Before the war, I had everything—a good life. My father made a good living. He was Hungarian, but the Czech authorities weren’t supposed to know he was living in Mukachevo. To avoid detection, we used my mother’s maiden name, Klien. In 1939, Mukachevo went from being part of Czechoslovakia to being under Hungarian control. My father was especially happy because he could live more freely. I was young then, and I had to switch from Czech to Hungarian schools.

 

My father’s business was doing well. We lived in a big house in the suburbs of Mukachevo and even added another room. My mother felt sorry for her younger brother, who had ten children. When the Hungarians came, he couldn’t make a living, so they came to live with us. We gave them the larger part of our house. My uncle was very Orthodox, as were my mother and father. My father had a beard.

 

My father had a brother in Budapest with two daughters. His brother begged him to move to Budapest, fearing trouble. But my father didn’t want to leave his father, my grandfather, so we stayed in Mukachevo. Little did we know that Hitler would come.

 

The Nazis arrived in Mukachevo in April 1944, right after Passover. We were putting away the Passover dishes when a German soldier came to our house. The Germans noticed the clean house and the smell of my mother’s cooking. One of them remarked, “Oh, the house is so clean.” Eventually, they took our house.

 

Not long after the Nazis arrived, they began taking us to the ghetto. There was a woman who lived across our yard who helped my mother with household chores. When they were taking my family away, she begged my sister Rivka, who had blonde hair, to go with her, saying, “Please don’t go; I’ll hide you.” But my sister refused, saying she would go wherever our parents went. If not for Rivka, I wouldn’t be here—my sisters watched over me. My mother had a sister who lived within the ghetto boundaries, so we moved to her house when we had to leave our own. We stayed with my aunt until they took us to a brick factory on the outskirts of the city. As we walked to the brick factory, my grandfather struggled to keep up, and the Germans began beating him over the head. He was bleeding, and my father was devastated. At the brick factory, we just laid on boards. My mother hid our earrings so the Germans couldn’t take them. We stayed there for a few days before being sent to Auschwitz.

 

The train journey to Auschwitz took three days. We arrived at night. They forced everyone off the train in great commotion, asking us, “How old are you?” in German. I said I was fourteen. I was tall for my age, and they sent me to the right with my two sisters. My father was also sent to the right, but he didn’t want to leave my mother, grandfather, little brother, little sister, and younger cousins. My sisters begged him to go right, but he refused and went left. If he had gone right, he might still have been alive because he was so young. At that moment, I didn’t understand what going left meant for my family members. My two sisters and I survived the selection.

 

We didn’t know our brother was alive. He was hiding, posing as a Russian soldier.

 

The next morning, I cried for my mother. They told me to go to Mengele’s block and talk to him. I went to speak with him, not realizing he was the one deciding people’s fates. My sister had told me what to say: “Herr Mengele, I want to go to my mother.” He replied, “Oh no, the mothers are with the little kids, and they get white bread and everything.” And that was it. We were in Auschwitz.

 

My sisters and I were later selected to work nights in a factory in Guben, Germany. We were incredibly lucky to stay together, as Mengele often tried to separate sisters. In Guben, we got breakfast and dinner, a bed, and a blanket. Compared to Auschwitz, the factory was gold. We would eat early and walk to the factory to work all night, then return for breakfast in the morning and sleep all day. We were making parts for radios. I caught on to my job quickly, and the Germans kept me because I was good at it. The German day workers left sandwiches for us, perhaps out of pity.

 

As the Russians got closer, we could hear the bombings. They took us to Bergen-Belsen because they didn’t want us to be liberated. My second sister, Ruchala, was sick, and they transported us on an open train from Guben to Bergen-Belsen in February—it was freezing. My sister Ruchala died. At the time, I didn’t understand what had happened. I remember Rivka crying. She was older and understood more. Ruchala had always been the strong one. When my brother saw us in Budapest after the war, he couldn’t believe I was the one who survived instead of Ruchala.

 

Bergen-Belsen was horrific—a death camp. There was no room in the barracks, so we laid outside on straw. No food was given out. Both my sister and I got typhoid, leaving us unable to eat. Eventually, they gave out bread, but it had been poisoned, and whoever ate it died.

 

Then, a woman came running, shouting that she had seen a British tank with soldiers. That was April 15, 1945—I still remember. The British liberated us and took us to a hospital in Celle because we were so sick. They gave us food. We were devastated by the death of our sister. My older sister took it very hard. I was too young to fully understand death.

 

The British arranged for our transport home, taking us to Prague and Budapest. The train connections were difficult because there weren’t enough trains.

 

On our way home, a girl from our city came running, saying she had just seen my brother, who was on his way to Budapest. She said she would tell him we were alive.

 

In Budapest, Rivka and I were waiting when I saw a Russian soldier who looked familiar—it was my brother. He had watched every train that arrived, looking for us. We reunited in Budapest, and he took care of us, eventually bringing us back home to Mukachevo.

 

I am alive because of my sisters.

The Holocaust shouldn’t happen again.