Jocko Podcast - 219: Auschwitz. You Had To Have Guts To Survive. With Rose Schindler. Two Who Survived

Episode Date: March 4, 2020

0:00:00 - Opening 0:06:12 - Intro to Rose Schindler.  Two Who Survived. 2:39:22 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 2:44:21 - How to stay on THE PATH. 3:05:01 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 219 with Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. The train station is very busy. Tata says the train cars they are using are called cattle cars, which are usually used to transport animals or dry goods. Every day, more cattle cars arrive and get filled completely. As each train leaves, I wonder where it is going.

and hope it is somewhere wonderful. When our name is finally called, it is our turn to load up on the train. We are packed in like preserved pickles in a jar. Once the car is filled with 60 to 80 people, they lock the doors. The car has no seats or toilets and no water. There are small openings at the top of the car to provide air,

but only those tall enough can see out and the openings do not provide enough ventilation. I am not tall enough to see out, so I have no idea where we are or where we are headed. It is colder than usual this April and hard to stay warm, even packed together like sardines. The train does not stop for any reason, so we ride and ride for a few days standing all the while. Mama, Aunt Lee, and Tata try to comfort us children. though I feel overwhelmed, I try not to cry or complain. I want to show Mama and Tata that I am big girl now. A group of men read their Bibles and quietly recite prayers. The cars get stinky because of the poor ventilation and no toilets. I don't understand why we are treated this way. The looks

of panic on the faces of the adults and the cries of the younger children unsettle me. At long last, train finally slows down and comes to a stop the door is unlocked and a man in a blue and white uniform climbs into our cattle car and tells us we are in Auschwitz Poland Auschwitz and I don't know if there is a name in the world that conjures up more vile and a more evil part of human nature than Auschwitz. Auschwitz was a concentration camp in Poland, established and operated by the Nazis who occupied Poland at the time. It had been a Polish army barracks,

but the Nazis converted it into a prison. Initially, it was used for political prisoners, and the camp quickly became a sadistic nightmare. And in the five years that it was functioning, 1.3 million people were sent there. And 1.1 million of those died. And that number includes 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war. It includes 21,000 Romani people.

It includes 74,000 Polish people. And it includes 960,000 Jews, 865,000 of whom were sent to the gas chambers and murdered immediately upon their arrival at Auschwitz. Many of those who were not gassed died of disease, of starvation, of exhaustion, of vicious beatings, of medical experiments, or of just individual executions. unspeakable horror, worse than you can even imagine, an actual hell on earth created by people. But in that nightmare, in that evil story of sadism and anguish and torment, there are also stories of hope, stories of sacrifice, stories of love and love and

stories of survival and it is an honor to be able to share one of those stories with you today the opening that I read is from a book called two who survived keeping hope alive while surviving the Holocaust the story of Rose and Max Schindler which was documented by M. Lee Connolly and it is an honor to have Rose Schindler with us here today to share her story. Rose, welcome, and thank you so much for coming on. I want to say it's a tremendous thing that you're doing, okay? Because there are so many people that have no idea what happened to us during the war.

So thank you very much for doing this. well i hope we can uh share and educate people on on what you went through on what your family went through on and on what happened to millions millions of people and um you know i got lucky because you were doing a speech here in san diego and my wife went to see you and my wife came home and said um darling you have to get this woman on your podcast and immediately, you know, she told me, and we were able to connect through your son, Ben. So, you know, she brought home the book.

I read the book in a day and just tried to make this happen as quickly as possible. So thank you for coming. And like I said, the name of the book is Two Who Survived. And as I always have to tell people on the podcast, I'm not going to read the whole book. You can order the book and we'll put out word at the end of how to do this.

that but you have to get this book to get the whole picture we'll go through some of the some of the points of it today but it's a phenomenal book it reads very easily it's it's it's the language is great it's it sounds like you read it like you're telling a story which is exactly what it sounds like that's how it's written that's how it comes across and so the book is called to who survived and i'll jump into reading some of it right now okay my name is rosy schwartz I'm eight years old and in third grade. I like to tell stories. I was born on December 28th, 1929, the fourth child in a family of six girls and two boys.

Hayasara is 15. Yudki is 13. And their English names is Helen and Judy. Fisiel or Philip is 11. Petschew is five. Blimchu is three. Faye is two. And Meyer Bear.

is just a baby. Mama's name is Regina or Rifka and Tata's name or is Solomon. Not all families have eight kids but many do. My family lives in Czechoslovakia and we learn to speak Czech in school. Mama and Tata learned Hungarian in school when they were my age. After World War I in 1918, the government changed from Austro-Hungarian Empire to the Democratic Czechosso-Hexecs. Slovakia. Sometimes when the government changes, the official language changes too. That is when our language changed from Hungarian to Czech. Since now it's 1937, it's been almost 20 years and Tata says everyone is used to speaking Czech. So what language were you speaking at home at this time? Yiddish. Yiddish. And that's why you got the Yiddish names. Right.

Trying to get, trying to force me to try and say Yiddish names, which I'm not great at. Well, you're not perfect, but you're great. Okay, I'll take that. And eight people in the family, or is that eight kids? Right, eight kids. Ten people in the family. And you say this. My parents say the Czech government is good to us.

Everyone has equal rights, and my family does all we can to be good citizens. Neighbors help each other and are always friendly. We speak Hungarian and Czech with our friends. Ukrainian is also a similar. language is spoken by many. Because we are Jewish, we speak Yiddish, the language of our faith at home. My father's sister, Aunt Lee, am I saying that right? Yes.

Aunt Lee lives with us. Her husband died in the First World War when her son was only 17 years old, and he decided to move to the Holy Land, leaving her by herself. Now what's interesting about this is I'm assuming that he fought her. Her husband fought and died in the First World War. Right. I'm assuming he fought for Hungary, which was aligned with Germany. Right, absolutely.

It was Austro-Hungary before the First World War. There was 100,000 German Jews who served on the side of the Germans in World War I. There was 12,000 German Jews who were killed in World War I fighting on the side of the Germans. And there was 18,000 German Jews that were awarded the Iron Cross in World War II. I didn't know that. It showed, you know, the reason that I thought, and I had heard that before, like I told you, before we started, I study war a lot and I read a lot about war. And to me, you know, sometimes you hear, oh, the anti-Semitism is this longstanding thing that everybody knew about for a really long. time and yet you this is only 20 years prior you had 100,000 Jews that were fighting on the

side of the Germans just like everybody else yeah and that's how quickly things can change if we're not careful yes unfortunately yes um you go on here since she was alone my parents invited her to live with our family aunt lee is a seamtress so she sells all our clothes when one girl grows out of a dress it goes to the next sister to use we call these hand me downs. We are grad. Aunt Lee lives with us because she is a friend with Mama and helps take care of the kids. Mama and Tatar are raising us as Orthodox Jews and we follow the rules faithfully. We always eat foods that are especially prepared to honor Jewish dietary laws called kosher. Each week we celebrate Shabbat on Friday night. Before the holy day on Saturday, we attend synagogue. We believe strongly that God will protect us from

anything bad. Our code of conduct says that the way we act in life is how we show our faith. Now, that sounds good, except for I got to this part that says, I do not like homework we have to do every evening. I have three more years of school before I'm done. I think I'll learn to be a seamstress when I grow up so I can sew clothes for my family. We have a comfortable three-room house on Main Street. Our kitchen is the largest room of all. The kitchen oven is so big that I could lie down inside of it if I wanted to. One of my favorite things Mama breaks is rye bread.

When Mama allows us to have some of the warm bread with melting butter on it, I am the happiest girl anywhere. Mama is strict with us so we learn how to live good Jewish life, but she's also loving. Even when Mama scolds me, I know she is teaching me how to be good. I want to be like Mama when I grow up. Because our family has many children. Every room in our house has beds. The bed in the kitchen is at the far end near the pantry. This is where my two brothers fish and mire bear sleep.

The living room has two beds. We're all six of us girls sleep. I sleep with Utki and Faye in one bed. I don't mind because I am small and there's enough room. Faye needs a big girl to sleep next to her because she gets scared easily. Hyacera sleeps with Pachu and Blimchu. So you guys are making good use of the real estate. Yeah.

Yeah, and again, I'm skipping through a bunch of this book so people can read it on their own. but really it just is such a, it paints a very kind of idyllic picture of this beautiful family, all living, this, you know, nice,

quaint life. You say here every night, we light the house with kerosene lanterns that give the house a golden glow and a special smell. We are cozy and warm in the house on the cold winter nights. Our water pump

is a modern metal hand pump that pumps water up to the spigot every time you push the handle down. This is a modern invention you're talking about there. Right. Right. Uh-huh.

Because you mentioned some of the other families still had the bucket that you're dropping into the well. We had a well in the other house, yes. So anytime we needed water, we go to the well and let it down and then we bring it up. And that's how we had got the water. You continue on here. We have plenty to eat each day. Most of it grows on our farm. All of us kids help mama manage the animals and the vegetables.

Mama says our farm is one acre, but it feels as big to me as a whole meadow. I help tend to the garden and collect eggs. Our garden needs attention nearly every day in the spring and summer to keep the weeds away and the vegetables picked as they ripen. We also have chicken, cows, and geese. So is the farm located on your house in Main Street, or is it somewhere else? Oh, no. It's right there.

It's right there, but we also have a lot of land out of the village, like maybe a couple of miles away. Okay. Okay. But it's, we grow the wheat and the corn and I don't know what else, but all the bread that we ate came from the wheat. Okay. So we did not have enough room to the area where we lived, so we had additional land out of the village, and that's where they used to grow all the corn and the wheat. Got it. You say this, Tata says the bar mitzvah is simple, but it changes everything for a boy. He becomes a man and may in turn learn a trade or may and may intern to learn a trade. Once he completes his internship, he begins to work.

Girls don't have a bar mitzvah, but they do sometimes learn a trade when they finish school after sixth grade. Many girls become seamstresses because knowing how to sew for a family is important. Most girls marry by the time they are 18 or 20 with the help of a matchmaker. Girls plan to get married and become a mother so learning a trade is less important for them. So is that where you saw your life going? Right. Just you'll 18 or 19 or 20. You'll get the matchmaker will come along.

Right. Give you a match. This wouldn't have worked with my daughters, I'll tell you. That's how life was in those days. Simple, but it was great. Yeah. Until the war broke out. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, again, this really idyllic picture, even though our village isn't very big, it has nearly everything we need. When I walk down the street, many people I see are Jewish. Mama says there are about 2,000 people in Sardin. How do you say the name of that? Serednya.

Serednya. I'm going to try that one again. Well, it's S-E-R-D-N-E. Seredna. It's right between Munkach and Ungvar. And this is a pretty rural place. Yes. I don't think, I don't know how many people we had there, but I don't think we had more than between 1,500 and maybe. I don't think we had 2,000 people there. But the next towns on either side of us, they had like 20 to 25,000 people in each, like Czechoslav, I mean, hang, excuse me, Ungwar and Monkaj. Okay. And they were about half an hour away, is that right? Well, it was, I would say, 20 miles on either side.

And Serednya means middle. So if anybody wanted to go from Serenna to Munkaj or Ungvar, you know, it was like about 20 miles. But if anybody wanted to go from Munkaj to Nguar, they had to go through Serenna. That was the only road over there. You guys also had a pharmacy, a dressmaker, a fabric store, a cabinet maker,

and a pots and pans maker where you can either buy new pots and pans or get your old ones repaired. Repaired, right. There's an open market. Farmers market. Farmers market. The middle of the town.

You said you had an uncle that lived in the States that sometimes sent you things. Right. And you were pretty proud to have things from America. Right. It was exciting. Things that we didn't have. Unfortunately, I never met my uncle.

Okay. We came to this country and he didn't want to know us. I don't know why. When we came to the United States, the Jewish organization was involved in that, okay? Even though my husband's family sent us affidavits to come to America, but still the Jewish organizations needed to know who's coming, what's coming, and everything else. So they asked me, do I have any relatives from my side of the family, not Maxis side? I said, yes, I have an uncle who lives in McKeesport and my mother's brother.

And we used to actually correspond with him when we lived in Europe. And when we came to America, we even tried to be in touch. And actually we did. Spoke on the phone sometime or corresponded. but they never invited us to come to meet them. We lived in New York. We came to New York in 1951. And so the first year wasn't too easy,

but after one year, we found my husband's uncle had an apartment house, so we got a two-bedroom apartment house, which was great in those days. And I used to write to them, I have room. You could come and stay with me. You know, we'd love to meet you. They never invited us. So we never met them.

Well, you mentioned your husband. Let's jump into Max a little bit. Right. Because you both wrote this book. Right. You both have both your stories, kind of how you started separately and then eventually you get together. But Max gives his kind of childhood, which was certainly different than yours. Right.

It comes pretty clear that you were a country girl and he was a city book. Absolutely. Absolutely. So he says, my name is. Max Schindler. I was born on June 18th, 1929, and I'm eight years old. My family lives in Kotbus. Am I saying that right? Right. Kodbus, Germany, Kodbus, Germany, which is south of Berlin. Dad says this is a big city with 55,000 people. We live in a multi-story apartment building that is filled with families. That is why there are so many boys to play with after school every

day. Dad knows so many good people and has friends everywhere. Sometimes he goes out to play cards with his friends, but otherwise he is at home with us every night. My parents tell us, they have come a long way in life. They're both originally from Poland and speak Polish fluently. They met, fell in love and married in Poland. However, they wanted more than their farm life and developed a plan to move to Germany. They speak German well and enjoy the modern life and progressive teachings of Germany. Dad said it was important to them to move to the city before having kids, so they did just that.

Dad says Germany is known for its advanced knowledge in science, innovative ways. to get information to everyone quickly and new ways to produce things. He says Germany is the place to get the best education, so we will have the most opportunities in life. My mom and dad really like Germany. And again, this is just, you know, this is, what, 1937, right? And totally having a great life in Germany. He says, my dad Benjamin is one of nine children.

He says his family is very religious, following all the Jewish laws about how to live. Therefore, he is the one who teaches us about our religion. Dad says he's pleased to see how we are growing up. He is more relaxed than his other family members about our faith and likes to say, we are German first and Jewish second. Dad had fewer business opportunities in Poland, but he found a good business in Germany. He runs a wine and liquor store. He makes enough money for us to live in our large apartment and have a maid.

Our apartment is filled with new furniture and fancy carvings. So he's doing pretty good. Right. The Schindler's. Yes. Yes. Every Friday night we attend Shabbat services at the synagogue. There aren't a lot of Jews in my neighborhood or apartment building, but there are plenty at the synagogue.

Many of our friends go to churches in town. No one cares which faith other people practice. It seems like families only talk about their faith at home. So again, I had to mention that because religion wasn't at the forefront. front of people's minds. They weren't sitting there thinking about it. So that's kind of the opening of the book. And again, I skip through a bunch of it.

But it kind of lays out, you know, the country girl and the city boy. Right. But the, you know, I thought that it was important to point out both of you living very nice, comfortable, enjoyable lives in these different areas. Yes, yes. The next chapter is called Wins of Change. Unfortunately. So you say life is changing.

I don't like fourth grade as much as third grade. It is harder than last year and other kids won't help me. So far, 1938 is not my best year. I don't understand why, but some of my friends are not talking to me as much as they used to. Some have even started ignoring me. I find myself mostly talking to my Jewish friends. So this is 1938. Right.

