Dan Snow's History Hit - Max Eisen: Surviving Auschwitz

Episode Date: January 27, 2020

Max Eisen was only 15 when he and his family were taken from their Hungarian home to the infamous Auschwitz Concentration Camp during the Second World War. All of his relatives were killed; only Max survived to see VE Day and eventual liberation. 75 years on from being liberated, he talks about the unspeakable horrors he saw first hand, the heroic actions of courageous inmates during the Sonderkommando Revolt and how he survived. 

Hello everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. I'm a little bit breathless. You find me a little bit breathless at the moment because I've just climbed up one of the world's longest staircases known as Jacob's Ladder on the island of St Helena in the South Atlantic, hundreds of miles away from the African coast, hundreds of miles away from its other nearest islands

like Ascension and Tristan da Cunha. It was here that Napoleon Bonaparte was famedly imprisoned, and I'm here looking at that history and lots of other history as well. It's here that thousands of liberated African slaves were brought when the Royal Navy captured the slaving ships that were taking them across the New World in the

19th century. So, lots to do here. So, lots of history action here. There'll be podcasts, TV shows coming at you thick and fast. Watch this space. At the top of the steps, I'm sitting in a fort which once housed the king of the Zulus and some of his uncles in the 19th century. So that harks back to the last podcast on your feed, which is Saul David talking about the Zulu War. Zulus continue to be a thorn in the side of the British Empire and necessitated imprisoning these senior Zulus on this island fortress right at the end of the century. But today's podcast doesn't have anything to do with the Zulus. Today's podcast

is the remarkable Max Eisen. We are focusing a lot on the Holocaust at the moment, given that it is the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and Holocaust Awareness Day. Shocking figures out today about young people's awareness of what the Holocaust was, what happened, why it matters. And so in our own little way, we're trying to do our bit as well. So feel free to share this and the other Holocaust podcasts with people in your life who you feel could use a bit of a historical context. This is a conversation I recorded with Max Eisen.

He entered Auschwitz as a child. He lost all of his family members there within seconds, minutes, days of arriving. His story is extraordinary and is typical of the experience of millions of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, Poles and other so-called undesirables in Hitler's Third Reich. You can watch this interview with Max Eisen on History Hit TV. It's like Netflix for history. Just go on there, watch it for free. Use the code POD6 and you get six weeks totally free. While you're there, check out Mary Fulbrook, Professor Mary Mary Fullbrook, talking about the Holocaust, in which she talks about her work, both extraordinarily scholarly and powerful,

and other Holocaust-related documentaries. So please go and check that out, POD6. In the meantime, everyone, here is Max Eisen. What was the last night in your family home like? Well, the last night was a celebration of the Seder, Passover dinner. And the Seder is a Hebrew word

meaning the order of the dinner. And the entire family was dressed in their best. This is 1944. Most of Europe and Judea by that time were all murdered. In Hungary, even though we lived under a fascist system, but we are still living in our homes. My father and uncle were home by some miracle from the labor battalions. Coming from a traditional Orthodox family, Passover is a big to-do. It's a very difficult work for my mother

and for the women especially because the house is turned upside down. Everything is cleaned of bread products and special foods are prepared. And the dinner starts with the youngest child asking four questions. Why is this night different than any other night?

Why do we eat bitter herbs? And the father answers, we eat bitter herbs to remember how difficult it is, it was for the ancient Jews to be as slaves in Egypt. ancient Jews to be a slaves in Egypt. Why do we eat with a cushion behind our back like a king? It's to say that we are free people now and freedom is a very important thing. And there are two other questions I can't recall offhand. And so we went through the entire dinner, and we retired about 12 o'clock. My two younger brothers, I had Eugene, my younger brother was, I guess he was about 10, and Alfred was 6, and my baby sister was about 8 and a half or nine months old. And my paternal grandparents were part of this big dinner and my uncle and aunt. We all lived three

families in this big house and I had other aunts and uncles who lived in nearby towns. And we retired about 12 o'clock and we knew that next morning we'll get up at the leisurely time, and we'll walk to the synagogue, and by this time we all had yellow stars. And I remember out in the yard, it was a beautiful balmy night. My grandfather and my father and uncle were talking politics. My grandfather and my father and uncle were talking politics. My grandfather said, if we manage to survive four to five months, we're going to be liberated by the Red Army coming from the East.

So we were that close, he thought. And that's not what happened, because early morning, our gate was kicked in by gendarmes. Seconds later they kicked in the door to our bedroom and they were in our premises yelling and screaming. You have two minutes to pack a bundle, we are taking you away. And if you have any money or jewelry, hand it over because where you are going, you are going to have no need of this. My mother being a practical lady, she told us kids to put on layers of clothing.

My father said, put on your winter boots. We had custom made winter boots. He went into the quarters of my grandparents to see how my grandparents were doing. My grandfather was 77 and my grandmother was 75. I guess my uncle and aunt were in the far end of this building. It was a terrible moment. It was truly a rude awakening. Hungarian gendarmes are a very crude bunch. They wear black riding boots and they have a big black fedora hat with red rooster feathers

and they have a gun with a two-foot bayonet fixed to this gun. And in this commotion, we had a big Alsatian whose name was Farkas. In Hungarian, Farkas means wolf. He was our protector. He was an amazing friend of mine. And in this commotion, our neighbor comes running in, her name was Ili Klinka, and the shun arms were yelling at her to get out of here. This is not your business. But she stood her ground, and she walked up to my mother, and she said to her, Ethel, where are you taking this baby? Why don't you leave the baby with me?

