exercised twice a week. And it was nice. We were great friends.”

“I want to talk about something very curious and unusual. We were thirteen grandchildren on the father’s side of the family, and we have all survived. We have survived because only four of us were in Europe during the war, and the others were in Palestine or in other countries where they had emigrated. It was very unusual that out of thirteen cousins, none of us was missing and we were able to reunite after the war.”