And you're starting to, even as a kid, even as a fourth grader, you're realizing that some of the kids that would talk to you before, all of a sudden they're not talking to you anymore. All of a sudden, we don't have the rights anymore. So many things are changing daily, unbelievable. I'm going to fast forward a little bit. Within a few weeks, on the way home from school, I see soldiers in the village. I've never seen soldiers before, and I smile and wave at them as I walk toward our house.

None of the soldiers wave back in me and suddenly I feel scared. When I get home, I ask Mama and Tata why the soldiers have come to Sardinier. Did I get it? Serrnia. Serr Dernia. Pretty good. They tell us the soldiers are Hungarians, and they are. here to take over. Tata says, there may be changes coming, but we are not to worry. After a few weeks,

I realized Tata's right. Many things are changing now with the Hungarians' arrival, and none of the changes are good. No one knows what is happening, yet no one resists. When I asked Tata why no one does anything, he says that we have to follow the rules and be good citizens. This doesn't quite make sense to me, but he explains that I will understand more when I'm older. So even, even, Even you're, I guess you're nine years old, and when you see the Hungarians show up and you see this kind of intimidation starting, even you think, hey, why aren't we saying anything?

Well, you know, sometimes the less you say is better. And if you complain too much, you might get into trouble. That's another thing. All of a sudden, we don't have the rights like we used to before. We were practically the leaders of the village. Jewish people because they were all in business. And mostly all the non-Jewish people were mostly

farmers. And we got along very well. We had no problems at all. You continue on. Now the adults seem frightened when I go into the village. In town, all the adults huddled together in small groups. I watch as they cautiously look over their shoulders

before whispering together for several minutes. No one smiles and waves to me as they usually did. This puzzles me, but I figured has something to do with the fact that everyone becomes nervous when a Hungarian soldier walks by. I also notice that people who go to our synagogue no longer talk with people that are not Jewish. I don't understand why, because until things started to change, everyone had been nice to one another. When I visit Tata at a shop, I only see Jewish customers. Tata had made suits for everyone, so it seems strange to me. Tata says

not to worry about it. Tata also says that everyone is nervous about what the change to Hungarian rule will mean for our village. Over the next few weeks, the Hungarians make many changes. The biggest changes for us kids is that all Jews are not allowed to go to our public school and we must be inside our homes by 6 p.m. in the evenings. They call this a curfew. It makes me sad because I like to play outside until the sun sets and mama calls us in for dinner. The neighborhood kids have become mean to us throwing rocks and calling us names like dirty Jew.

Unfortunately. One day when I'm walking and talking with Yutki, a boy calls us from across the street. Stop laughing and behave yourself, you dirty Jews. He yells as he picks up a rock. I will hurt you if you don't. So the kids, everyone. Yeah. It was terrible.

It is September 1939 and I'm nearly 10 years old. I don't like the new Hungarian rules, but we are doing fine and staying at home. with Mama. I don't miss going to school at all. Tonight, Tata has a strange look on his face when he walks in the house. He looks pale and is pacing back and forth. He seems to be having trouble saying what he means. Then he tells Mama that his shop and everything in it are gone. Gone? What do you mean, Mama asks, her eyes getting big. I can see her hands start to shake as she suddenly sits down heavily on one of the kitchen chairs. I was cutting fabric when three Hungarian soldiers walked into the shop. They approached me and told me that all of us have to leave.

They said that all Jewish businesses now belong to them and that we two were to leave and never to return. Tata's voice shakes. He too sits down on the chair running his hands through his hair. So now this is sort of a transition from, hey, they're putting some rules on you, but now all of a sudden they're taking property. New rules every day. Every day they had new rules, right? Thank God they didn't take our homes away. That's one thing.

The businesses were all taken away. And did that happen to everyone in the town at the same time? All the Jewish businesses were taken away, yes. You continue on. You say life is not normal at all. News is spread that Germany is at war with Poland. No one knows what will come next. we're going to witness now Max go through the same kind of similar transition.

Right. This is Max. It's the fall of 1937 now and after just a few weeks back at home from a relaxing summer at Grandma Shweed's farm, I realize that something is very different. It's not just nerves about returning to school. The adults are whispering in the grocery store lines while washing laundry in the basement and at dad's store. Even mom and dad wait for us to leave the room to talk.

Something is not right. I know Fred senses it as well, so he asks mom and dad what is going on. It seems there is growing concern about Adolf Hitler, who has a hatred for all Jews and that there is a possibility for war. One day, Dad comes home from work to tell us that there are yellow Jewish stars and signs painted on the windows of his store that say Udenrauss, meaning Jews, get out of here. Your own stores. Fast forward a little bit. The next day, Dad informs us that the Germans came to his liquor store and took all its contents. He was ordered not to return.

Fred and I are jumping up and yelling. They can't do that. He orders us to sit down and listen. He continues saying that throughout the ordeal, people were throwing rocks and calling him a dirty Jew. He had no choice but to walk away. Dad wants us to understand that we are in no position to resist the Germans. Doing so could have serious consequences. He will now become a traveling liquor salesman.

And you go on, or sorry, Max goes on, Dad continues to try and move the paperwork along for emigration to the U.S. So he had realized we got to get out of here. And he starts putting through the paperwork to get out of Germany and get to the U.S. And it's taking a lot of time. It's a bureaucracy. Max says here, Dad is even more eager now to get us out of Germany. He has completed the paperwork for the entire family to be.

moved the United States with the help of his relatives in San Francisco. Even with their help, there are many hurdles to jump. The paper takes longer than dad thinks they should, so he is anxious, although there's nothing more he can do to speed up the process. In September of 1938, after another fun summer in Poland, we prepare again to return to school. Fred's new school, and Fred is Max's brother. I failed to mention it's all in the book.

Fred's new school is called Adolf Hitler Junior High School. and he talks about how because they were Polish they were able to go to the school even though they were Jewish Right This is a little bit of a longer section

But You know I've written a bunch of kids books And you know the kids books are written From the perspective of a 10 year old kid And then he turns 11 and then he turns 12 But the mind You know when I wrote them Of course I kind of got myself

into the mindset of a 10-year-old kid and what their thoughts are. And when I'm reading this section from the perspective of a 10-year-old kid or a 9-year-old kid, which Max was at the time, it really, it's very hard to get through to understand what it was like for kids. So this is from Max.

Yeah. On October 28th, 1938, I am nine years old and settling into fourth grade math class where we are working on the 8th, times tables although it is not common on this day I make an error in multiplying my teacher approaches me and slaps me across the face I am shocked it's not the pain from the slap that upsets me I am upset because no one has ever treated me like this at school before and I don't know how to respond for the

moment I choose to be quiet so as to not draw attention to myself again I will have to think about what is happening here before I choose to act my cheek burrow from the slap and from shame later that day two German SA officers known as stormtroopers or brown shirts come to the class and call out my name I stand at my desk to acknowledge that they called me wondering why did they somehow know about the math error for which I'd been slapped my heart is pumping even harder than it was after the slap the officers approach me take me under their arms and begin walking I have no idea idea where we are going or why but I have no choice but to go

with them. I don't understand what is happening. The German SA officers don't explain anything and I decide not to ask despite being very frightened and wanting to know where they're taking me. They marched me out of the school and through the town, never pausing or explaining to me what is happening. Along the way we pass our synagogue where people ask, where are you going? I respond that I don't know. We marched straight to the local jail and they shove me behind bars without explanation. The jail is loud, confusing, and frightening. There are many other Polish Jews with me in jail. I can tell by their clothes that all of them were taken from their task at hand and brought directly there. There are women still wearing aprons from their cooking in their kitchens.

Men are wearing suits from their work. Children have their school bags from the classroom. No one understands what is happening. Many keep asking for explanations and some are crying. Jews of all ages and professions have been rounded up and brought to this jail. So, and he goes into this. He thinks that the reason that all this is happening in his mind is because he got a math problem wrong. And he continues to think that for a little while. Fast forward a little bit. The officers command everyone to listen up.

All Polish Jews are being sent back to Poland. Dad says they call it the repatriation of Jews to Poland, but he says the truth is Polish Jews are now exiled from Germany. Shortly thereafter, everyone in jail is told them march in a group. and then here they go, getting on board of a train. As I climb onto the train, I realize it is packed with Polish Jews. There is no extra room at all. The doors are then locked.

Dad says the train is moving toward Poland. Dad has to hand over almost all our money as well. No one resists this injustice, but our parents' faces show me how much of a problem this is for our family. Fast forward. It takes some time, but we can feel and hear the movement of the engine on the tracks as it leaves behind us. as it leaves us behind. The guards unlock our train car and allow everyone to leave. Mom and dad tell us that they saw a sign as we pulled into the station,

and we are now in Sebastian, Poland. So they've been relocated. And at one point, and he tells a harrowing story in here where his mom and dad leave. Right. And they say, hey, you just stay here on the train. Right. And they leave to try and figure out what they're going to do. when they leave another the train starts to move yeah and max and his brothers don't know what to do

but they figure you know their mom and dad had said stay here you know stay wait for us we'll be back so they decide they're going to jump out of the train right so they throw their luggage in their bags and they jump out of the train and it turns out that the train was just being kind of relocated on the tracks a little bit it was going back and forth a little bit but the just horror that forces them to make this split the second decision. And again, you're talking about kids. Talking about little kids. Right.

So now they're in Poland. In the middle of November, 1938, our parents decide to continue on to Bretzko. Bresco. Bresco. Bresco. Bresco, Poland, to Grandpa Schindler's house. Right. After two weeks, our parents tell us we are leaving.

And again, I'm just reading some of the highlights to capture the story. Yeah, you got it. The detail that he puts in here is, is really powerful. After two weeks, our parents tell us we are leaving. This time, we are going to get Grandma Svides. Shweidz home. Right.

Her big farmhouse has enough space for all of us. Also, because the farm is in a small village out of the country, there seems to be less risk of Germans soldiers finding us. Mom and dad let us know that this is where we plan to stay. Grandma's farm is self-sustaining with horses, cows, ducks, chickens, fields with crops, and a big garden. I'm not accustomed to this much farming, caring for animals, using an outhouse,

and lighting kerosene lamps instead of turning on a switch. Fed feels the same, but we both know not to complain. This is our new life, and we need to adjust because there are no other options. We get lessons in all farm life topics because we must work the farm to help our family. Dad cannot sell liquor like he did before. He is now a farmer.

while we are working in the fields, hoeing, picking, and planning, dad teaches us about farming and our Jewish faith. The Polish kids are not kind to us or any of the Jewish children. The Jewish students stick together to avoid the Polish kids as much as possible. And fast-boarding here as the war approaches, the hostility and aggression towards Jews gets noticeably worse. My Polish classmates harass me and want to fight with me. I get involved in some serious fights with these kids.

Our fights often include throwing rocks into homes. The situation has become truly dangerous. I am fortunate to have my brother and cousins close by when kids attempt to fight with me. I can always find support and family members. So fast forward a little bit. Now the war kicks off. Within a day or two of the beginning of the war, the polls align with the Germans. They put on German uniforms and want to be part of the German war effort.

They call themselves the Polish Fox Deutsch. and circulate rumors that the whole city is going to be gassed. The local people are very frightened and go indoors, sealing their windows with tape to keep the gas out. All the villagers, including us, stay inside for two or three days. As a result, the streets are barren of people. This is how the Germans march in and take over the city without firing a single shot.

The Germans now occupy all of Poland and have taken over. There is a real possibility of being captured during the German SS roundups. The Jews that are caught are sent into a ghetto or a concentration camp. My parents are frantic about this possibility and will do nearly anything to avoid it. They have heard about the horrors of life in the ghettos and the concentration camps. Our parents are now frightened and trying to find a safe place for us. I know, I'm terrified.

There doesn't seem to be any good choices left. So many things keep changing while we were in occupied Poland. The German officers nail orders to trees and signpost to communicate their latest edicts. This is how we learn that Jewish kids can no longer attend school. Another edict is posted in 1941, ordering all Jews to wear a Jewish star on their clothes over their heart. Mom soes the stars on our clothes for us while explaining that we must follow the orders in order to avoid being punished. We know that we may have lost their lives by resisting. We know that many have lost their lives by resisting.

The Germans are dangerous and unpredictable, so we do what we are told. Many times the Germans march down the main street near Grandma's house. When this happens, news of the German soldiers coming travels quickly to the families. This time we hear about them from the neighbors and move hurriedly and quietly into the forest to hide. Mom grabs food and water because we may have to stay all day long or even overnight until the Germans leave the area. While we are hiding in the woods, Grandma stays in her store and acts relaxed and normal, serving the German soldiers to keep us safe. She tells them she is an old widow just trying to make a living. The soldiers must be leave her because they do not search for us.

Mom and dad talk about how brave she is. Grandma's risking her life because if the soldiers found out she was hiding Jews on her farm, we would all certainly be shot. Yeah, this is a matter of years. You had to have so much hope in situations like this, hoping that it's going to get better. Okay? Things will change.

That's how a lot of us survived. It's shocking to me how quickly all this happens and how you go these. I mean, even in your small village, you go, okay, well, there's 2,000 people in that village. It takes, and it gets through that village pretty quickly. You can understand that. But now we're talking about all of Germany, all of Poland. This is before the internet. This is before cell phones.

This is word of mouth and people nailing edicts to treat. and this transition from this idyllic situation for both your families and for the Jews in these situations to to this horror in a matter of a couple of years. Right. Unbelievable. While this was going on, nobody said a word. The whole world was quiet. Where was the world when this was going on?

On a personal level. what was it like with a little Christian girl a little girl that you knew that you played with and then one day she doesn't play with you anymore? Right. They started calling us

dirty Jews throwing rocks at us they didn't want to have anything to do with us and before that most of the people made a living from the Jews they all worked for us because they're all in business the Jewish people so now we just have to

hope that things will get better. The non-resisting in both your parents and Max's parents, both are, look, we got to just do what we're told right now. We have no choice. And the reason is because otherwise it's almost like an immediate execution. Right. It's so hard to believe what we went through.

It's really hard for anybody to believe what we went through, but it's so horrible, horrible what happened. Going back to one of your parts in the book, in 1941, I'm nearly 11 years old, and there's another new rule. We must wear a gold star of David on our sleeve so everyone will know we are Jewish. I don't understand why only Jewish people

have to wear an identifying patch and follow special rules. A few months later, another change comes into our family. On Sunday, the men and boys that are old enough are rounded up by soldiers and loaded onto trucks. That includes Tata and Fissel. They are driven out. of town and as I watch the truck pull out of sight I wonder where they are taking them.

A few days later when the men haven't returned, I hear women in the village questioning aloud to one another if the men are ever coming back. Tata will find a way to come home to us. I know. When the men finally arrive home on a Friday night, Tata and Fisci'll look exhausted as they descend from the truck. Tata's face has deep grooves in it that are dark brown with dirt. Fisciel's clothes, which used to be blue and gray, are now a muddy brown. Flakes of caked on mud shed off his clothes as he makes his way over to us. When they approach, they say nothing, only nod at us tiredly.