I can hear this, her asking my mother, and I keep thinking, what was my mother thinking? Would she have left my baby? Would she have survived? We will never know. And we were hustled out from our home and escorted by two gendarmes, like a bunch of criminals to the school where Jews were collected the whole day from outlying farms and 500 Jewish people were sealed off in two school rooms the second night of Passover. And we were, I guess about 15-20 minutes from my home walking to school, took about 15-20 minutes. And we're stuck in these two school rooms, we're not allowed to move out, get out of the room, and it was a horrible night. And young kids, older people whose comforts were gone, whose bed was no longer there, he had a floor to lay down on the floor, I mean it was a horrible

event and all this happened on, it was April the 14th 1944 and it happened that that particular day April the 14th was the, and it happened that that particular day, April the 14th, was the Sabbath and the first day of Passover. And this Passover was again Friday night on the Sabbath, except that this time in 2019, it was on April the 19th, the first night. So this was a horrible event, that this is where it all started. And then we were sort of on a treadmill that we couldn't get off. It just... What did you think was going to happen to you?

Had you heard rumors of what was happening to Jews elsewhere across Eastern and Central Europe? No. In 1944, it was a terrible thing that we didn't know. Not knowing is a terrible thing. And we didn't know what was happening to the Jews just maybe a couple hundred kilometers from our place across the Carpathian Mountains in occupied Poland. It was kept under wrap. The Nazis had a massive apparatus of deception and a ministry of propaganda. We should have had some warnings, but we didn't know. My grandfather, who was a cavalry officer in the First World War,

fighting for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Jews would put down their life for the Emperor Franz Joseph. We heard certain things, but my grandfather said, no, these people would never do things like that. Some horrible things, everybody thought it was not true but not knowing is a terrible thing and so when you were in the school or loaded onto the train what did you think was going to happen well once i was in the train i knew that i was in a box and uh i mentioned in my book that we were taken away in 1942. Hungary deported about 40,000 Jews

whom they said that they were not Hungarian citizens. So when Czechoslovakia was partitioned, my mother's family, my maternal family, were stuck in Slovakia, and we were given to Hungary. So my mother was called a Slovakian, and my aunt, they were both now from Slovakia, and we were picked up in 1942. My grandfather and my grandmother and my Aunt Bella, they were not taken away because my grandfather had all kinds of decorations. He was a bona fide officer. We were on a train for about two weeks and in a place near the Tatar Pass, which you could pass over the Carpathian Mountains into the Ukraine to a place called Kamenets Podolsk. We didn't know what this place was all about. And this is where Hungarian Jews were taken to Kamenets Podolsk

and shot by these Einsatzgruppen, the SS killing units, near the Dester River. So, and in 1944, you're in a boxcar, and I knew and I kept thinking of that 1942 trip, where the doors were not locked. The gendarmes were sitting with us in the cattle car. Their feet were dangling down in the open door, and this time the doors were locked and bolted down, and I knew that there was no way out of here but we have never dreamt oh that we are going to uh face brutal death and gas and all that sort of thing that was nobody ever thought of that tell me about conditions on that train how many how many

days and nights were on the train we were in the train um I believe three nights and four days, or four nights and three days. It was the most terrible condition that you can imagine. It's like you open up a can of sardines and you see how tightly they are packed. And this is how we were packed into a cattle car. There was no way you couldn't move around. You were stuck in one place. I couldn't see my mother holding a baby and other mothers holding their babies in their arms. And my two younger brothers were stuck

among taller people. My father was somewhere else in the cattle car, my grandfather, and I knew that I was totally on my own. And you were rolling with the train. You could hear the clicking of the wheels on the tracks, on the joints of the tracks. It was like a steady clatter, like a machine gun shooting. Click, click, click. And suddenly, these massive people, you fall asleep. You are so tired. And you're rolling with the train,

and suddenly you hear the whistle of the locomotive. And you wake up with a start, and you think that you just had a nightmare and you realize that you're actually living in a nightmare. Initially they gave us a pail of water and a pail for a toilet and that water, whoever was near that water, the water was gone immediately. It was never replaced. The doors were never opened. Imagine the stink, you know, the slop that was sloshing around from the bucket of the toilet, and not being able to

go to the toilet for three days, and four days. It was, two older people died, and we had to keep these bodies, we couldn't dispose of the bodies. I remember when the train came to a stop, because the locomotive needed to have water and coal, and we were screaming for water and water. And gendarmes outside, they said, if you want water, throw out jewelry through the little opening on the cattle car.

So we were fleeced of everything that we had. And we were taken to the brickyard in Kassia. They took everything away from us, but people still had something. They were talking, should we believe him? And they said, look, we need water or we're going to die. So they collected a few rings and they threw it out. And the gendarmes had a cynical laugh and they said a terrible thing. They never brought water.

So somebody was boosted up at one of these stops and he was reading the name on the station and we realized, somebody realized that we were now in occupied Poland. We left Hungary and that was a big shock. We thought that we were going to be resettled somewhere in the east, this is what the Nazis said. See they didn't say we're going to take you to the death camps and shoot you or gas you. take you to the death camps and shoot you or gas you. They said, we're going to resettle you in the east, and you will be working on farms. Families will be together.

And so we now all of a sudden knew that we were in occupied Poland. And then on the fourth night, the train came to a stop. It was being jockeyed back and forth, and I knew sort of in my guts that we had finally arrived. Nothing could be worse than what I've just experienced these four terrible days. And suddenly the doors of the cattle car opened, light flooded in. There was a man in a striped jacket and a cap, and he was yelling at us, Rouse Schnell, out fast. And we just followed, simply followed orders.

You know, we were like a bunch of zombies. Imagine four days stuck in one spot. We were practically stuck to the floor in this mess. And people started to move around like larvae in a cocoon, you know. Trying to find their bundles in this mess on the floor. And they keep yelling at us, don't worry about your bundles, you'll have it delivered. You see, the deception worked 100% on this platform. They knew exactly how to process Hungarian people, Hungarian Jews. So we are on the platform, There's a terrible smell of burning flesh in the air.

There was darkness beyond the platform. This was all lit up. I could see thousands of little lights all over and I thought that I was in some kind of a big industrial area because I could see flames coming from behind me. industrial area because I could see flames coming from behind me, two or three chimneys, flames and selection began. We were separated. Everything went fast in an orderly fashion. This is what one of the SS guards who was on the platform when Hungarian Jews were brought in 1944, I was at his trial in Germany in Lüneburg in 2015.