Tata smiles at me when I wave and takes my hand in his as we walk toward the house. Later that night, after Tata and Fis shall wash up. We are all sitting around the Shabbat dinner table. Tata tells Mama that they are being forced to work for the Germans. It is hard labor and the men feel like slaves as they are never paid for their work. they are given very little food and very little water. When Mama asks what they are doing for the Germans, Tata says they pave roads, cut wood for bridges, lay foundations, dig ditches,

and sometimes they work in factories. No matter what they are doing, they work hard, long hours. The guards watch them closely throughout the day and threaten anyone who hasn't working hard enough. Tata says he and fish will keep their heads down and work steadily so they can come home to us on Friday nights. Yeah. You can't even explain how horrible this was.

Unbelievable. One night when Tata and Fissel are sitting quietly by the stove, I asked Tata why no one does anything about this situation. Tata sighs and says, Rosie, we have to be patient, follow the rules since we are not in charge. Of course we would like to be paid, but we can't force them to pay us. God will reward us for being kind to the Hungarians. People whisper all around me that Jews are to turn in their radios. We are no longer allowed access to public information or not.

news program. I hear whispers among the adults about what could be happening in other places. Many people look grim and shake their heads as they head home to inform their families. I run nearly all the way home to tell Mama. I learned later that only one Jewish family keeps a radio in the cellar of their home, defying their rule. This is a huge risk because if the Hungarians find out, they will kill all the people in that house. You're right. Absolutely. I'm going to fast forward. You guys live under these conditions. I mean, just brutal conditions. And then we get in the spring of 1944, I'm nearly 14 years old and living under the fascist rule of the Hungarians. My village is different, locked down and under their rule. Jews are prisoners in our village, forced to stay put and avoid being seen or noticed.

Non-Jews run the town, having taken over all the shops. Mama looks tired and Tata has gone most of the time. I miss him so much, especially because he always helped me understand the world. Right now, the world doesn't make any sense to me. I miss my old life, even school. One morning, a month before Passover, as I am playing with my sisters in the lane, I hear loud noises coming from down the road. As we watch soldiers in dark green uniforms and black helmets march into town. They wear tall black boots, thick leather belt with shiny buckles, and a large red armband with a spider on it. I'm unsure who these soldiers are.

I've never seen uniforms like these before. I am worried. This time, I do not wave to the soldiers. They make me feel worried. Germans. I hear several women whisper. I study the outfits of the German soldiers and wonder how these women know them to be German.

How have they come to take over our country? Those are SS, one announces. What's the SS another asks? the Secret Service, I heard they are the most brutal of the German Nazi forces. It's interesting that even you as a young girl, when you saw the Hungarian soldiers, you know you were a little concerned. But when you see the Nazis, your instinct is, you know that they're evil. That's completely different, absolutely. Because my mother and father actually were born in Hungary.

So we didn't think it was so awful because they were born in Hungary and nothing would happen. but of course everything did we never thought anything so horrible was ahead of us what happened to us you go on here one day as we are all chopping vegetables

in the chicken in the kitchen mama interrupts the conversation with a very serious look on her face girls I know that things are confusing you need to continue to act as if nothing is wrong acting strangely can get us into trouble if you mind your own business and act natural the soldiers will ignore you

and leave you alone. That's the hope. Yeah. Absolutely. Fast forward a little bit here. When the seven days of Passover are over, Mama sends me to the bakery to buy bread. During Passover, we eat no bread.

I cannot wait to taste bread again, and I hurry into town to buy it. On my way out of the bakery, with my fresh loaves tucked under my arm, I hear the town crier beating his drum. I join the other people and gather around him to listen to the news. He tells everyone that all Jews are being shipped out by train.

They need to pack a bag of belongings and go to the school within 48 hours. I rush home to tell Mama, but she has already heard the news. I'm relieved Tata and Fissel are home and not at work camp so we can all be together. Mama and Tata also know

we need to bring valuables to the school for registration and safekeeping. Tata decides not to follow this rule and wants to hide our valuable jewelry instead. So he actually takes some of the jewelry and hides it. It's in a little shoe polish box.

And then puts it up above a beam. Between the ceiling and the wall and the corner. And your sisters didn't even want to know where it was going to be. You're the only one that was brave enough to say, okay, dad, tell me. My father said, come with me. I want to show it to you. So when you come back after the war, you'll know where it is.

So my two sisters, my Helen and Judy, they said they don't want any positive. of it so I told my father I'll go with you so we went to the corner one of the one of the rooms in the house took a ladder and my father opened a little area between the ceiling and the wall in the corner and we put it wasn't much jewelry because we didn't you have my jewelry in those days my father had a wedding band and a and his pocket watch by the way this is a chain from my father's pocket watch. I wear that every day.

So that's the chain he put into that box? This is one of the chains. And my mother, all she had was a pair of earrings, a necklace, and a wedding band, or maybe a little something else. So a little shoe polish box was plenty big for that. So we hid it and we covered it with dirt, so nobody should notice it. And after we came back after the war, I knew exactly where it was.

And so we divided the jewelry between the third. of us. So now the day comes. When the day, when the next day arrives, Mama instructs us to wear three layers of our best clothes because we don't know where we are going or how long we will be gone. No one knows where we will be able to do laundry. I choose my warmest clothes and Mama packs our down quilts in case it gets cold. We each pack a burlap bag with our belongings. I'm excited to travel on a train for the first time as I have never gone beyond the neighboring towns on either side of my village. When the time comes, to leave. We are all packed and ready. It's April 1944. And Hyusara, who is now 21, and Yutki,

who is 19, helped Mama and Aunt Lee with the younger kids. Fisle is 16 and I am 14 years old. Pechu is 13. Blimchu is 10. Faye is 8. May Bear. Meyer Bear is six years old. Tata and Mama lead her whole family toward the school with each of the older kids carrying a burlap bag of belongings. There are a lot of people at the school when we arrive and all of them are Jewish. This train station is the biggest building I've ever been in. I hear some of the adults talking about how the station transport shipments of bricks all over Europe from the brick factory here. Mama points out that Jews from all the neighboring villages are here in Ungvar with us.

We remain in the train station for three or four weeks under the watchful eyes of the Hungarian soldiers with guard dogs. We sleep in tents at night. The soldiers remind us regularly that Jews are not to try and run away or they will be shot. Our parents continue to reassure us that we should not worry as God will protect us. And then the story here is the story that I read in the opening of you actually getting on the train. You're packed in there. You're traveling for days. And finally, when you arrive, the door is unlocked.

and a man in a blue and white uniform climbs into our cattle car and tells us we're in Auschwitz, Poland. He begins telling people what to do next and helping them move their belongings. He asked me how old I am, and I tell him I'm 14 years old. He murmurs, tell them you're 18. Utke is holding my little brother, Meyerbear. The man asks her if this is her child. No, he is my brother, she replies.

He tells her that young children must stay with their mothers. He gives information to many people as we climb down off the cattle car. Once on the ground, all luggage and possessions are tossed into a big pile. We are put in rows of five people and directed to walk on for about five minutes. There's no talking aloud and everyone is confused because we don't know what's coming next. When we arrive in front of three German SS officers in uniform, they begin to separate us into groups. One of them asked me how old I am. And I follow the advice of the man on the train.

I tell the soldier that I am 18 years old. Hyasora responds, no she isn't, she's 14. No, I'm 18, I insist. The officers wave my sisters and me to the left. Tata and Fissel are directed to the line in the right, while Mama, Aunt Lee, and my three little sisters and baby brother go forward joining another line of people. I don't know why they are separating us, but Yuki keeps telling me to be quiet and not ask questions.

Just do what they say, she insists. The guards quickly move everyone along. so there is no time to talk to Mama or Tata. I try to keep my eyes on them as their lines move in off in different directions, but I quickly lose sight of them. I wonder how long it will be until I see them again. Maybe they separate men from women here, but that doesn't explain why Mama, Aunt Lee, and the little kids went in another line.

So many things are happening that don't make sense to me. My thoughts get interrupted when the soldiers yell at us to keep moving. Yutki, Hyasara, and I follow our line into a big bathroom. marked logger camp C. Maybe here we will wash up after being stuck in the cattle car for days. Instead, we are ordered to take off all our clothes and toss them in a pile. I slowly remove the three dresses that Mama had me wear. I pause when I have stripped down to my underwear and look at the many women around me.

Everyone is undressing. I have never been naked in front of strangers before, and I am feeling confused and humiliated. This is so wrong, but no one is saying anything. When Hayy Surah and Yutki start removing their undergarments like the other women, I slowly do too. I am shivering and feel scared. The soldiers take photographs of us, of us, humiliating us further. I think this must be hell because I have never experienced anything worse. I am appalled to realize that the next step is to have every hair shaved off our bodies.

I cannot understand why they need to take hair off my head, arms, legs, and even my most private places. I can see other Jewish women don't understand what is going on either and look ashamed. The faces of all the women shaving us are like stone, showing no emotion at all. I feel so exposed with no clothes and now no hair to cover me. I reach up to touch my hairless head and am shocked to feel my nubby and bruised scalp from the rough handling of the emotionless women with the razor. After we are shaved, we are ordered to grab a dress from a pile on the cement floor and given wooden clogs. The clogs seem to be all the same size, but don't really fit anymore. They are hard and difficult to walk in. I have to shuffle the get anywhere. My

dress hangs down to the ground like a sack. Since my head is freezing, I tear off a piece of fabric from the bottom of my dress to wrap around my head. At least my head is covered, but I am still very cold. I don't understand why I can't retrieve my old socks and undergarments that are in a heap on the floor close by. As soon as we are dressed, we are forced to go outside and line up for Zelle-A-Pel. Zay-Lapel. Zay-Lapel, which is a roll call.

Right. It is now late in the evening and there are so many people moving about that I get separated from my sisters. I am frightened and frantically call out their names. Two bald women and dingy dresses approach me. They reach for me and reassure me. Rosie, it's us.

I hug them both fiercely and stammer. I did not recognize you. I'm so relieved to be with them that I can't stop shaking. So, I mean, any elude that things were going to work out in any way that could be remotely considered humane must are completely shattered at this point. Completely shattered. I mean, you know, when you're being told, hey, pack a bag, hey, get on the train.

Like, those things don't sound good, but they at least sound, they at least sound somewhat reasonable. They sound like a reasonable, okay, we got our bag, we're going to be taken somewhere. All that is completely gone now. Absolutely. Absolutely, absolutely. And you're 14 years old. Right. How tall are you?

Five-one. So you're this little girl. Just followed rules. Whatever they were saying, we had to just follow. Things happen so fast, you cannot imagine. We didn't even have time to think about anything. Go here, go there, do this, do that, and that's it. You know, it's one of the things that they do in the military, right?

is they take you, they take everything that you have, they shave your head, and they're trying to get rid of your individuality, right? They want to remove some of that. And this is just the exact, you know, but they're doing it to an absolute extreme, you know, stripping you naked and shaving your entire body and just removing anything that you had from the past.

Well, I don't think you can compare that to the military. No, I'm not, I'm not, trying to compare it to the military. I guess I'm just trying to say that the idea of... Certain rules, I guess. Well, the idea of when they shave your head in the military, part of what they're doing is trying to take away some of your individuality, right, so that you can become part of the group. Here, they're trying to take away your humanity. That's it. That's what they did. Point on here, it says all of us notice a huge fire spewing heavy smoke that looks like a burning mountain across the open area from us. I can see shadows of people moving through the smoke and can

hear the cries of children. There is an overpowering foul smell coming from the fire. Somehow I taste the fire in my mouth. Yuki asked the guard as she gestures toward the fire, what is all that noise about? The guard responds, they are burning hair. Yuki replies, burning

hair would not make such a noise. To which he snaps, they are burning cripples. A sick feeling comes over me as I realize the guards and soldiers are barbaric, cold-blooded animals. Yeah. So that's your

first recognition that we are going to receive zero. Right. Humanity from these guards. Absolutely. You can't even explain how things were. They were so horrible, so unbelievable. And this all went on for so long, and nobody tried to help us. Because this is 1944. Right. So this had been going on. This was five months before our part of the world was liberated. You know that? By September, In 1944, our part was liberated by the Russians. Going back to the book, Barrick 26 is our sleeping quarters. I have never seen anything like it before. Dirt floors and rows of wooden three-tiered bunks.

No straw-filled mattresses. No blankets or pillows. No heat. A fireplace that doesn't work. Hayusera, Yutki, and I are assigned to the top bunk with five other women. We climb up and huddle body-to-body to stay one. during the freezing cold night. I am so thankful that my sisters are with me

because everything is foreign, harsh, unexplained, and unbearably cold. The next morning I decided to look around the camp to figure out where we are. I assure my sisters, there are a lot of people milling around and I can blend in or hide. I will be careful. I walk outside and I'm shocked to see many barracks

just like the one we slept in, arranged in rows of buildings. There are dozens of people walking around outdoors, all shaved, all shivering. Some are wandering around like zombie. When I try to talk to one of these zombie-like women, she just stares through me, doesn't answer, and keeps walking. She is truly frightening to me. It is as though she is here, but not really here at all.

There is a 12-foot electric fence encircling the camp. Dead people hang from the fence, their bodies contorted. I wonder why so many would grab onto the electric fence to end their life. What kind of hell are we in? Why are we prisoners? Feeling like a second-class citizen at home was nothing compared to this. I'm on a mission to learn all I can, so I ask those who have been here longer to help me understand.

Most of the women are very patient with me asking questions because they remember how frightening and foreign everything was for them when they arrived. They explained that some people cannot endure the severity of the camp and know that if they hold on to the electrified fence, their life ends in 20 seconds. One thing I learned for certain is no one can escape. There are guards with guns, the deadly electric fence, and people watching your every move. This must be hell.

Unbelievable. Unexplainable. The half-dead zombie-like people and the bodies clinging to the electric fence are overpowering. I am in a day seeing the true horrors of war here. As I walk around, I think I hear my Yiddish name called out softly. How could anyone in this Godforsaken place know my Yiddish name, but then I hear it again. Rosie. I turned to see a man in a striped uniform who I did not recognize, but who is beckoning to me.

He approaches me and says, don't you know who I am? I'm your Tata. With a wave of pure shock, I realize it is Tata. I'm tremendously relieved. At home, Tata always wore a suit and a hat and glasses and had a beard. I look again at this man with no hair and I know it's him. I hug him as tight as I can, cry and kiss him and kiss him some more. His arms around me are the first sense of warmth I've felt since arriving.

The Tata explains that he and Fisil were selected to go work in a factory. They will leave soon, but in the meantime, he has been looking everywhere for his family. He decided we must be in this all-women's camp where the Hungarian people are sent. Where is your mother, he asks? I don't know, but I have you how you saw her with me. Whatever you do, stay together because you will have a much better chance. of survival, Tata replies. I think what chance does a 14-year-old have of surviving in a place like this, but I don't

say anything. Tata holds both of my arms at my side, looks me in the eyes, and sternly says, make sure you stay alive so you can tell the world what they are doing to us. I assure him I will do my best. Then he and I make plans for us to meet again tomorrow at this spot. That's a heavy charge from your dad. Oh my God. Yeah. Unbelievable. You know, every time I open the book and I go through it a little bit. I just can't believe that this happened to us,

that the world allowed this. And the world knew what was going on, but nobody tried to help us, just because we were Jewish. On the next day, Yudki Hyosara and I wait at the designated spot to meet up with Tata and Fissel. When we see them, I cry and relief. We all hug and kiss each other, and we are so happy to have time together. Tata repeats his solemn advice to each of us.