He said we had to do everything in an orderly fashion because at times from Hungary there were three transports sitting on the tracks inside Birkenau, Auschwitz. So no goodbyes were said. Selections, they said, my mother with a baby in her arm and my two little brothers and my grandparents, my aunt, they were sent to the left. And my father and uncle went in front of this SS officer. He said to the right. and I came in front of him. He looked at me. He sent me to the right. How old were you? I was 15 years old. We had no idea what this was all about. All I could see, SS soldiers. I've never seen

soldiers like this in my life. I've seen the Czechs, I've seen Hungarians. These were a crude lot, you know. I remember seeing the skull and crossbones on their caps and helmets. And these were the units of the Totenkopf Division who were in charge of handling the Jews from all over Europe. So my father, Nagra, and I, we were now in the clutches of an SS We were now in the clutches of an SS guard unit and we were processed. We were taken to a barrack. We had to get undressed. They took away our clothing and the only thing we were allowed to keep were our boots.

Next stage was they cut our hair and the next stage was a shower, and from there we were taken to a wooden barrack, and we were put into triple-tier bunks. And this was a—I've never seen a triple-tier bunk in my life in this type of a barrack. And I was able to lie down after standing for all these days and nights on wooden planks. And, you know, it was a wonderful thing to be able to lie down and get up and get off your feet and early morning I was yelling and screaming Roush now the bunks were being hit with these truncheons men in striped outfits and I couldn't understand what am I doing in a place where all with all

these criminals who wear striped outfits because as a child I knew that if you committed a crime, you were put in jail and you wore a striped outfit. We didn't know. We were hauled out in front of the barrack. This was May 18, I guess, or 12. It was a beautiful bright morning and I am looking at this huge place of hundreds of barracks and I see guard towers all over the place. And I'm looking back and I see four chimneys with flames and smoke and the sights and the smells, guard dogs barking and harsh orders being given.

And I couldn't figure out what this was. I could see emaciated people behind barbed wire fences. And we were all naked. Two men in their striped outfits, they brought a canister of liquid. office, they brought a canister of liquid. We were given metal dishes. It was called a shisel. Once you were given a shisel, it was yours. Some people received a smaller one, others received a bigger one. That became a big fight eventually, because if you had a small shisel, that was your ration, your portion. And they ladled out a portion of tea, it was some kind of a herbal tea. This was my first drink of liquid in four days. And my father asked these two men in these strapped outfits,

are we going to see our parents today? Because everything on the platform was said. They're going for disinfection. in these striped outfits, are we going to see our parents today?" Because everything on the platform was said. They're going for disinfection, you will see them in the morning, see this deception worked perfectly for them. And we believed it, and so they asked my father, where did you come from? He said, we just arrived in the middle of the night from Hungary. He said, in 1944, you don't know what this place is all about? And they said, your families have

gone through the chimney. And I kept thinking, how does a person, why would a person go through a chimney? I think my father and uncle got it, what was going on, and I knew it within a few hours. I realized what this place was all about. So this was our initiation into that life. We were given tattooed numbers and striped outfits, and we were no longer a human being. We were a slave laborer working for the Nazis. And they asked for people who can do farm work and we came from a farming area and my maternal family had a big farm. So my father and uncle, we put up our hands because

my father said, well, on the farm we'll probably be able to have some potatoes or beets or turnips. About a hundred of us were selected out and marched down to Auschwitz I. And we came to this big gate and they were, all these SS guards, they were brimming, they were right in front of the gate. It was like a fortress, it was being guarded. The gate was always loaded with SS guards, there was a lot of action there, units coming out, units going back. They were being guarded by guards. guards and there were brick buildings, two-story brick buildings, and it was probably one or two o'clock in the afternoon where we marched through this gate.

It was a strange world and we were taken to a barrack. And a little while later a kapo arrived. He was a small guy. He was a German psychopathic killer, his name was Hermann, he introduced himself and he said from now on if you don't follow my orders you will either be beaten to death or whatever, but you'll die from hunger or from beating but you'll surely go to the gas chamber. This was our initiation.

Can I ask, were you overwhelmed by the news that your siblings, your mum, your grandparents had been killed? I mean, how did you process that trauma whilst you were still going through this terrible thing yourself? Well, by the next day, we knew what happened to them. There was no time to grieve because you were on the edge of a razor blade here every second. Once this hermit took over, he was a couple

of this unit of 100 people. And my father and uncle were truly my guardian angels there for the next two months. They kept me going. I mean, to be parachuted in into a place like this, how do you get acclimatized? There's no easy way to get used to the way of life here. It's a difficult life. You work 10 to 12 hours hard labor, and you have to do with a lot of strangers who were there a few months before or a year before, and people here would kill for a crumb of bread, and these things were shocks that hit me.

I mean, you received a little bit of a portion, and if you didn't watch it, somebody would steal it from you, grab it out of your hand. So we knew, and there was no time to grieve. You had to be focused every second of how you're going to survive from second to second, how you're going to put one foot in front of the other? And you lived on a 300 calorie diet and your clothing was a striped pair of pants, a striped jacket and a cap, you had no underwear, no socks, you didn't have an extra t-shirt, no toilet paper, toothbrush, you didn't have a locker. You had a bunk. And all these things are starting to play havoc with your body. You're on a liquid diet, a cup of tea in the

morning. I think the worst thing was every morning you had to get out of your bed, I think it was about six o'clock. You got your cup of tea and you ran down in front of the barrack and there was a bell counting. This was morning and night. So on a good day, can you imagine counting about 30,000 slave laborers? Every barrack, the couples lined us up, five in line in a military fashion. We had to space out the distances. And you had to stand there in a military fashion. And a couple, if you didn't follow orders, if you didn't line up, it was a vacuum in the back of your head.

And on a good day, it could take maybe an hour and a half. And then they were all tabulated. There was a Lager Schreiber. A Lager Schreiber is a writer who collected all this information. He was a Polish political prisoner. His name was Cyrankiewicz. After the war he was liberated and he survived. He became the first prime After the war, he was liberated and he survived. He became the first prime minister in Poland. So if there was a person missing, if the count wasn't right, you could stand there for three to four hours.