Do your best to stay together. Stay alive so you can tell the world what they are doing to us. The next day, we go to our spot to meet Tata and Fischel. As planned, we wait and wait and wait for what seems like an eternity, but they do not come. Fast forward a little bit. Hayasara, Yutki, and I have no choice but to stay together in this evil place. We share a bunk bed, meals, and one bathroom with a thousand women. No one is allowed to use the bathroom at night.

It has sinks with cold running water, but no soap for us to wash up. There's no toilet just a hole in the ground. There is nowhere to shower or take baths. We only have one plain dress we are wearing and no way to clean it except with the cold water. Without a shower or soap, we are constantly filthy. We are always itchy with the bites of lice and bed bugs. We can rinse out our dress and walk around naked while it dries. It doesn't really matter because we are surrounded by 28,000 women in the same predicament.

We have no way really to clean our dress or our clogs. We are left to rot for months in the same horrible dress. I realize quickly this concentration camp has some predictable events. Every day as they count us, every day they count us as we stand in rows of five people. At 5 a.m., the guard shouts, get up, get up, shnell, quick, quick. We all rise and run outdoors. to be counted whether it is freezing, rainy, or sunny. We stand in lines for hours, three times a day,

until the guards have a tally, then we are released back to our barracks. I'm told this is how they know how much space is available for the new people they bring in by train every day. People leave to go to work in factories, get killed or are gassed, so the counting is necessary.

Sometimes we are forced to kneel and hold up rocks until our arms feel like they will break and the rocks fall. Other times they make us move rocks from one spot to another, then back to the original location. It doesn't make any sense, but we don't ask questions. We keep our heads down and do what we are told because any resistance may mean we will be shot.

I've seen it happen. I cannot escape the horrible smell of the crematorium's chimney of the burning bodies 24 hours a day. The sickening stench of burning flesh makes me want to vomit and never becomes less upsetting emotionally. The smoke and smell burn a black hole in my heart. We have to find a way out of this place and that will require me knowing as much as possible.

about how it is run. Women explain that prisoners are chosen for jobs and they must comply. Any Jewish worker who resists is shot dead on the spot. Strong Jewish women called Capos are put in charge of running each barrack. The Capos live amongst us in the barrack and watch everything. They are not paid, but they have certain rights that others lack. They may get more food, but they are doing the dirty work for the Germans. The cooks preparing the meals are Jewish as well.

Jews clean out the bathroom in the barracks that is used by 20, 28,000 women. Jews even worked the gas chamber. Everything was done by the Jews. If you didn't do it, they would shoot you on the spot. You had no choice. They would see their own families going to the gas chamber, and there wasn't anything they could do or say. You say here, this is too much for me to process,

and I begin to see why some people touch the electric fence to end their misery. I ask repeatedly why we can hear people crying out near the Crematorium. I learned that when a group is gassed in the showers, not all the people are dead when they burn the bodies. Maybe they don't give them enough gas because we can hear the screaming coming from the crematorium. The men running the incinerators called Sonder Commandoz, will be sent into them soon so they cannot tell the world what is happening. So you even have the Jews are running the factories. They're running the gas chambers. everything. And eventually they're going into them too.

Absolutely, yes. Usually the gas chambers, I heard from many people say that after three months, they would change the guards at the gas chambers. Every three months, they would change them. The ones that there are three months, they put them in the gas chamber, and they get new ones in. So at the end of three months, you go into the gas chamber? Yeah.

The people working there, yes. at the guest chambers. Would you talk to other people? Would you talk to other people besides your sisters? Was there any sense of community? No. Was it just broken spirit? Broken spirit.

And the thing is, we came to Auschwitz, and they were always people. You couldn't become friends with any of the people there, because we were only there. We were in Camp C, okay, and Auschwitz were Canow. And this was a transitional camp. You come, you get selected, and you leave. The only people that stayed behind is the ones like me,

because I was skin and bone, and he wouldn't select me to go to work. I would run out of the gas chamber line and hope nobody sees me. If they would see me, they would shoot me on the spot. They did not want to take people to factories to work that were skin and bone, okay? So it's just you and your sisters.

everyone else is kind of transient. Yes. And there's no feeling of community. No, none whatsoever. It's just broken spirits. Absolutely. You never know who's going to be there tomorrow. We had 30 barracks in this place, okay?

One barrack was a kitchen, one barrack was a bathroom. And people were coming in all the time, coming and going, coming and going. And of course, there were so many dead ones. bodies always in our camp. They would commit suicide by touching the electric fences. They just couldn't take it anymore. You touch the fence 20 seconds later, you see blood coming out of the nose and you're dead.

And they would come with those big wheelbarrows every day to collect the dead bodies. You say here, one day I ask a woman, why I haven't seen my mother, aunt, my little sisters and brother. The lady is careful to gently tell me what I think. think I already know. She sadly affirms that my worst fears are correct. When they got off the train, they were putting a line that led directly to the gas chamber. I would say 80% of the people that came in on the trains went into the gas chamber. All the mother's children, the sick, the crippled, the old age, the only people they tried to say were the ones that could go for slave labor, to go to factories to work.

Continue on here. They remind me of how lucky I was to be accepted as being 18 and eligible for the adult factory work line. If the Sorders had known I was 14, I would have gone with my mother and aunt and younger siblings straight to the gas chamber. I do not feel lucky in any way right now.

I just can't get used to the idea that my mother, three sisters, and little brother are gone and is beyond comprehension. When Yuki Hayasara and I try to talk about it, we can't We cannot speak, we just cry. Yeah. We have to keep going, like Tata told us.

It will eventually get better. We believe we need to have hope. Right. I have difficulty processing all of this and have to keep asking myself, why, why, why? And I think this section right here is one of the most powerful pieces. You say this, one of the ladies hugs me close and says, you will never understand what these Germans are doing because it is beyond comprehensive. comprehension it does not make sense and it never will they are crazy out of their minds

you are not remember you are the sane one here go where you need to go inside of yourself and remember who you are they cannot steal your soul unless you give it to them never give them your soul follow the rules and survive so that the real you can blossom again when you are free war is a horrible thing but it will end when it does there is another life for you outside of Auschwitz and you need to live

for that that's how we survived really by hoping and think things that know that things will be better someday and I guess I mean the difference between having that attitude

of things will get better someday and thinking that they won't, those are the people that are going to go and grab the electric fence. That's it. They just gave up. They couldn't handle it anymore. Who was this woman? Do you remember who this woman was

that told you this? I have no idea. Probably somebody much older than me. Remember, I was a 14-year-old. I was a young kid. Did you did you believe? I mean, it had to be hard looking at these surroundings

to believe that there really could be hope beyond this. Well, if I did not have hope, I listened to my father. He said, whatever you do, stay alive so you can tell the world what they're doing to us. Okay? That was your mission. That was my mission.

Actually, it was more my mission than my two older sisters. they would get very angry with me sometimes because I would do things that was not the right thing to do in a place like this. Okay? Well, you would take risks. Right, absolutely. You're a little bit of a hard person to subdue.

Actually, even as a child, many times the mother said, you're acting like a boy. You're not acting like a young lady. Here's another little part about what you guys are eating. the only thing we got for breakfast is black coffee. You'd describe what the black coffee is. The black coffee is not coffee at all.

It's horrible. It was horrible. I took one sip, and that's the only time I ever tried it. I thought I was going to throw up. It was so horrible. You say we are literally starving. We are. Absolutely.

Lunch is nothing but a piece of bread. Thice of bread with a piece of margarine, yes. Occasionally, we'll give us butter to put on it. The bread is dry and hard, and there we are told. They put sawdust in it. We line up outdoors to get our bread at a table staffed by the kitchen women. We do not share our bread. It is coveted and sometimes hidden away for later.

The food tastes horrible and is not enough to live on. It is not surprising that some prisoners here have a German nickname, Musselman. Is that right? Yeah. Which means skeletal or skin and bones. So many people are too thin and I am becoming one of them. At dinner time, we get a pot of soup to share among a dozen women. We are hungry every day.

There's never enough to eat. An officer comes in the barracks and shouts, I need 300 women for selection for factory work. Many women hurry outside to be selected. Anything must be better than this place. Once they line up, everyone removes their clothes so the officers can examine their physique to decide if they are healthy and strong enough to do factory or work.

If a woman is too weak or thin, they label her as a musselman and send her to the gas chamber. I don't know if it is because of food or illness, but I have a bad bout of diarrhea and I'm very weak. I can't stand and walk for the first few weeks of my illness. Yutski and Hayasara will not go outside to be selected without me, so we hide when the officers call for volunteers. It's not hard to hide with a thousand people in the barracks, and they only need 200 or 300 women. The officers do not notice me.

This works for the first three or four weeks, but I'm just skin and bones now. I know I need to be selected for a factory to get out of here. Youdkeen Haia Sara helped me stand up and pinch my cheeks so I look like I have some color The problem comes when I undress I'm so frightened because I know I am too thin and weak to be chosen My worst fears come true when the officers call me Musselman and send me to the gas chamber line It is a torturous few minutes walking to that line My sisters helped me get there holding me under my arms as we cry and panic There is so much going on around us that I begin to wonder if we can somehow sneak away

I tell you can Hyasara what I am thinking is we agree to try it. We have no other choice. At the agreed upon moment, we calmly step out of the line and head straight back to our barrack. All of our hearts are pumping wildly. If an SS officer notices,

we'll be shot on the spot. Luckily, there are a lot of women moving about the camp and no one notices. You have any idea what you weighed at this point? I have no idea. But you're just skin and bones. I was very, I was, even at home, I was very thin. Okay, I was not a big eater.

This wasn't good, that wasn't good, you know, when you're a child. And the gas chamber line, that's, you know exactly what that is. Absolutely. You know when I get in this line, I'm going to be dead in three minutes or whatever the minutes is. Right. And they're just walking down the line. They look at you, too skinny, musclemen, go over there. One over here, one over there.

Right. So they always put me in the gas chamber line. And I would make sure nobody sees me, I would get out of the gas chamber line. If they would catch me, they would probably shoot me on the spot. Remember, we had close to over 28,000 people, women in that camp. Okay? And, you know, they brought in over 500,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz, April and May of 1940. before. And everybody that came into Auschwitz, we went into Camp C, okay, or the gas chambers.

You had to have a lot of guts to survive and also hope, hope for a better day, okay? And you are a risk taker? Yes. I mean, clearly, you're taking a risk by going out there, getting in line, you're taking a risk by getting out of line. You got a lot of bravery in these situations. You had to. If you didn't, you're gone. The only people that survive are the ones that have braveries, really. You say food is such a problem for all of us, but particularly for me, since I am too thin. At lunch, one day, we stand in line outside to get our bread as the usual. The capo gives me a slice of bread, which I notice is half its usual size. I am hungry, so I speak without thinking. My bread is cut in half, I accuse her. The capo is furious with me

because my accusation can get her in a lot of trouble with the Germans. She pulls me out of line and takes me to where the German SS officers will be sure to see her actions. She beats me so brutally that I cannot stand for three days afterwards. My sisters are both concerned and frustrated with me for getting into trouble. Yutki tells me, next time, just shut up. Don't ever complain about anything again. It will only get you in trouble. Do you want to get shot? I know she's right, but I struggle at the injustice. We are already starving. How can they steal half my meager food? Still, I need to learn to keep my mouth shut. Right.

How did you guys look at the capos? I don't know if we even looked at them. All we knew is they were there, okay? We didn't see them too often. The only time we saw them is when they came to select people to go to factories to work. Did you look at them as fellow Jews? Oh, you mean the capos? The capos.

Oh, excuse me. I thought you were talking about the SS. Well, they had to do the right. otherwise they would get shot. If they don't do what they're asked to do, then they would not do the job. But when the couples, when they did get these jobs, they could get extra food, they could get extra,

all kinds of things. You know what I mean? They were in charge of a thousand women in every barrack. So they had to be very strong and to do the right thing. Otherwise, they wouldn't do it. They wouldn't choose them to do it. to do it. Was your view of the capos like, hey, they're just doing what they have to do to survive?

I don't know if we did when we were there. But now I know that they had to do what they were chosen to do. They had no choice. Okay. But they were our own people that did this work. You go on here today, good fortune is upon us. One of the ladies in Barrack 26 tells us that we have cousins in Barrack 3. We are shocked and all three of us begin asking questions in rapid succession.

What are their names? How did you find them? Are you sure? How do you figure out we're related? In Barrack 3, my cousins are in charge of the whole barrack, including food distribution. They help get me extra food every day and begin to gain weight and think more clearly. It literally saves my life to have a little more food. I'm so thankful to be with them in this horrible place.

Yeah. So there's another little thing that allows you to survive. Right. Right. It was amazing that we found out I mean, so many thousands of women over there, and they were all the way in the beginning of the camp, number two or three, I'm not really sure,

okay? And they were in charge of giving out the food. So, of course, when we got there, we would get extra whatever there was. As the months go slowly by in September of 1944, we notice that Auschwitz begins to empty out. Our cousins are taking to work in a factory, and so we are sad to see them go as the barracks residents dwindle,

it makes our exit more urgent. Now there are less people hiding, less people to hide among, we are at risk of being noticed. I am getting stronger and less skeletal, so I urge my sisters to try selection with me again, but I am labeled as a musselman and sent to the gas chamber line. Muselman. Musulman. Not muscles. Musal.

Musalman. Skin and bones. Skin and bones. Musulman. At least I can get out a line now on my own and head back to the barrack. this repeatedly enough that we decide I can no longer go through the selection process at all sooner or later though I will be caught sneaking away from the line and shot there has to be another way we have to get out of here repeats over and over in my mind I know we cannot give

up because I have hope I always remember what my father told me stay together because your chances of survival will be much better it is not easy to keep hope alive when we are in camp giving up seems easier and we see many who do give up and end up on the electric fencing. There are a few good rumors that help us have hope. Women gather in the bathroom to hear the latest rumor that the Americans or Russians may liberate us. The hope that we will reunite with Tataun Fissel keeps us alive. Even with this hope, it is hard to continue believing in something. We all question our faith in God. How could God allow this to happen? Following the Jewish laws got us nowhere. One day in 1944, the SS officers arrived at the barracks

announcing they need 300 women to go to a German factory in Freudenhow, Freudenthal? Freudenthal. Freudenthal. This is the day that Yuki, Huyusara, and I will be chosen. I know it. As we are getting up to the line, as we are preparing to line up, I look at my sisters and tell them, go get selected and save me a place in line. I will find a way to sneak into the group.

Hyusar and Yuki both look worried, but go out in the front door and get selected. I must find a way to get in line without being detected. Meanwhile, I am working feverishly to come up with a plan to join them. Our barracks are always guarded by capo as no matter what. My heart raises so loudly that I wonder if others can hear it as I try to figure out what to do. I don't have much time. I must think fast. I watch a woman who gives out food from our kitchen as she exits the back of the barrack.