People would simply drop dead just standing there. Standing was a terrible thing. So lunch was, we were out on the field. The first day, we were taken out about five, six, seven kilometers. They were scythes. What a scythe looks like, a farmer would cut with a scythe, wheat. This is what we had to use. Some of these scythes, the blades were small, some were lead-bag. It was a fight who is going to grab a small one.

You really had to push your way through. You really had to fight for every advantage that you could have. They gave you a sharpening stone. These were Erzat stones. They would break very easily, and the commandant, we had a commandant who was an SS sergeant, he said if you break the stone you'll be shot on the spot, because that's sabotage. And lunch was half an hour, we received some swap that brought out these containers. It was

called a Kessel. Soup stank to high heaven and it was mostly liquid. Imagine a hundred people lined up for this canister, for this ladle of soup, and you get to know a few days later that the thick part is on the bottom of the soup. If you don't know the guy who ladles, those that know the guy who does the ladling, he'll go down to the bottom and give you maybe a little thicker stuff. They try to figure it out and you get a whack on your head. You stand there and you receive your ladle. I said, I'm not going to eat this this was just awful my father practically crammed it down my throat

you know three four days later the soup taste of pedigree the trouble was it wasn't enough so my first day impressions and you waited sometimes it was some left over and I said repeat repeat, repeta, means repeat, that you could line up and get a little bit more. So those that were, could fight hard, they would get up front. Everything was a fight here for every little bit of extra food. And when it was all gone, I mean, two or three people would try to dive in into this castle, into this container, into this

container with their heads. It was so horrible. I said, I will never do this. It was such a terrible action. Eventually, you get used to all these things. The first few days were a shock. Then you march back to camp about seven o'clock and you receive your dinner, which is a cup of Erzatz coffee and a thin slice of bread and a tiny square of margarine.

And this is your diet, about 300 calories. And imagine what your body is like, you can see your body fast disappearing right in front of your eyes. You have no socks and your heels. I was lucky to have my boots, but you know my boots got soaked and wet during the day. Then we had to drain swamps and you had to save your boots because your boots were the most important thing. Once your boots were gone you received a pair of wooden clogs. And you had to tie them. I tied my shoelaces, my boots, around my wrist, and I used that as a pillow so people wouldn't, they would try to steal my boots, I would know.

But in the morning these boots are hard as a rock, and you have to get your feet into it. And your heels are bloody wounds and you need to deal with all these things. Cutting, you know, with a scythe, the blisters, both hands were full of blisters and they were breaking. Your hands were flush and blood and you couldn't run to a doctor, there was no such thing. You had to deal with all these things bite the bullet and keep on going and for two months my father and uncle we were and i were together and then they were selected out one night and never saw them again after that

why were they selected well because, because this is July. Tens of thousands of slave laborers were worked to death in huge German factories all around Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II. There were ammunition factories and constructions and all that sort of thing. So they knew that the Russian army was coming, and so the German companies, they loaded their equipment, sent it back to the fatherland, so if there's no more work, then we don't need all these bodies, we're not going to feed them these 300 calories, and the selections were in the middle

of the night. So it went like this, you're sleeping the sleep of the dead, and suddenly the loudspeakers come on, powerful loudspeakers, and you have this reflex action that you fly right out of your bunk, and it says, Achtung, Achtung, all prisoners, run down naked and follow the others to this barrack for selection. And we all knew what selection was. We knew it was certain that my father and my uncle and I, we were separated by that time. They were in a different barrack than I was. And I didn't know what happened to them. Next morning before, appell before lining up, I ran to their barrack and they were not there.

I had to go to work and I came back at night and they were still not there. I ran to the quarantine. There were several quarantine barracks that were quarantined off inside Auschwitz I. And these were people who were taken eventually up the road or to the gas chambers in Birkenau, Auschwitz II. And I happened to see them, and I was yelling the name Eisen, and my father and uncle came to the wire, to the fence, and we had no time to talk. My father gave me a blessing because the guard from the tower was yelling. I was past the trip wire.

He said, if you don't move, I'll shoot. And my father gave me a blessing, and he told me that if I manage to survive, I need to tell the world what happened here. I was devastated. I knew that this was the end of my family. So about 25 years ago, somebody who went to work as a volunteer to process documents in Auschwitz Museum archives found this document where my father and uncle's names are on this document.

They were selected out for Streptococcus hemolyticus by pharmaceutical companies. It doesn't say pharmaceutical companies, but this is what they were selected for, never to be seen again. You see, they were injected, the process when they were injecting these people with all kinds of bad things, they produced pharmaceuticals. And this happened in July the 9th, 1944, and I was alone in Auschwitz I. So there was a terrible partying, and here in the men's camp, nobody would take you under their wing. Everybody was out there for himself, because your life was that difficult. You had to be so focused. I was very lucky that my grandfather and my uncles who were farmers,

especially my grandfather who hammered into my head, he gave me so many work skills and life skills, and I think those things helped me survive Auschwitz. Actually, after my father and uncle were gone, about a week later I had a terrible beating by an SS guard out in the field, and he hit my head with the butt of his gun, and I was bleeding and couldn't stop the bleeding. And I went into shock and I was thrown into a ditch. You know, you lose a lot of blood and you are done.

I remember the under couple was a Polish political prisoner. He came to me in the ditch and my head was still bleeding and he tore off a piece of my jacket and he told me to urinate on it and he put it on my wound and it stopped the bleeding. There's something in urine that would stop the bleeding. That saved my life, but I kept thinking, I'm done. Once you lost your legs, you were useless. I remember the commandant, Sergeant Kunz was his name.

He was an Austrian. He was about six foot five with a big Luger pistol on his right side and a cigarette in his mouth. He looked at me in the ditch and he said this sign. This sign meant that you're going up in smoke. I knew that it was only hours or minutes before I'm going to be taken to the gas. So at the end of the day, they put me on a two-wheeler that carried all the tools, shovels and pickaxes, brought back to camp. This Stasek, the under couple, he got two other inmates to take me to barrack 21, which

was the surgery department. And there was a ward upstairs. And this was a… They had a surgery simply because they brought the International Red Cross and showed them, look, we take good care of our workers. It was part of the reception that Nancy used. The two surgeons were two Polish political prisoners. One was a doctor, he was a chief surgeon, and his assistant was a doctor, and they operated

on me and I was put up in the ward upstairs, and the next day, I remember this doctor coming and looking at me, and my head was all bandaged up with paper bandages, and the thing was that if you couldn't walk away on your own feet, two days after, that's all you had is two days in the ward. You were loaded on a stretcher and taken to the gas up to Auschwitz II. And I was loaded, and as they took me through the middle of the barrack, there was a hall, the doors, Dr. Rzeszko took me off the stretcher, brought me into the prep room, and gave me a lab coat, and he said, you'll be the cleaner. And why did he choose you?

Well, I keep thinking that in the ward upstairs, there were two doctors, two Jewish doctors. One was a Polish-Jewish doctor, and one was a French-Jewish doctor. And there was a medical student who was working in the surgery, who was sent to Auschwitz for one year, and he was going to be going home a week after I came in there. So I think somehow the discussion between the two doctors and Dr. Rzeszko, maybe that I didn't find anything out, but this is what I assumed that happened.

Because that medical student was there for a few days and then he was let go. This happened to Polish political prisoners. They said that his crime was just, he was sent to Auschwitz for one year. So I think this was it, but they saved my life and I worked there in the operating room for six months. That saved my life. I ran the operating room. I was 15 and a half years old.

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that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Every time I talk to a Holocaust survivor,

a camp survivor, there's always a story like that. Virtually no one seems to have survived just hard labor, hard labor, because those people tended just to die of exhaustion or beatings. You see, I think Primo Levi, who was an Italian Jewish survivor, he said, unless a door opened for you, you couldn't crawl out of this netherworld. And for me, that opening was this beating that I received from this SS guard, you see. I got into the operating room through the wound, and my life changed because

I didn't have to work outside under a capo, and my rations were more improved. didn't have to work outside under a kapo and my rations were more improved. There were different layers of inmates in the camp. There were Polish political prisoners, they were the first ones there, they were called the prominent people, and it was a fight for survival, you know, it was a seniority kind of a thing. And anybody who had sharp you know elbows you had to fight for every second for everything that you uh otherwise you didn't make it you know you had to be uh resilient and you had to be uh you had to put one foot in front of the other and you you could never give up you know so these events are 75 years ago now and yet you describe them so vividly, like the time saying goodbye to your father through the chain link fence. Is that do you still remember that? Is that because you've retold the story so many times? I wrote my book of the pictures that I see in my head, you see. And this is the way I figured out how am I going to write a book.

I wrote a book through the pictures, you see, and this is what I tell students. I'm a storyteller and I think my long-term memory is is um very good i remember things very vividly and sure i talk about it a lot i mean uh this is what i talk about but uh it's um you will never forget it so um and tell me i know you had lots of experiences in the surgery, but can you tell me about when the attempt was made to destroy the incinerators, that moment in the camp when you felt the energy that you might be able to rise up against the Germans? Well, one of the crematorium gas chambers was blown up. By the Jewish inmates?

It was called the Sonderkommando. These were the people that worked there. And Sonderkommando, Sonder means special unit. These people were living in the attic of the crematoria. They were selected and their lifespan was 60 days. They were rotated. After 60 days, they were gassed

because they made sure the Nazis that this would never get out into the world or what was going on there. And so I remember there was a big alarm. The sirens were going when this breakout happened. Out of I don't know how many hundreds that managed to break out, they were all shot. They had to run through three and they were called postenkette, like chain links, like you know when you

throw a little pebble into a lake and you see that there are rings and this is what Auschwitz was guarded with three chains of guards with all kinds of implements, you know, and patrol. And a few managed to get through into the forest. I heard about four. The rest were all shot. And in November, all the three gas shimmers in Birkenau were blown up. And that was a sigh of relief because I knew now that it will

not die from gas but there was many other ways that they could kill you still you know but you after that breakout you witnessed the execution of the of the women well the execution of the men was in January the 6th, 1945. There was a German company, it was called the Union Ammunition Works. There were many women who were working there from Birkenau. So these women were smuggling out explosives. They were working in the Palwer Pavilion. This is Palwer with explosiveosive Pavilion, you see.

They managed to bring out explosives in the hams of their addresses, collected it, and it was somehow thrown into the Sonderkommando through the fence. And they built some little Molotov cocktails from this, or some explosive grenades. And the Nazis, they were able to, they had a DNA for all the explosives and they could tell right away where it was manufactured. It led them to Union ammunition work, which was just outside Birkenau. They probably grabbed four girls and they tried to get it out of them. They were beaten to a pulp.

These were not necessarily the four girls. These were just four girls. They were going to beat the heck out of them. They would say, look, I didn't do it. Somebody else did, but they didn't. We had to witness this on January 6, 1945, when they knew that they were finished. They were sending us a message that we are still the bosses here, you know. We are the people. It was a message and I will never forget that. The four girls, they were black and blue. They stood on the yellows

and tall and they each said two Hebrew words, Chazak ve'ematz. And thousands of us had to watch this, which meant be strong and of good courage. And that was such a moment. There was a groan that just, I can remember this hum. And I think the deputy commander who was watching this, his guard, his Pra his Victorian guard, hustled him out right away.

As his guards, they took up their guns and their dogs and they just pushed us back away and get out, get out. And that moment passed. I will never forget that. I think about it how these brave four girls were not thinking of their death. They were trying to tell us to be strong and brave. So this was a very cruel, I mean, a system. And the people who did this, I don't know.

It's hard to imagine how people can kill and kill and kill. Could you tell me about the death march when the Soviets were approaching? Well, the death march I left on January the 12th, 1945. We could hear artillery barrage from a distance. There were fires all over Auschwitz I. They were burning information. Every person that had a tattooed number, they kept perfect records. They had this idea that Ordnung muss sein, the order must be.