Suddenly I find myself running as fast as I can down the long hallway of the barrack toward the back door. The female capo guarding the door raises her hand to stop me. My heart is beating hard in my chest as she looks at me. You can't go out this door. You have to go out that way to be selected for work, she says, pointing in the opposite direction. I don't want to go to work, I say, shaking my head. My mother has just gone out that door and I need to go with her as I point to the door behind her. The seconds that pass before she responds feel like hours.

I continue to reach toward the door, employing her to help me. Somehow, the capo takes pity on me and lets me out the door. I scan the area for guards as I sneak around the building to join my sisters in line. There are enough people moving about that no one sees me enter the group. I can see my sisters and they have a spot for me to slide into. I feel a sense of freedom for the first time and a long time. Suddenly I know I am strong and brave. It is as though an angel is looking after me.

I think as I look upward. Maybe it's my mother who helps me out of this terrible situation. Maybe things will get better for us now. I make eye contact with Hayasara. She has sheer joy on her face as I approach. She elbows Yuki to indicate that I am on my way over. As I end of the line, Yuki immediately grabs my arm and squeezes it so tight. All of us are frightened and excited at the same time.

Hyusar and Yuki are relieved that I am with them and even have, and even a little surprise that I made it. I can see the questions on their faces but silently indicate we can't talk about it now. I will explain how I did this later when we are alone. The three of us try to act calm so no one will notice that I am not supposed to be in line. I feel their hands as tight as I can, so tight that I can't feel my own fingers. We have to celebrate internally and happiness, springs up inside me, hope and fear are war within me.

Before leaving the camp for the factory, we need to go through a cleaning process. We know we all smell. I remember when I first came to camp, I smelled a sour, pungent odor everywhere on everyone. I guess I've smelled it for so long now that I don't notice it anymore, but you can always see the revulsion on the faces of new prisoners when they arrive. It is the stench of death on living bodies. I can see the dirt in the lines on people's faces. our hands don't come clean when we rinse them.

The hair that grew back in the last four months is stuck to our heads and has a foul odor. It is clear to me that we are not supposed to have been here this long. But now that time will end if I can make it through the cleaning without being labeled a Muslim. So once again, talking about your courage to do that. It was unbelievable.

How this all came to me, how I did it. I don't remember, but I did it. The main thing was to get out of there. And sometimes you have to do all kinds of things, okay, to get where you want to go. And also, you should never give up hope. Without hope, you're lost. So whenever anybody's in trouble, they have to remember that things will get better. And that's how we survived, the three of us.

You guys get cleaned up, they shave you again. They de-louse you. Well, we were full of lice. We didn't have cleaning in four months. Can you imagine? No. Not having a cleaning in four months. Actually, I took my dress up a couple of times in the summer.

Because, you know, we were also lucky that we were there in the summer, not in the winter. If we would have been there in the winter, we would have frozen to death. So we were there in summer, and so I would take my dress off and wash it. There was no soap, no nothing, and let it dry and then put it back on. You say, hey, after you get de-laussed and cleaned, you say this. Finally, we are given decent street clothes to wear. It's the first time in four months I've changed my clothes. One of the women pins a piece of paper with a number on it to my dress.

She tells me that this will be my number that identifies me from now on. They've taken away my name. I am no longer Rosie or even a Schwartz. Now I am just a number. A25893. Yeah. See it? You know, a lot of the survivors after the war, they had it taken off.

But in the 50s, surgery wasn't like today. They would always have a mark on their arms. Never, you know, so. And to me, I never even occurred to me to do that. And when my kids were little, they would ask me what it is. I would tell them it's my telephone number. Process you now and get you loaded onto a truck that drives you guys out of the camp. And you say, as we pass through the gates, I feel an incredible weight lifted off my shoulders.

This is truly a moment to remember. I know that my life may not be easier at the work factory, but at least we are alive. We are scared and weak, but we have left the hell of Auschwitz behind us. Right. At the factory, they provide us with more decent street clothes, similar to what I previously owned. The building is so cold, so we go to bed fully dressed. Even our blankets are not enough to keep us warm, but at least we have blankets. The building has a musty odor, but I have my own bed with a mattress, sheets, blanket, and pillow.

We are allowed to access bathrooms at night. We can even get a shower with soap and you're even given clean clothes once a week. The showers and bathroom are just down the hall compared to the hell of Auschwitz. this feels like heaven. So this is your new location. Right. And it really is. This is what you've been striving for.

Absolutely. To get into one of these work camps. Yes. Did you know that the work camp was better living? Or were you just knowing that anything is better than Auschwitz? We didn't know, but anything, anything was better than Auschwitz. Okay. I don't think there could be anything worse than Auschwitz.

On our first day of work, the numbers that were pinned to our clothes are tattooed onto our left forearms. I know that I should feel pain, but I don't as I watch them scratch the needle across my skin. In my mind, I am thinking about the law that Jews may not make any cuttings or print any marks on their bodies. How will God take this new development? I'm not in any position to resist the permanent tattoo that reminds me every single day that I am not free. A-25893 is emblazoned for the world to see every time I reach my hand out to touch my sister or grab a piece of machinery. Each day as we leave the factory, we show our tattoo, which confirms that we are Jews who belong in the camp

and not one of the free citizens that goes home at night. So when you're working this camp, there's actually regular civilians that are working there. Right. Germans? Yes. Germans, absolutely. Mostly women, because all the men were in the military.

We're fighting. Yes. You say this, sometimes the German lady who works next to me brings me an apple. Yes. It's a big risk for her to offer me any special treatment because she could be labeled as a Jewish sympathizer and be taken to jail or shot. It is also a risk for me because I can be labeled a thief.

There are no apples given to Jews here. So how would I get one? It would be up to a guard to decide my fate if I were caught with an apple. We are very careful that no one of authority is around when she hands me the apple. I think she realizes how hard our lives are and feels a bit sorry for me. It is so good to see the humanity in some people because we have lived for months. and some of us for years surrounded by inhuman and savage guards every day, we have been treated as though we are not human.

So this is like the first sympathetic person. Right. She was very nice. Did you have conversations with her? You talked to her? We would not have conversations, not too much, no, because we are both working at different things. But she...

But she would bring an extra piece of something sometime. An apple or a fruit or even though compared to Auschwitz, this was like heaven. Okay. You, Yuki was in an area working on ammunition. It's Yutka. Yutka. Yutka. Yutka.

Yutka. Well, how am I doing with Hayasara? Bad. How do you say Ayasara? Chayasura. That's a Yiddish name. Hayushara. Helen.

Helen. Her English name was Helen. Or in Czech it was Helenka. Okay. I need to stick with one. She's sewing. Utka is working on ammunition and you're working on gas masks, inspecting gas masks, which is obviously a hard thing because you're thinking that these gas masks are for German soldiers. It's going to save the lines of German soldiers.

Absolutely, absolutely. But we had no choice. I would sit on a high chair and then have to pick up the gas. gas mask, look inside it and put it down, up and down, 12 hours every day or so. And Judy and my sister Judy and my sister Helen, one of them worked on uniforms and one of them worked on guns. We were all in different areas. It was a big factory over there.

You know, this idea that you had of sticking together, of being a family and how that increases your chances for survival. As I read that, it seemed a little bit counterintuitive to me because I always think, well, if I just have to take care of myself, it seems like you'd be able to make more things happen as opposed to you're looking out for other people. But what I failed to realize and what I think is that because you're sticking together, you're looking out for each other, you're keeping, you know, maybe you give a little bit of

extra bread, you share some bread, so you're able to take care of each other. And people that went by themselves had less of a chance of survival. Absolutely. Absolutely. A lot of women that came there to Al-Qam that were alone, I would say most of them didn't make it. Being alone is so hard. But when you are with sisters, you know, at least you have more hope to survive. You say here, I'm always afraid that if I attract the attention of the guards, they will realize I'm too skinny to work and will kill me.

Then who will help my sisters stay together? I have to stay alive and do, as Tata said. After a month at the factory, I gather the courage to speak to the person in charge. I take a deep breath before approaching the intimidating officer. My handshake as he looks down at me. I am still very short for my 14 years and with no heels or hair to help me seem taller. I'm sure I look like a younger child. This is hard work, I say, shocked it out confident my voice sounds.

Because my hands are shaking, I press them into my sides, hoping you won't notice. I should get an extra meal to conserve my strength. To my utter surprise, the officer allows me an extra meal each day. Yes, she did. I would take it to the living quarters, and I would share it with my sisters. Over time, my sisters and I realize that the German doctors in white coats conduct experiments on the prisoners. I don't remember the incident, but my sisters tell me I was taking. by one of the doctors for several hours.

Upon my return, my mouth remained painful for several days. I asked my sisters to look in my mouth to find out why it was so sore. They noticed that all my teeth are drilled out and filled with something gray that looks like street cement. I cannot see inside my mouth because we have no mirrors, but I had no fillings in my teeth before coming to the factory. The procedure is so awful, I blocked it out. It takes weeks for the pain to subside. Yeah. So that's just a random, yeah. You get taken away.

Right. I may have complained that I had some pain in my teeth. I'm not really sure about that. All I know is when we were liberated, I had my teeth filled with cement. Our daily lives continue. This is fast-forwarding a bit. And again, people have to get the book to read it, to get all the details, which are incredible to read,

harrowing to read. Yeah. But I'm going to fast forward a bit. You say our daily lives continue as each and every day we wake, eat, work, walk back to our quarters, wash, eat, and sleep. It seems like a never-ending monotony, but we are grateful for it. This routine feels safe. Auschwitz had no predictability since any situation could turn into a nightmare in a second.

Safety is rare these days, so we embrace it as much as possible. The guards mostly leave us alone unless someone steps out of line. Hardly any of us do that anymore because we all recognize there is safety in submission. Going forward a little bit more. And again, you tell some really, really kind of fascinating. Fascinating stories about what goes on inside and people need to get the book to see those to read about those I'm gonna fast forward a bit after eight months of working and living at the factory something starts to change I start to feel eyes watching me steadily I've known that the guards watch us but never felt this kind of observation

I can feel their eyes on me watching like a hawk waiting for me to make a mistake I think they are planning to take me back to the camp and to my death one day I'm looking through the glass of a gas mask when Rivka appears in front of me in front of my distorted glass. I'm so startled that I jump off my stool. What are you doing? They will see you. I hiss her. She should not leave her place in the line. Surely a guard will discover her and we will both get in trouble.

Have you heard? She asked in a whisper. Heard what? I asked. Confused. No one has spoken to me at all today, apart from my supervisor who barks orders at us once every hour. We are to be marched, she says gravely.

I have no idea what she means. that but from her face I know it is not good marched where by whom I don't know I heard some guards talking about how the Russians are coming she replies the word Russians makes my heart feel makes my heart beat faster I know that they are fighting against the Germans for liberation but what does liberation look like no one knows all we know is that right now the Russians are the only people who want to get us out of this prison on May 6th 1945 we wake up to a gray gloomy morning and prepare for work there is an odd energy running through the room as we make our way to the door to line up.

I wonder why everyone is so jittery. Are there extra guards outside? Are they moving us? Are we going on the march? We line up in front of the door like always. But instead, of the silence that usually permeates the air, whispers, fly along the line. What is happening? Someone asks, are they sending us back to the camps?

I don't know. Where are the guards? They should be here by now. Another person answers. One brave soul ventures, one brave soul ventures to the door. after about 15 minutes all of us are nervous she opens the door and we see no one the usually locked door swings open without resistance we consciously move out to the yard to find the gates to our quarters wide open this has never happened before and all of us are very worried we look around for the

guards as we walk toward the gate there on the fence is a plain white bed sheet someone wrote on it in german it reads there will be no work for a few days there will be a march that all of you will be in wait here until we come for you. That's bizarre. I didn't even remember that. You see that? All I know is that the guards didn't come to walk us to the factory, okay?

And after being hours and hours, after we were waiting all these hours, I said to my sisters, I'm going out, I want to see what's going on. I was probably the youngest kid in the group. There were 300 women, I believe. I go outside, and the fact, fence, the gate to the fence, because we had electric fences surrounding us.

It was wide open. The Germans ran away. Everybody ran away. And of course, here I am, and all the women are in the building. They're all afraid to come out. And I'm screaming at them, actually. Come on out. I think the assets all ran away. And I hear the planes going over us. And I hear the shooting of guns behind where we were living. They had all kinds of cornfields. They were growing a lot of corn. The Russians were coming through the cornfields. And they came and so when I saw that, of course, I said,

I better go in front of the Russians, but how am I going to go? You know, they might think I'm German because I had hair already the same size hair like and regular clothes. And so being, I guess my hair was not that big, that long, okay? But we did not have any marks on a lot. our dresses, saying who we are, okay? But I thought maybe they think I'm German, okay? So I tore a piece of my dress up, and I found a stick, and I put that on, and I went

in front of the Russians like this. And what was their reaction? Oh, they hugged me and kissed me. I mean, and I told them, we have 300 women here. They came. They liberated us, and it was an amazing day. Did you, I mean, at the... that point were you, how long did it take you to realize that this was the end of everything

you'd been through? Well, we've been looking forward to this for so long and it finally happened, okay? And you stayed with your sisters the whole time? Right, absolutely. Oh, yeah. I don't know if I would have survived without my sisters. I don't know if my sisters would have survived without me because I did things that nobody did, you know, in a condition.

in a situation like this, you have to do certain things to survive. Okay? You say in the book, this is the moment we had dreamed of hope for and waited long months to see. It was as wonderful as any of the dreams I had. All of us were overjoyed at the news we had waited so long to hear. Helen, Judy, and I are survivors. Right.

We are finally free. We stayed together like Tanta said because it would improve our chance of surviving. was right. Yeah. The Russians tell you, hey, go out into town, take what you want. Right. They did. But I didn't go alone. I went with the Russians. The Russian soldiers came to our living quarters, and they would offer their help. They were very good to us. And were the, were their Germans still in the houses, or were they gone? Oh, no. They left. Are you kidding? They ran away. As soon as the Russians, they saw the Russians, they all fled. So you're just going from no food, no clothes,

and all of a sudden you got normal food and everything right away? No food after that, no. No, but the Russians were very good to us. They took us into town and they also brought food for us. If we needed anything, they would get it for us. So. You eventually decide that you're going to head back to your home village. Of course. You say after four weeks on the trains we finally arrive and walk to our little farm. Our once beautiful and cozy home is hardly recognizable. The roof is almost gone, likely from a bomb. All our belongings are gone. They must have housed German horses in it since there was horse manure everywhere. I remember where Tanta hid the jewelry and I rushed to find it. I am relieved to find the spot as untouched even though the roof is largely gone. I clawed the mud to

uncover the shoe box. When my fingertips tap a corner of the box, I rapidly remove the mud to extract it, relieved that it remained undiscovered. I climbed down to show Yuki and Hayusara. Hyasura. Hayesura.

Hayesura. We sit down on our kitchen floor and carefully open the lid. Inside is Tata's pocket watch chain, which is the one you're wearing right now. My parents' wedding rings, earrings, and a couple of gold chains. All of us cry at the discovery.

These are the only things that remain from our past. Yeah. You start to get news. You start to get rumors and information. One man reported that he knew nothing of Tata but was in camp with Fischel where they sewed SS uniforms. He described how well my brother did in camp.