So we had a tattooed number. They kept perfect records. They were burning all these cards by the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands. So there were fires burning and they were getting ready. And I could see this. I knew that this is the end. How is it going to end?

I thought that they'll simply blow us up or kill us all. So that's not what they did. They forced us through the gates. It was a dark night. I remember magnesium flares were dropped from somewhere. I think maybe it was a Russian plane. I don't know. We marched through the gate and we started to march in this bitter cold snow. We were marching for three days or three and a half days. Day and night, no stop, without a stop.

Five of us had to hook our hands together. And imagine keeping about 28,000 people in a column. They were, you know, they were slowing down and I realized that I cannot be in the back of the column because they were just picking them up. They shot them on the spot. And then we were put into open boxcars that carried coal, and we were put into these open boxcars,

and we were on another nine days, so in total it was 13 days. We left Auschwitz on January the 12th, arrived in Mauthausen in Austria on January the 25th. It was bitter cold. I remember the train came to a stop at a station about the 11th or 11th day after we left. It was not a crumb of bread given to us, no food. The catching snowflakes tried to hydrate yourself a little bit. Over 70% of the people didn't make it. They froze and

they simply dropped. So the train came to a stop. It was getting dark, probably about five o'clock. This was January. I didn't know where we were. Everything was blacked out. This was the system during the war. Everything was blacked out. The trains wouldn't run at night because the locomotive would send sparks through the chimney. They were being picked up by allied fighter planes. So everything came to a stop. There was a big bombing raid in the middle of the night. I remember Shrapnel hitting the side of the cars. Next morning, I was able to look around and I see the name on the station was Pilsen, Czechoslovakia, occupied Czechoslovakia.

We are there. I don't know how many cars, we had a tremendous amount of cars. And SS patrols were patrolling all around us. And there was a commotion behind me, about five, six cars behind me. And there was an overhead bridge that people could go across over the railway tracks. And there were Czech people with bread baskets throwing chunks of bread into the train, into these boxcars.

And I tell you, seeing that alone, I mean, I think it gave me three months to go. That was such an uplifting moment, even though I couldn't get a piece of bread. So the SS guards were yelling, don't throw bread, these are Jews. The Czechs simply kept throwing bread and they took off their schmeissers, their submachine guns and they sprayed the bridge and the people ran away.

I will never forget that because a few days later, the train came, our journey came to an end. It was January 25th. We had to get out of these boxcars and there was a big river and ice flow was going down and somebody said this must be the Danube. Ice flow was going down the river and there was a big bridge and I thought this is it, they're going to line us up and shoot us. The train couldn't go across the bridge because the bridge was damaged by Allied bombings.

That was a feat to get over missing railway ties. Many people were falling through the cracks into the ice floor. They never made it. Then we're going uphill and we come to a beautiful town. I could see the name Mauthausen, and I'm looking around, this was the first time in nine months that I saw civilians. You know, nine months incarcerated by the Nazis was like nine million years, you know, I thought that I'd been there forever.

I see the beautiful homes with sparkling windows, with curtains, and I thought, my God, you know what we looked like. We were black and a stinking mess, black from frostbite. And I thought that if I could get into one of these homes and have a bath, I would die happily. And then I see three young women pulling sleighs on the sidewalk. It was a lot of snow. There were children bundled up with rosy cheeks, knitted hats and scarves. Their eyes were bugged out looking at these

monsters walking in the middle of the road. The women that were young women that were pulling the sleighs, they looked the other way. They didn't want to see us. It was such a juxtaposition between Pilsen and Mauthausen. We didn't know what was going on here. As we go on, we pass through this town, we are near a mountain of granite and I see people hacking away with chisels on the side of a sheer mountain. I said, oh my God, is this what we're going to have to do in your own Mauthausen?

They had the granite. That's where they were. They had 110 steps to go up, and the punishment was they had to carry a slab of granite and go up and down until they dropped that. So I was in Mauthausen for four days and there were four horrible days. They were put on the train and sent to a camp for milk. It was on the Danube.

Did you want to go on living? Why did you, how did you put one foot in front of another? I would never give up. I don't know. I just had this urge that I want to go on and I kept my mind going all the time, looking at things.

And I remember in Melk, it was an old cavalry barrack from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. On the other side, a distance away on a hill, was the biggest Franciscan monastery in Melk in Europe. And I always kept looking at the beauty of this building. I mean, these are the things that kept my mind going. The next day they loaded us into a unit and we marched down to the railway tracks. The Danube, the river was busy. Boats were hauling people from Vienna.

They were running away from the Soviets and they were running towards the Americans. We were put into cattle cars and taken to the work, to the tunnel. There were six shafts that they were drilling into the mountain. These were huge shafts. The locomotive would push in several cars that were building aircraft parts. And I was given one of these electric drills and we were drilling the shape of the inside of the tunnel. Sort of cutting steps and I was right on top and I got this huge electric drill that was

working on air and it was shaking me and I couldn't lift this. And there was a toad organization, a civilian organization who were doing the manufacturing or the digging of these tunnels and I said I can do this it's okay he gave me a job to collect all the bits that broke it was terrible work and so it saved my life I didn't have to do this work and I was I got so sick there in milk I got the first time that I was really down so sick there in milk I got the first time that I was really down and out I had must have had a stomach flu and I couldn't eat and I had diarrhea and and I was taking these drills out to the

smitty to the blacksmith was out in the yard and he was welding these and I told him I have I'm really sick and he said eat charcoal. And I was eating charcoal for two days. And on the third day finally the poison left me. So you read it in the book. There were always some people that sort of helped me move myself ahead, you know, gave me a helping hand and otherwise you couldn't exist, you know. And tell me about that last camp, the conditions there right in the last days of the war.