Just days before the end of the war, all 300 men in his camp were marched into the forest and forced to dig a large hole. The Germans then stood them all at the edge of the hole and shot them. Yeah. As they fell into the hole, it became a masquerave. The man told me that the Germans' goal was to destroy any proof of what they did during the war, so they made sure that there would be no survivors to talk about what happened in the camps. I asked the man how he survived.

If everyone else died, he tells me that he was too ill to get up, so he hid in the back of the barracks and no one noticed him. Poor Fischel came within days of liberation only to be slaughtered by the Nazis. Later, another local man returns with, news of our father, this man was with Tata in a factory where Tata had become very sick. He had sores on his legs that would not heal. Because Tata did not recover and could not work, they shipped him back to Auschwitz where he was murdered. I repeatedly think about him and the injustice, wondering if he was scared. My brave intelligent father's face swims in my mind. I wonder if he thought of us before he died. I'm sure he did. I'm sure he did. The fate of our immediate family is now

clear. Of the 11 Schwartz family members taken, there are only three who survived. Over time, we get word of our extended family. Our wonderful family of nearly 150 is

reduced to only 11 survivors. Unfortunately, yeah. I may have been more than 150 people. Because in those days, you know, Jewish families, they did not believe in contraceptives. They didn't use those.

And so everybody had a lot of kids. And my mother and my father, they each had three or four or maybe five sisters and brothers. So, and the only ones that came back, maybe a dozen of us that we know of. There may have been other survivors that we may not know about, okay? They lived in different places because in those days, it was not much. When you lived in different cities, we did not keep in touch too much.

So you hear about the Central British Fund. Right. And they have a program where they're taking orphaned survivor children from the Holocaust and bringing them to England. Right. And you apply for this program. This is, it says, so they're called the CF, CBF.

Despite the CBF's attempt to gather a thousand survivor orphans, they can only locate 732. 32 kids, Ryan. On February 19th, 1946, I joined the last transport of survivors to load into Royal Air Force planes. They were all bomber planes. They used to, used, for transporting us. The first transport started in August of 1945,

and the last transport was 1946 of February 12th, and I was in the last transport. And so there was only 732... Yes, that's all they could find, yes. Or only that registered for the program. So maybe they were more, but I don't know why they didn't register. So you fly across and you end up in Scotland. Scotland at the Poulton House.

Right, and Lesweid. That is called Lesweid. You say here in this unexpected start to a new life, we have no parents and most of us have no siblings, but we have each other. Right. We all stick together. We become like family. This simple life falls into a pattern of predictable, safe days which comforts all of us. we are encouraged to have fun and relax together.

All of us are eager to feel normal again with our new family. Our days are routine and comforting. The counselors talk to us about our new life and what to expect now. We need a long-term plan. Well, the only plans we had is hopefully maybe going, getting, coming to America or going to Israel. Okay? Because all our cities that we came from,

They were the past. When, like I said, there's both, both you and Max have sections in this book, and the Max's section describes what he went through. Right. And, you know, it's a similar start. An edict is nailed to the trees around the village that all Jews to report to the nearby ghetto. his dad does a pretty good maneuver where he basically bribes one of the Germans and says, hey, my family can work, all of us can work, and gets the whole family sent to Commando Floszenberg,

which is a forced labor company. Right. And he says, they go into this kind of self-contained. all Jewish work camp and even though they don't get paid they're not being tortured. They view this as a good thing that they're in this forced labor camp. Right. They need their labor also.

He works there for about a year and then they get told that they're going to get moved. So they have to break down all the equipment that they're using in his factory. They load it onto trucks. They move it from the trucks to a, to a salt mine, which was a bad decision by the Germans

because inside the salt mine, all the equipment starts to rust almost immediately. So they have to break it down and pack it up again, which they do. And then they get shipped off again. I'll read this little section here. Soon after dawning our blue and white uniform, we enter a long line that moves very slowly. Each person exits the front of the line. I can see them examining their forearm. One man shows us his forearm and blurtz and Yiddish.

They are tattooing these letters on our arms. How will God view this? He must be an Orthodox Jew. Our faith forbids us to have tattoos. In this moment, I am thankful that we are not Orthodox and we're raised to be more relaxed about our faith. I can see the pain on the man's face. Dad assures him, God would never punish you for something you cannot control.

The tattoo on his forearm says K.L. I intend to find out what that means. So we are waiting in line for a tattoo. I wonder why we need a tattoo here if we didn't need one at the last camp. This new camp is worse in so many ways already. Dad and the other men quickly find out from the inmates that K.L. is shortened from the word concentration logger. Concentratios logger, yeah.

It means concentration camp. The tattoo identifies us as prisoners of a concentration camp. Dad feared we would end up here. So Max ends up in a work, as a worker, ends up since he's small, he's only 14 years old, ends up working inside of airplane wings. Right. He says the Poles hate us and will not help us in any way

because once again he's working alongside of Polish people, the normal Polish civilians. Right. Every night we lay on the straw teeming with lice. and bed bugs, there are 300 boys and men per barrack, all of whom are suffering the same challenges. The bug bites make it difficult to sleep at night, and in daytime they cause itchy irritation. In addition, we must wear the same uniform for a month before we get a new one. Getting rid of the bugs is impossible. Sanitation in the labor camp is awful. There is a cold water

trough where we rinse our hands and face. There is no soap. There are no showers. Latrines or pits with a wooden board over them. The board has a round opening for us to squat over, but there's no toilet paper. So many people use the latrine. It always stinks. Jewish inmates are assigned to clean it. In fact, I realize now that Jews are doing all the work in the camp. The guards are just directing them. Lunch is a bowl of soup. Dinner is three or four ounces of bread. Everyone in the camp is weak and malnourished. We go to work no matter what. Everyone knows prisoners who cannot work are shot or sent to the gas chamber. They didn't keep us here to have a good time. ends up in another concentration camp called Plaza Plaza Plazov plashov the rumor in the camp is that the Russians are now close to Warsaw and are threatening to override the Germans the allies are coming

Poland and Germany are bracing for attack the soldiers here are more tense than at the other camps we need to be very careful not to test their patients because they become more explosive with every little provocation now at this camp we are to do work not in a factory Instead, we move around the city to dig ditches and build fortifications for the German troops. Once again, you're doing something that's going to help the people that are torturing you and killing you. We have no choice. Ends up getting moved again. And again, you've got to read this book to get this story. I'm going through the high points of it right now or the low points, I guess. But in the end, he gets transport again, and Auschwitz is the destination.

nation. But the train comes to rest near Dresden. We remain at this location for nearly a year. We work in the factory. Our work in the factory is consistent and comfortably predictable. We hear with increasing frequency from the grapevine that the Allies are closer. Even some of the local Germans talk about what will happen if allies enter Dresden. The night of February 13, 1945, the Allies saturation bombing of Dresden begins. The sky lights up with flares from the first wave of planes. Subsequent waves of bombers drop phosphorus bombs that cause fires after exploding. The entire city has become a giant torch.

When our factory housing gets hit, fire spreads quickly. Pandemonium breaks out as we prisoners run down the stairs to the bomb shelters. The words, survive, survive, survive, repeat in my head like a comforting chant. Two days later, the bombing is finally over when we crawl out of the bomb shelters. shelter, we see that the factory is half gone, and the accommodations upstairs for the inmates is lost. We must now sleep with no roof. It's literally freezing temperatures, and we have no blankets.

So, yeah, that's the bombing of Dresden, which was a historical, you know, that's, they bombed with these incendiary bombs, which caught fire, and I want to say 250,000 people were killed in those, in that bombing. probably and a lot of civilians mostly civilians and you know people look at that in various different ways but at this point in the war it was a decision that was made i think churchill really drove that decision because the germans the nazis had been bombing and killing civilians in england right and he said okay well our turn yep and that's what they did and a curse kurt vonnegut slaughterhouse five book is about coming out of the

coming out of the POW camps, prisons prison camps after that as well because everything was just destroyed. They were bombing that city for two days. He gets moved around

again and yeah they go on a they get marched. Right. They go on a, and I got to read this section. After a few days, the German SS soldiers, with their guns on their soldiers, round up the Commando group.

This is them, the Commando Friesenberg Group. Again, and we set off on a forced march. We are 300 to 350 men marching through the forest into Czechoslovakia. The march takes a few weeks, but feels more like a year, and it is ghastly for our group. We march on one side of the river, watching bombs explode on the other side. With snow on the ground, all of us are. are freezing as we climb up the mountains. I can't feel my toes and try to walk with my hands tucked into my armpits.

We get very little to eat, and we are all starving. We march through several towns as people stand on the side of the road and silently watch. We are told not to speak to the townspeople or accept anything from them or else we will be shot. Not one person offers us anything. No food or jackets or boots or blankets. It is a disastrous death march from bombed out Dresden to Littomiris. I see men fall, give up and die, or sit down and refuse to go on. These people are all shot.

Dad's health declines and he is in bad shape. He is very weak and cannot walk alone. Fred and I support him on either side with his arms over our shoulders. We get tired after hours of assisting him with other men. When we get tired after hours of assisting him, other men from our group help hold. him up the German stuff us in a barn in a sub camp our first two nights after the death march at long last we are given a small amount of food which is our first food in eight to ten days we sleep on the dirt floors squashed together to try and stay

warm our first night's sleep in almost 10 days no one cares about the abhorrent living conditions and we are completely exhausted and barely alive two days later when we arrive at the ghetto in late March of 1945, they're only about 80 of our group who are still alive after the forced death march. The rest are dead. Out of 300. So, I mean, at this point, they're put into another camp. Max says here, everyone is near death, completely exhausted and starving.

The camp is overcrowded, filthy, and disorganized. They get marched to a place called the small fortress, which was just another nightmarish hell. On May 8th, and again, I'm skipping forward, but you've got to get this book to read through what actually happened. On May 8, 1945, Soviet troops enter the small fortress to liberate the camps. And Therazenstadt. And Therazenstadt. What is that the name of the town?

Terazine. Could this be the day we had waited so long for? The troops are indeed here to liberate us. Our imprisonment at the hands of the Germans is over. at last. Even the weakest of us is celebrating to know we are finally, finally free. We did survive. We are no longer captives, prisoners and slaves to the German Nazis. The three of us, so it's Max Fred and the dad, their dad, despite all the odds have survived to today's liberation, although dad is very likely at death's door. Yeah. I can now proudly wear dad's gold watch chain rather

than hide it. And again, there's a incredible story, and it's a similar story to yours. in that Max's dad had a chain, except for Max kept it with him the whole time. Right. And him and his brother, Fred, traded it back and forth and kept it and hit it over all that time. And now he's able to take that watch chain out

and actually wear it. He says this week, we slowly came to the realization that dad did not survive the typhus epidemic. Fred and I share a long-knowing look. We both know. I can see it in his eyes. Benjamin Schindler is dead.

After a quiet period, we begin talking about what likely happened. I hope that dad lived long enough to know liberation. Fred believes this is true. He says after liberation, people wander around looking confused, relieved and angry, and all have questions about their loved ones. Max and Fred, they came down with typhoid, so they kept them six weeks in one place.

And by the time they came out of this disease, they could get up and go outside. They looked for the father, and there was nowhere. Couldn't find him anywhere. So a lot of people died after liberation. And they buried a lot of people in Terrazine. But they had no names, because none of us had names in the camps. I mean, when we were in Theresee and Freudenthal, we had the names,

but we didn't have it on our clothes or anything. So most camps, you know, if you didn't have the... Names on your clothes or anything. There's no way to identify. No way to identify. No family to identify. No. So when someone died, it was just a nameless body.

Right. So that's what happened to Max's father. He says here, with the help of the Red Cross, we find out that mom and Cecilia went to Stutthoff. Stutthoff, a camp in East Prussia. That concentration camp reportedly expanded several times, adding more barracks and extermination chambers during the war. They tell us that Rishela? Rochella and Cecilia Schindler were killed there. Just before liberation, all surviving inmates were loaded onto barges, pushed out into the Baltic Sea, and were deliberately sunk.

Right. Our worst fear is realized we worried about Mom and Cecilia's safety every day. We were suffering in the camps, keeping hope alive that they would survive. Learning with certainty that they are dead is a tremendous blow. The Red Cross also investigated. The Red Cross also investigated our family in Poland that went into the ghetto. They tell us that our cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandma Sveed, Svied, were all killed.

None of them survived. We also find out that our dear grandpa Schindler refused to go into a ghetto when the Jews were rounded up in 1942. He was shot in the street near his home. Right. At 90 years old, he refused to leave his home. We now know that our whole family is gone. Murdered by the German Nazis. Dad is dead.

Mom and Cecilia are gone. Our extended family no longer exists. It is just Fred and me in the world. All that remains from our former life is the gold chain that dad wore to hold his watch. It's not an easy book to read. No, it's not. I've read it so many times. And yet?

Every time I break out in tears. I can't help it. I mean, both to hear and read about both of your family and Max's family, the entire family's gone. Wiped out for no reason just because they were Jewish. The world doesn't realize what they've lost. Who knows? Maybe one of those people could have been a doctor

who would have found a cure for cancer. Okay, because we believe a lot of them in education. Max finds out about the same program that you were enrolled into. Right. Of looking for orphan survivors. And the maximum age for that group is 16. Fred is 17. So Fred and Max decide they're going to lie about their ages to get in there.

Yeah. We had no IDs. We had nothing. What we had was the clothes on our children. bodies, nothing else, no identification of any kind. So Max, you know, Max gets to England and again, you just got to read the book to go through that transition of what it's like to go from a, from a concentration camp to England. Right. With white sheets and white bread. And he's got a part of there where he explains, he thinks white bread is basically like cake. He thinks they're making

sandwiches on cake because it tastes so delicious to him. Yeah, just, just, it's a really, it's just powerful. Yeah. And, you know, one of the things that I, I called out in here is that he says, we attend school, we attended organization and for rehabilitation, rehabilitation and training school for half a day, five days a week. The school is designed to prepare us for life and work. And, you know, I just read that as his focus, and it seems like everyone's focus was like, okay, we're going to move forward. We got to find a new job. We've got to find out how we're going to put our lives together.

You have to do that. If you don't, you're lost. And there's also, what's the name of Mr. Montefiore? Am I saying that right? Montefiore. And what was his position? He was a wealthy Jewish philanthropist in London. And he offered to take us to England.

He was kind of supplying a lot of the financial backing behind. Absolutely. Absolutely, yes. Actually, Sir Leonard Montefiro walked me down the aisle when we got married in London because I had no parents and so he offered to do that.

Yeah, no, that's why I definitely wanted to call out his name because I knew he was an important figure to all of you. Oh, yes. He was a very important person in England and very important person in Israel. Have you ever been to Israel?

I have not. In Israel, many of the cities have a lot of... Sir Leonard Montefioreau is all over the place, but he built this and he built that and all kinds of things. You guys, there's a great line in here again. You know, it's just the counselors tell us that we did not deserve the suffering that we endured, that it cannot stop us now, and that we can be anything we want to if we are willing to work hard.

Right. Which is just, you know, again, the mental. of, look, we've got to move forward. And also, it's interesting, you can be anything you want, but you still have to be willing to work hard. Even after everything you've been through, you're still going to have to get out there and work. Absolutely. And we did, and we did, all of us.