Well, the camp was Ebensee. It was in a plateau. Avon's Day is a lake. And this is now, we arrived at the beginning of April, 1945. There was no more work. I mean, the Reich was finished. And they shut the camp and they didn't give us our rations anymore. And typhus broke out. We were infested with lice and there was no medication and no water. People were simply dying by the thousands. And I had, I got typhus and I had very high fever.

I was in the lower bunk. I couldn't get up to the second, to the middle. May the 6th, somebody shuffled in, in his wooden clogs, a skeleton. I mean, we were all skeletal by now. He kept saying that the guards are no longer in the towers. And I tell you, I couldn't move, but I knew that if I don't get out of this bunk, I don't crawl out, I will never make it. And as I write in my book, I woke up from my fever dream.

There were a few men sitting around a little pot-bellied stove, and I could smell something was cooking like meat. That smell of meat made me even sicker. Once your life is hanging by a thread, your life is ebbing away, you don't want to smell food or eat food. It made me so sick. This was maybe a day or two before the Americans arrived. So I crawled out to the latrine in the back of the barrack. That's where the bodies were thrown in.

I saw a lot of bodies with pinched out a little bit of muscle on their buttocks because there was no meat on any one of these bodies. There was some muscle left and they were pinched out. I realized that these people were cooking this from dead bodies. This is how people try to survive. I crawled out from my bunk and I could hear some heavy equipment grinding away and I could see there was a white flag flying over the gate and suddenly the gate came flying in and the big tank is coming through and a white star on it and there were

black soldiers sitting on the turret and this was May the 6th, 1945. This tank unit was called the 761st Black Panther Tank Battalion. They were attached to General Patton's Third Army. I will never forget their eyes. They were in total shock. They came through the Battle of the Bulge. This was the first camp they liberated. Ebensee, Gunskirirchen and Mauthausen so these were fighting men

and they were in this hell hole you know in May of 1945 there were thousands and

thousands of bodies who were rotting you know we couldn't smell it because we lived with this

but these guys you know they were in total shock. Their eyes were like saucers. And I had the good luck to meet up with Johnny Stevens, who was the head of the squadron of tanks. And they radioed because the war was still on for two more days. And another unit came, the 48th U.S. Infantry Division, and there was liberation day for me.

It came the 40th US Infantry Division and there was liberation day for me. I tell you, I was liberated, but you know, I can't say that I was free because I was down and out. The Americans tried to do the best they could, but how do you deal with thousands of people who are dying and half dead? And when they gave us food, it killed us. They cooked up a stew. They brought army kitchens and army nurses, these beautiful girls. They had to pick us up. We were so filthy.

Our skin was like the skin of a snake. We were being DDT'd. We were full of lice. They cut off these rags and they put us down into army cots. And it was the first time in months that I was sleeping on a canvas cot. Why did the food kill people? Well, we had no stomachs left, you know. We had no intestines. We couldn't process protein.

It was the worst thing that you can give to a person who is half gone, whose system is totally shut down. The irony was that we are dying from starvation. Now when they gave us food it killed us. It took me three years until I could process food you know the proper way and it plays you know you work with such adrenaline when you are in a camp. I mean, to survive from second to second. And I guess all of a sudden it is a lot of, it took me three years to become a normal person, both physically and mentally.

In Marienbad, I was in this orphanage. So on V-Day, you were how old? I was 16. And how many family members were left that you knew about? Well, I had to make my way back home to Czechoslovakia. I had nowhere else to go. And coming home, I knew that there would be nobody there. It would be a miracle.

And I was hoping that my Alsatian would be there in Farkas. The farmer gave me a lift for the last few kilometers and I could see my home from a distance of about a kilometer away. I mean that house, that home, it seemed to me I was away for a million years. It was such a busy place a year before, three families. My paternal grandparents, my uncle, and aunt, my family. Chickens, geese, and ducks were roaming around. We had a huge orchard of fruit trees. We had a big outstation and two fox terriers. I'm coming closer, it's a dead place, and I open the door to my mother's kitchen and there's a neighbor sitting there. I was a sight that you couldn't imagine.

I was wearing a Hitler Youth shirt, and corduroy breeches, and Americans found a huge warehouse full of Hitler Youth shirts, because they couldn't give us any clothing, you know, that was the only thing that, and I told her who I was and she was not happy to see me. You see, when we were taken away on that first night, after we finished our Passover dinner, that truly, for my family, was the last supper, never to be repeated again. Land a Viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories

that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. The next day, the exodus of 500 Jews from my town, and out of 500, 480 didn't come back. Less than 20 returned, survived. Only one mother with two teenage daughters.

So here I am in this home where a person wouldn't give me a glass of water. How do you pick up the pieces, you see? And I went through all kinds of trials and tribulations. I wound up in a hospital. I had pleurisy. In 1948, I had three years in this orphanage. My friends, my family were 40 boys who were all orphans from Hungary, Romania, Poland, Slovakia.

Then the communists took over overnight in 1948, in September or so, and we knew that we had to get our backpacks and get the heck out of Czechoslovakia. Can I ask? You said it took three years to recover your body and mind. How is that possible? Surely it takes a lifetime.

Are you ever fully recovered from an experience like that? Abdulaziz M AlhamdanI Well, I think I recovered. Many people have not many people. I hear all kinds of stories, many survivors wouldn't tell their story what happened to their children. And perhaps that was a mistake. And, a mistake. I had a wonderful life. Marienbad was such a beautiful place, the beauty of the place. I became a normal person. I was reading books, all the classics in Czech.

We had a lot of fun and I arrived in Canada. I was 20 years old. I got off the ship in Quebec City and I kissed the ground. I knew that I was home. I had less than a dollar in change in my pocket and I was put on a train and sent to Toronto. So out of 80 people of my family, only three of us survived. A cousin from my father's side, a cousin from my mother's side. So the happy ending, perhaps, I mean, that was a sad ending, a terrible ending. But something I didn't know.

And you know, my book, the title of my book is By Chance Alone. So it took me years and years to write this book. I've tried everything. I couldn't sit down and discipline myself to write this story. And finally I realized thousands of students were asking me, Mr. Eisen, did you put it down? Finally, I said, okay.

So my memoirs, I had my memoirs finished, and I was going to March of the Living in 2015. I sent it to HarperCollins, and the editor, Jim Gifford, was with me in Auschwitz about 12 years ago. And I kept sort of in touch with him. I said to him, Jim, I have my memoirs. I'm going to send it to you by click of a button. And I'm going on a march of the living.

I'll be back in two weeks. a button and I'm going to the March of the Living, I'll be back in two weeks. I just want you to tell me whether it's worth anything for a book or not. He said, well, I'll have to look at it, send it. So two days later I had an email from HarperCollins that they would be honored to publish my book. I tell you, I just about flipped. So I went on the march of the living, and you go through the process of signing a contract and publishing a book. It's a big, big job.

So a year later, in 2016, after it was launched, I had a phone call from New York, and this fellow said, my name is Josh Eisen. He said, I just picked up your book on Amazon. And he said, we are cousins. He says, his grandfather and my grandfather were brothers.

I said, how? He said, well, look, I'll be in Toronto tomorrow. I'll bring the family tree. So he brought a family tree. I didn't know that my grandfather had six siblings who emigrated to the States in 1919. Nobody told me that. So he brought me all this information. A year later in 2017, we had a gathering in Manhattan.

Ninety-eight people of my grandfather's siblings, three and four generations, came to this gathering. You see, by chance alone, it was, everything was by chance alone, really. It is such a, had I not published this book, had I not written it, I would have never found out that there's a large batch of Isons living in the States. So... And so Josh went to Europe, and he found a headstone of our great-grandfather.

It's in a town. And, you know, many stones in Jewish cemeteries are gone, or broken down, or sunk into the ground. This one is standing there. Beautiful. You can read it. He was buried in 1906. His name was Jacob Eisen. And my uncle, my father's brother, was named after him. And my uncle, my father's brother, was named after him. You know, Hebrew names are after sometimes the grandfather or great-grandfather. So this is a good ending to this story. Do you look back with hatred at the people who did those awful things to you and your family? No, I don't. I never had this hatred.

I came to this country. We left Europe. We left all this terrible package behind. I came focused that I need to start a new life. I will never forget it. I would think when I... I often went to Europe and sometimes in the summer I used to go to big plastic shows. I was in a short sleeve shirt and somebody saw my tattoo number.

Oh, he said, I know what that is. He says, oh, you know, we had it so bad here, you know, my mother had to stand in line for bread. Yeah. So I never had hatred. But if I would meet somebody who was older than I, I would be thinking, what were you doing between 39 and 45? I mean, I meet a lot of German people, and I say there's no collective guilt.

meet a lot of German people and I say there's no collective guilt and but I'm going back again with my son my sons are identical twins so one was with me a couple of years ago now he's coming in this will be his first time it's a very difficult thing going back to Auschwitz is difficult yeah, especially with my son I'm going to introduce him to his first family this is a marker that's it, there's no other marker so

you go there and you come back with more questions but why do you go back? well, I feel what drives me, look, I know how it started in Nazi Germany. It started with words. It started with boycotting Jews' stores in Germany. Jews were removed from everyday life.

Boycott, divestment and sanctions. Do you know that these three things are the biggest thing in North America? Against Israel, boycott, divestment and sanctions. That is telling me that this poison has come back. And it's here too. In universities. So it starts with worse and it ends with terrible places. And so last year,

there was a poster about this high with my face on it, beside a synagogue, beside several synagogues, that Jewish Federation supports Holocaust education. On July, on a Friday night, on the Sabbath,

somebody crawled out from a hole and ambled over to the synagogue and put on my forehead a word, Ahdum. Sent a message. So, and I know what Ahdum means, many people wouldn't know what Ahdum means. They would say, well, it was a crackpot. No, that was a terrorist act, you know, to terrorize. And I always tell this in schools. This is not a Jewish problem. You need to understand how it progressed in Nazi Germany, starting with words and the terrible acts of killing. Is that why you tell what why are you so passionate

about sharing why should we remember history are some things best that we don't think about you don't want to repeat the same things and i tell them i said look the only way that we can stop this everybody needs to say you we will not allow you to do this, you cannot do this in my school, in my city, in my town, in my country. If we want to keep our world a free society and live in freedom, because the reverse of it, you know, if we allow this poison to spread, then we'll lose our freedom and our real life, because it it's just look at what happened to Nazi Germany. And I say, look, Canadian teenagers, you know, in Canada, there was no

conscription. The first kids that volunteered, there were 17,000 Jewish kids that volunteered to join and go to fight this Nazi evil in Europe. Tens of thousands of Canadians from the Dominion people went to fight this Nazi supremacist ideology. Tens of thousands of them died so that we can live in a free society today. Are we going to allow this to happen here? You know, so going to schools, 32 years I've been speaking, when a grade 10 student comes up to me, I say to them, look, listen to the Canadian anthem, Canada glorious and free, we stand on

guard for thee. He said to me, Mr. Eisen, he shook my hand, I promise you, I will stand on guard for Canada. This is why we are speaking out, because we have seen it. We have seen the devil, we have seen how it starts, by words, propaganda, people bite and get on board. You need to sift on what you hear. And in the book you say you also remember your father's last words. I remember my father's last words. If you survive, you must tell the world what happened. You've been doing that ever since? Yeah.

And I've been doing that for quite a while. My second career after I had a successful career in business, I didn't sit on a lazy chair and I've been… I have a whole new career and this keeps me going. And I can tell you that for me, that I can speak to teenagers, I can speak to grade five kids, to university students, to police, to heads of school boards. And I mean, why did back and it's grown to such a thing. Now that

I think, now that... So... Well, Max Eisen, your book is by chance alone. Thank you for sparing this time. You're welcome. Hi, everyone. It's me, Dan Snow. Just a quick request. It's so annoying and I hate it when other podcasts do this, but now I'm doing it and I hate myself.

Please, please go onto iTunes, wherever you get your podcasts, and give us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps. Thank you.