Let me tell you something. If you're going to count all the survivors that remained from all the people that were killed and that came to this United States, okay, I bet you not one would have gone on welfare because the first thing they did, get a job. Okay? Our education was very low. I mean, I had three and a half years of education, close to four years of education. I never even thought of going back to school and wasn't even on my mind.

First of all, in Europe, we only had education until the age of 14. even though I didn't have it in Europe because we couldn't go after I was like nine years old but we all worked very hard to get where we are okay you do a you do a great job of going through like kind of how all this stuff unfolds

and it's really just a beautiful part of the book when there's five of you girls that show up in where is it Bedford hostel and it's a bunch of a bunch of the young men survivors, that's when you, well, that's when you meet one handsome young gentleman who says, hello, I'm Max, and this is my brother Fred. Yeah. Welcome to Bedford.

Yeah. And. When I saw him, I said, I'm going to marry him. You made the call, huh? I made the call. Of course, he already had a girlfriend because all the girls from Bedford, the town, the non-Jewish girls, they would come to the hostel. They liked the Jewish boys.

So you had to... You had to make a move there. It took me some time, but I got him. Test your patience. Right. That's what you need to do in life. But you got to go after what you want. Absolutely.

You got to take a little risk sometimes. Yes. Coming from Rose. Yes. You get jobs. You learn English. Now you move to London. Who is it that moves to London?

Is it you, Max, and Fred, that all moved to London together? Yes, yes. Yes, we did. And... Because the hostel was closing. The kids were leaving. They were finding relatives in the United States. They're going to Israel.

They're going to Australia. You know, because we were all orphans. And a lot of us remembered we had relatives here, there, and everywhere. Okay. So a lot of them, so a lot of us from England, you know, came to England, and then we went over to the United States. You guys get married. You say it at, when you guys get married, your receptions, 95% of the guests are survivors in the hall.

They're all survivors. We kind of stuck together. You know what I mean? Yeah. We were in hostels together. And then even when we came to London, we did not live in a hostel. They, you know, they put us in private homes and the organization would pay for our upkeep. You go on a honeymoon?

Is it a honeymoon when you guys go to Paris? Yes. You say, I never thought. I thought I could be this happy again after all we lived through in the camps. As we head back to England, I think of my parents and wonder if they were ever this happy. Thinking of my parents makes me miss them for a moment and I am sad. But then we arrive at our destination and the sad thoughts are pushed aside in favor of hope for the future. It's just such a common theme that you talk about all the time that you're not going to get caught up in the past.

It's not that you're going to forget about the past, but you're not going to dwell there. Right. Well, you cannot go. You cannot, life is to look forward for better things. I mean, if you're going to look to the past all the time, it's not going to get you anywhere. Okay.

So we just have to hope for the best and do the best we can. You say here, London is a fun city for us. We have lots of friends and enjoy our jobs. Five years have flown by since leaving the hostel, and we are so happy for our new life. life here together. And again, I'm fast forwarding through a bunch of really, really good stuff. And then you say, one night over a wonderful dinner of fish and chips, Max proclaims, Rose, I think it's time for us to move to America. His statement takes me by surprise. Max periodically

talked about moving to America since we met. We talk about America as a destination for someday, but I never considered that someday might be today. He told me that his father had been trying to get the family immigration visas before. the Germans rounded up all the Jews. Right. I don't know, Max, what we do in America. Whatever we want, he tells me with a smile. So that was your vision of America.

Right. Was we're going to go there and... Yes. That was our hope. The uncle I had, he didn't offer to bring us. But Max's family offered to bring us. Sent us affidavits. What were the affidavits for?

To come to America. So they just got a sign that, hey, we're going to... They're responsible for you. Okay. They were responsible for us for five years. Okay. So, of course, when we came to America, we spoke perfect English already. Within three, four days, we had jobs.

You know, we were already grown up. Land of opportunity. Land of opportunity. Lots of opportunities here, right? Although, I thought, well, maybe you can expand on this a little bit because, well, first of all, October 3rd, 1950, Rose and I, this is Max, Max talking, Rose and I both wear our father's watch chains as we leave the apartment. When we reach New York City on October 12th,

my uncle and second cousins meet us at the dock and put us up in a Manhattan hotel for two nights. Our hotel window looks out into a junkyard, which makes us want to check out as soon as possible. After a quick breakfast on our second full day in America, my uncle gives us $20 and says, good luck, you're on your own. Right.

From then on, we will never stay with family again. I do not feel we need them. We can make it here in America on her own as long as Rose and I have each other. I tell you, we were very lucky to have these relatives, okay, Maxis family. They were really amazing people, okay, and we loved each other deeply, okay? They welcomed us like their own kids. Thank God we never needed their help. Yeah, that's awesome.

So he gets a job at a scale company. working on making scales. Right. And then he notices some little upgrowing company called International Business Machines or IBM. Right, right, right. He realizes maybe that could be a good job. He gets involved in that.

You end up passing out one time on the train. Go to the doctor. And then Max says, when Rose calls me the next day, she tells me there's nothing at all to worry about. Excitedly, she says, the doctor says that there's only one thing going on with me, and that is that I am pregnant. Right.

195, Max decides he's going to come and check out a little place called San Diego, California. Right, right. We all know what happens when you come to San Diego for... Nobody wants to leave. Nobody wants to leave. Max included. And then you arrived in April of 1956,

with baby Roxanne. and then you end up with a place in North Park. You get a job at Golden State Fabrics. Right. And then you start raising your family. Yeah. Ben arrives in 1957 who I met today. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. It was the second. I have a daughter who is 65 years old and Ben is 62. So we came to San Diego in 1956. I came to Max came Christmas time He came for a three-day visit And he never went back to New York

He calls me two days later He says Rose, we're moving to San Diego He got a job at Solar Okay Okay And worked for Solar for five years And then He went to General Dynamics

He retired after working at General Dynamics for 28 years Good good career and a great place to settle down. So we lived in North Park for six months and then we bought a house in Allied Gardens. You know, I'm going to take a little aside here. You say this, you say occasionally I still wonder

if there is a God. How could there be with all the terror that happened to us and to others? Surely God would not have allowed it. When I think about this, it makes me angry. I ask myself why God would have allowed the Holocaust to happen. and I never come up with an answer.

I cannot sort out with what I feel. So this question has to be put aside to allow me to continue with all the good in my life. That's a very big question. Losing so many people, complete families wiped out. There are so many complete families wiped out. You know, the one woman that talked to you inside Auschwitz that said you will never make any sense of this because it doesn't make any sense.

Like this is too insane to understand. Right. You can't comprehend it because it's incomprehensible. It is. It is. I mean, we're sitting here talking about, you know, you and your direct family. And then you multiply at times two to get you and your direct family and Max and his direct family. But then you have to do that hundreds and hundreds and hundreds.

of times over and over again. And every one of those unidentified bodies that got buried in a mass grave with no identification and no family. Every one of those. And you know, this is something I talk about a lot because it happens in war all the time. Oh, there was 22 soldiers killed.

Oh, there was, you know, 428 soldiers killed on this attack in World War I. Those aren't just soldiers. Those are people. Of course not. Absolutely. And these people, these bodies, unidentified bodies, every one of them had a family, had hopes and had dreams. Absolutely, absolutely.

Max convinces, it sounds like he kind of convinces Fred to come out and move to California. It sounds like Fred had a harder time after. He did. he had a harder time. He lost his hair in the camp. So after liberation, his hair never came back. And he was more, a lot of people are more obsessed from the past. The best thing is sometimes to forget some, you know,

not to think always about the past because you want to go ahead. Yeah, a thing that I talk to people when I talk about loss, Because I've lost a lot of friends. And when people ask me about how they handle that, I tell them to remember but don't dwell. So we never want to forget what happened. But we don't want to, as you're saying, we don't want to sit there in the past

because we need to think about the future when we move forward. Absolutely. Absolutely. Max says we don't really talk about the camps much at all. Our friends don't want to hear about the atrocities and we don't want to relive them. Even in our survivors group, it's not a big subject. It is difficult to talk about losing absolutely everything, your home, your family, everything you own, even your family photos.

For most Jewish families, the only people to survive are those who left Europe or hid. Our circumstances are rare. Even Rose and I have an unspoken agreement not to speak of it between us. We both understand and do not need to talk about it. We are focused on going forward. Right. looking ahead and working on everything together. That's what life is all about.

When you talked about, again, just Max's career, and one of the things that he said about his career, he said, I want my children to see that anything is possible with determination, hard work, and an eagerness to learn. Right. If Max, if the war wouldn't have been affecting Max so bad, badly and his whole family, he would have been really something very special. He was a very smart man.

So, I mean, also, we have no education. There were a lot of big plans for the Schindler boys before the war, okay? Of course, it all went to hell. When you, your son, Steve's 13 years old. And tell us about what happened there. That kind of changed the direction of your life a little bit. Well, he was in the Anne Frank story, and he played a part of Peter, okay? And the teacher found out that his parents are Holocaust survivors at Lewis Jr. High in Allied Gardens.

And that's when I started speaking about the Holocaust. Before, we didn't want to talk about it, okay? Because life goes on, and so we didn't want to even tell our kids a lot about what happened. So when Steve was in this play, they started calling me to go out and talk about the Holocaust. So that's, and I've been speaking there, that, it's close to 50 years now. Steve is 62. No, he's, no, excuse me, he's 60. Ben is 62.

Steve is going to be 61 next month. So you can imagine how many years I've been speaking about the Holocaust. Well, one thing that you said in here that I think, really is a bold statement. You say the Germans did not succeed in their endeavor to silence the Jews or prevent anyone from telling of their atrocities. I am one of the few who remain

and I can tell the world. Right. A.2-5893 on my forearm has a new value. Right. And I am not one to pass up an opportunity. This may be my first time speaking, but I will find more places to share my story. That's what you said after you got done

speaking to those kids for the first time. You were talking to Max after you did the, after you talked to the kids. The first time. Yeah, and you guys are having this conversation. And this is Max talking. He says, he's asking you, you know, what were they asking you about? He says, what else did they ask? And it says, Rose thought for a moment before responding.

One child asked, why do I think I survived Auschwitz? She says softly. The fact that a child asked this is interesting to me. Sometimes children say things that adults won't. I know that Rose has thought about this before, so I'm interested to hear her answer. I push a little further. And what was your answer?

I asked quietly. It's a miracle that I survived, Auschwitz. Also, I really do think part of it is because I kept looking out and trying new things. I would not give up. I just continued and never. gave up hope as I process her words she squeezes my hands across the table and says you did the exact same thing this takes me a back for a moment it is true but I've never thought about my time in the camps in this way before it really is true that you don't know when the next

attempt at survival might be the one that succeeds I say I smile and squeeze her hand back you really are amazing Rose We got to this place together, Max, Rose replies, before placing a kiss on my cheek. We sit silently for a moment as we both ponder how our lives could have been different. Before this moment is broken, I squeeze her hand to get her attention. We have climbed mountains. I did not know we could climb. We made it, Rose. We made it. Yeah.

And actually, as we came in, I'm sorry, Rose. He's gone over three years now. We've married 67 years. Well, I think the incredible life that you shared together is something that is a beautiful story. And Ben, when he came in, he said he'd been listening to the podcast a little. bit to kind of get a feel for it and talk to you a little bit about what it was going to be like.

And he was listening to one of the podcasts. And one of the podcasts, what I was saying in the podcast was keep moving forward. Like, hey, things are going to be hard. You keep moving forward. And he actually brought in a photograph of Max's tombstone. And it has the single quote that Max, you know, that the family decided to put on the grave Stone was live day to day and keep moving forward. And I got to say, like I said, this whole thing got started when my wife went and saw you speak

and just looking at this book, you know, you didn't know her at the time, but you made a little inscription to my wife. And it just says, Helen, never give up hope, signed Rose. Schindler. And I think that, um, did I write that down? You wrote that right there. No kidding. Never give up hope. Yeah. Never give up hope. Yeah. So, um, I mean, I think that really between never give up hope and keep moving forward, those are, uh, very strong sayings. Strong sayings. And, and you and Max are shining examples of how to actually do that. Right. how to actually do that in life.

I know I've had you trapped in here for a while. You have a website. The name of the book is To Who Survived. To Who Survived.com. Yeah, so there's a website called To Who Survived.com. The book is available there. The book is available on Amazon. We'll have a link to it so people can get it through our website

to make it easy for them because they know our podcast. Website is Jocko Podcast. You also have social media. So despite the fact that you're not quite a teenager anymore, you still have Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. And all those are at 2 Who Survived. It's the written out T-W-O Who Survived. And the book, I'm telling you, I read a little, I read a fraction of the book today. There's so many details in there.

The stories, the two. two intertwining stories are so moving, they're so powerful. And like I said, it reads like a story. It reads like... It's a real story. Exactly what happened. And the language is just, it feels like you're sitting across the table hearing it first. The language is actually, we did this for middle school.

Well, it was perfect for me then. Yes, it's perfect for everybody, I guess. But we thought it's so important for us to tell it to the kids at school. what happened to us, okay? Yeah, it's a beautiful book. I mean, despite the fact that it's filled with horror, it still is a beautiful book about the strength that human beings can display,

even in the face of the evil of other human beings. Yeah. Do you have any closing thoughts, Rose, because I don't want to keep you in here forever? I want to thank you for doing that. I hope people will enjoy your story, okay? I don't even know where it, if I turn on my, it's not a radio, I don't even know what you call it.

I'll explain to Ben how to get it done. Well, we have, since Max passed away, I don't even use my, not a radio, it's a whole set. Well, I'll make sure to talk to Ben so that you can listen to it and watch it. Actually, you can watch it too because it'll be on something called YouTube, which is like a television that you can watch any time you want. I'm on YouTube already. Yeah, well, I've watched some of your stuff on YouTube already. You'll be on there more.

But it's really funny because I've never even put on my, it's not a radio that I have, it's a whole set, you know. Like a stereo system. Yeah, it's okay. Right, the stereo systems. Okay. I couldn't think of the right word. Stereo system.

I should put it on sometime. Max used it all the time. But ever since he passed away, things are so different for me. Well, yeah, you know what? I do recommend you go and put the stereo system on. Put some records on there. You should see all the records we have. Well, I bet that Max would like to sit down with you there

and listen to some of those albums. He probably would. I hope he can. So I recommend. you do it. Okay. Thank you very much. Have a beautiful day. Thank you. And you too. And have a beautiful life. And just remember,

if you have a problem, if something is going, not going so well, remember tomorrow is going to be better. Okay. I will do that. Thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for sharing your story. And thank you for giving us an example. Thank you for doing this, okay? It's an honor to have you. Thank you.

and with that Rose Schindler has left the building what an what an honor to have her on what a story pretty unbelievable echo you made it through

yes it's kind of harrowing when you think about it from the perspective of a 9 10 11 12 year old kid yes right yeah and there's So there's two things that I, well, there's a bunch of things that I pulled from it.

But two things that really stand out, small, seemingly small, but kind of big. Where, like, so they stuck together, you know. And so what that was, essentially, was covering move the whole time. Absolutely. Because it was, yeah, so that was kind of like, and you know how you said it was counterintuitive. Counterintuitive. Yeah, where it's like, oh, yeah, like. Hey, if I don't have to depend on this person or whatever.

I identified the root of that thought in my brain. When I was in Sri Lanka, and I worked closely with their special operations forces over there. There was an army guy who was saying when he was a normal infantry commander, and there was a brutal civil war going on in Sri Lanka. And he was telling me how hard it was to be in charge. And he said, listen, if I was alone on the battlefield, He goes, I will 100% live and do the right thing.

100%. He says, when I got all these other guys relying on me and making, you know, I'm responsible for them, he says, it's so much, so much harder. And that's what I was thinking. So I was thinking that, hey, if you're just, if you just got to take care of yourself, it's going to be easier. But then I thought the same thing you thought, which was, wait a second. And that's exactly what I said to her.

You know, you're taking care of each other. You're covering moving for each other. Because that day where you're hurting, that day where you could use an extra quarter slice of bread, you know, maybe one of your sisters can give it to you and no one else in the world would. So, yeah, the idea of sticking together and having that, and, you know, obviously, like, that's what a seal-up tune is,

you know, that's what any team is, right? Your sum is greater, the sum is greater than the parts. And that's what this is another proof of. Yeah. So that was one thing. What was the other thing? Just like there's no real formula to survive. There's like a lot of luck, you know.

But man, her bravery basically was the function or was the result of just milking that luck. Because she was basically sent to die plenty times. But she would like sneak out of line and do all the stuff or whatever. And that's like the kind like you just get one person to see like, hey, or even realize. You know the kind where you go, you know, she goes for selection. They're like, no, you're too skinny. You're a muscle man.

Sorry, Muslim. Is that what it is? Muslim. Yeah. It's funny because it sounds like muscle man, which is the exact opposite. Unless, it takes one guard to be like,

hey, wait, didn't I just send you to go die yesterday? Kind of thing. What are you still doing here? Yeah. Hey, walk with me. Yeah, I'm going to make sure this time kind of thing, you know? Yeah. The amount of, and I was thinking about that too,

you know how we have, well, it's literally called survivor bias, right? Yeah. Where when you only hear from the people that made it, then it seems like that's what you should do. Because how many thousands of people said, oh, I'm going to sneak out of this line? And they got seen and they got killed.

Oh, yeah. You know, that happened over and over and over again. Yeah. And it's, I mean, you know, according to her, like, you just do one single, you know, sign of resistance. You're like, oh, well, they'll just kill you. Because, like, and it makes sense because it's like not even. We need people to work and obey.

That's it. Like, otherwise, like, we want you all to be not. Be here. Yeah. If you don't want to do those two things, then we're just going to kill you. And with no second thoughts whatsoever. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. That's crazy, man. Yeah, no, it's, um, it is. And isn't it crazy what a human being can get through? Yeah. Can survive. And it makes you realize that we have, like, just we are overwhelmed. with opportunity.

Even if you consider that opportunity is just like gonna go home and drink some water, some clean water. Gonna go home and clean yourself. Yeah. Going to go home and not have bed bugs and lice. And lice.

That's the plan. That's what I'm gonna do today. When I go home, I'm not gonna have bedbugs and lice. Yeah. That's, that's, we got that. Yeah. Right?

We have food. You know, leftovers probably hey let's do it you know there's parts in the book like there's parts in there where she's she figures out where they basically clean the dirty

kitchenware from where they make the soup and every once in a while she can find potato peels right and she's she has to keep it a secret because you know she just shares the potato peels

with her sister sisters only yeah and if anyone else figures out that there's potato peels out there there won't be any like everyone will be there yeah so so yeah that's the kind of thing where you think well you're just because you have sisters it's helpful because what did the sisters do that helped her she did that to help the sisters you even there's the time and I know you were probably feeling this too where where she or might have been max I forget which story it was but they went from the Oh, yeah, when she went to work, right before when they were just in harsh conditions.

And then they went to work and then they could like take a shower once a week or something like this. With soap. Yeah, you know, when you're going down the list of all the new things that they had or whatever, when you think about it comparatively to what we have or whatever, still like, bro, those are like slave conditions really still. Oh, for sure. But since you were kind of engrossed in the story, when you started revealing it, I was like, Ooh, that feels like a relief even to me, you know, hearing it. But man, that's how that's like that demonstrates, you know, like how thankful we should be.

Yeah. Opportunities everywhere. Opportunities. And one opportunity you have is to live. Yeah. Yeah. Live. You're not sitting here worried about dying.

No. You're not worried about getting. Hey, we go in that line over there. By the way, it'll be dead in three minutes. That's what's about to happen. Yeah. Do that nine times. So, well, let's take advantage of the fact that we're alive.

Yes. That seems like a good plan. Mm-hmm. And let's do right. What can we do? What can we do to take advantage of the fact that we're alive right now? I'll tell you. We be and remain capable.

That's a big deal, too. Mm-hmm. capability in health. Gratitude's a big one. Obviously. Part of that health part of it is jiu-jitsu. Obviously, and capability. J-Jitsu allows for greater capability, exponentially greater, my opinion.

I would agree. In all aspects. Yes. So, anyway, a lot of us are doing jiu-jitsu. A lot of us are about to do jihitsu. We're going to need a ghee. What key do we get? Or a jing-gi.

Okay. Okay. Also, if you do no ghee, get an origin rash guard. The other part of the uniform in the totalitarian ghee and no-gee scenario. That's not really totalitarian, but it's... Yeah, I just learned that word. Totality is what you meant. Totalitarian would mean there's a regime of... Yeah, that's not what I mean at all.

Like I said, I just learned that word, so, you know, I'm practicing, and we'll get it right next time for sure. Anyway, origin main.com, that's where you can get the stuff. We also have jeans. Yep. In the event of you not doing jujitsu at any point of the day, where some origin jeans. Which is unfortunate.

Yeah, you know, but we got to be thankful, you know. Yeah, you get the, by the way, I did a bad thing, which was talk about the Delta 68 genes before they were really, you know, ready to be released. maybe I got over excited, right? Maybe I just lost my mind a little bit. But I will say this. I have seen the Delta 68 jeans,

which are the most comfortable leg garments ever created by man of any kind, are in production right now. I think I've said that before, and I was inaccurate. The last time I said they're in production, it sounded cool, but it was a little bit of like, I was assuming,

I made an assumption, which we know is not good. The assumption was, oh, yeah, they must be in production by now. They weren't. We were moving the fact. We were moving the boot line into the new factory, blah, blah, blah. A bunch of things were going on. We weren't in production yet.

Guess what we are now. We are in production. Okay. We are in production with Delta 68 genes. I understand. And you claim that they're the most comfortable leg garment. They not claim. I'm saying I have worn every different type of leg garment.

garment in my life. So the joggers were more... These are the most comfortable and the best. More than the joggers. Yeah, well, I didn't really... The joggers aren't for me. And they don't look normal. And they don't feel normal.

This is my little theory, hypothesis, whatever. You put on the joggers, you felt the physical comfort, but the psychological and emotional discomfort trumped it. So it can't be the front runner of comfort. Is I'm saying? I'm going to tell you, no. You're actually wrong. I will tell you the Delta 68 genes.

are as comfortable, if not more comfortable than the joggers. Physically. Physically, more comfortable. If I had to sleep in one or the other, I'd pick the jeans. I'm not going to, what do you call? You're not going to call me a liar. I'm not going to call you a liar. I'm not going to refute your own opinion.

So, hey, man, all good. But on a factual level, I'm just going to say, I don't know 100% if I agree with you. Okay. So there's two theoretical presumptions that are, are being made by each of us. One of them is that the joggers are the most comfortable leg garments ever. Not as functional, by the way. Or just as functional.

No. But the Delta 68's, in my opinion, are the most, not only functional, but also most comfortable. So there you go. There you go. Hey, you know, when we get them, we can see for ourselves, you know? And if you want to get them, you can get them from Orange and Maine. orghumat.com, which is also where you can get supplements. Yes, supplements.

Joint supplements. It's very important. Very important. Joint supplements, joint warfare. Super krill oil. Also, additional protein in the form of dessert called mok. Also a version for the warrior kids, warrior kid mulk. Many different flavors.

That's the one you're going to have to choose for you. I'm not going to say, hey, mint chocolate is factually the best one. Well, that's a matter of opinion. It's not like the Delta 68, which is about. matter of fact. Well, questionable fact. We'll see. Got Jock White T as well. Don't forget about the Jocko

discipline in a go. Jocko discipline can. It's so good. It's so good and it makes you feel really good. It gets you up on step, we'll say. If you're going to train,

if you trained against a clone of yourself and one of you had Jocker Discipline go and the other one didn't the one with jocco Discipline go would win 100% of the time 100% of the time yeah no question am I wrong double blind no that's been tested by the way oh yeah we can test that with you and jade well you know theoretically no but um no you're twins though I'm sorry theoretically yes but I'll give you know the jocco discipline go you'll go against jade it'll be proven it'll be proven forever that's hey you can pick all this stuff up At origin,maine.com, or the supplement stuff you can get at the vitamin shop, which is a retail outlet all over the place.

And they're stocking up. If they were low on stock, we're taking care of that. They got stock now. Yes, big time. Also, when you are getting your copy of two who survived, to the let, I didn't know this until at the end, two, like the letter to, TWA, who survived, as opposed to what I thought, I thought it was like, a letter to who survived.

You see what I'm saying? Kind of like you was like a thing. Okay, I got it. It was dedicated kind of situation. Anyway, all right. To Who survived. Go to jocco podcast.com. Click on the top where it says books from the episodes.

Boom, we got you. So you can get it through there. Easy way to just navigate and find it. Also, we have our own store. It's called jaco store. So you go to jocco store.com, and this is where you can get more rash guards, represent the path while you're doing your jiu-jitsu or surfing.

or whatever you use rash guards for. Some guys, when they do powerlifting, it gives you all the range, a little bit of compression. You know, it's very functional garment, as it were. Anyway, some T-shirts on there represent the path. Discipline equals freedom. The attitude of good.

You know, shirts, t-shirts, hoodies, light and heavyweight. A lot of stuff on there if you like it. If you want something, get something. Good way to support it as well. Also subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already. Yes, it's important to subscribe to the podcast. I guess.

I don't know, varying levels of importance. How about that? Here's the deal. If you want to, go ahead. If you don't want to, continue to be lame. That choice is yours. Don't forget, we also have the grounded podcast, which is a new episode out of the grounded podcast.

So you can get just right up to date. on the grounded podcast. We also have the Warrior Kid podcast, because let's face it, warrior kids need warrior podcasts. So we got that for them. And also don't forget about the Warrior Kid soap from Irish OaksRanch.com.

Have you gotten any killer soap yet? No, not yet. That is so lame. Well, here's the thing. I just heard, I was informed that we, they, the nice, the great people up at Irish Oaks Ranch, sent me some and you some oh yeah all right okay well let's just make that a little clearer

they sent two bars to my house neither one of those was labeled echo okay I'll just put it to you like that but I will say this killer soap is the best soap ever and I'm not even kidding it is so good it's it's everything I ever could have imagined it is soap it's a square most industrial looking bar. It's got a skull on it. And it says killer scope, it's killer soap. And it's black. Black soap.

So, yeah. And we're going to sell it on our site. So soon you'll be able to get Jocko soap. You'll be able to get killer soap. Made by a kid, a warrior kid, by the way. So there you go. Yep. It's true.

Also, we have a YouTube channel. Official. Got a little checkmark on our YouTube channel, by the way. Brow, that's something. It's not nothing. I was not aware of that. It's official. Anyway, not to say, you know, okay, that means what it means.

But here's the, here's what it actually means. I have no idea what this means. Well, sometimes people will, they'll take your content. Okay. And they'll put it on their YouTube channel, which is, you know, it spreads the words. So that's cool. But, you know, sometimes if people want it, because there was a time where someone was trying to kind of impersonate a little bit.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or it could have been misconstrued, you know, so people might not be able to tell the difference. Unless you get the checkmark, boom, they know that's the official one. That's what the check mark is for. So we're kind of in the game now. Yeah, yeah, we're official 100%.

Anyway, our YouTube channel for the video version of this podcast. If you want to see what Rose Shindler looks like. Yes. Then you can check it out here. You can also see Echo makes some, what he calls enhanced videos. They're visually enhanced. We don't know if it's necessarily an improvement.

all the time on reality. I kind of think it is an improvement on reality though. I think sometimes Echo's vision of the world is a little bit better than everyone than the normal vision of the world. Just a little enhanced.

Why not, if I speak, why not have things exploding around me? I think it works. So there's that. And don't forget about psychological warfare. If you need a little, if you need a little psychological hitter, then check out

psychological warfare. Fair. It's on iTunes, Google Play, MP3. Check out Flipside Canvass.com if you need a little visual hitter to get you in the game. Dakota Meyer owns that. Listen to him on podcast 115. Get in the game with Dakota. We've got some books, leadership strategy and tactics, field manual. We got the way of the warrior kid series. We got Mikey and the Dragons. We got discipline equals freedom. Field manual. We got extreme ownership and the dichotomy leadership. These are all books that will help you and the people around you be better and win in life. Straight up, all of them.

We also have Two Who Survived by Rose and Max Schindler. And also it's a capture, the story's captured by M. Lee Connolly, but you can get that book as well. It's an outstanding read. Eschelon Front, Leadership Consultancy. what we do is solve problems through leadership. If you listen to us, talk about leadership, and you'd like to have help employing these leadership strategies, tactics, and principles inside your organization,

go to echelonfront.com. That's what we do. We also have EF Online, which is online, interactive leadership training for you, for your organization. Go to EFonline.com to check that out. Check that out. We have a seminar, a convention, A leadership course, May 7th and 8th in Orlando, September 16th and 17th in Phoenix, December 3rd and 4th in Dallas.

Go to extreme ownership.com for details on that. Every event that we've ever done has sold out. So if you want to come, register early. And of course, we have EF Overwatch and EF Legion, EF Overwatch, executive leadership from military for civilians. EF Legion, frontline leadership, frontline troops with military experience to come to your organization. Check out either one of those, EFoverwatch.com or EFlegin.com. And if you want to connect with Rose Schindler, you can find her at her website, To Who Survived.com. And on all the social media outlets, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

All of those, she's at To Who Survived. and Echo and I are also on the interwebs on all the various social media channels, including YouTube, where we are now official. Echo is at Echo Charles. I am at Jocka Willink, and the YouTube channel is called Jocko Podcast. And to Mrs. Rose Schindler, once again, thank you for coming on and sharing your eczer. Incredible story which is just it's even to sit here and hear you say over and over again that's unbelievable. It's unbelievable and it reminds us of What what it means to suffer What it means to face

Unimaginable horrors and still maintain hope and While we will not dwell we certain will not forget and to the military service members out there that have fought and continued to fight to protect the weak to liberate the enslaved to bring the light of freedom into the world like those forces that liberated the concentration camps thank you all for your service and the same goes to our police We send law enforcement to our firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and border patrol and secret service. You all also make sacrifices to protect us.

And we thank you for that. And to everyone else out there, you know, clearly we have seen today through Rose's story once again that human beings are capable. of absolutely horrific and hideous evil. But we've also seen that human beings are capable of overcoming those satanic forces in the world and of maintaining hope against the darkness. And in the end, so fight on, do the right thing and no matter what, do not give up hope.

hope we've got for tonight so until next time this is echo and jocco out