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It happened exactly 63 years ago but Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp survivor Gabor Hirsch recalled the details as effortlessly as if it had been yesterday.
“The death marches started on January 18,” the 78-year-old explains. “They told us that those who were not strong enough could remain. I was quite weak and decided to stay.
“The guards left two days later but returned on January 24 to eliminate signs of the crematorium and to collect the rest of us. There was no roll call and I hid under some straw. Those who went with them were shot.
“Three days after that we were liberated by the Soviet army. I was one of the few who survived. You had to be lucky to do that. You could not survive by being clever or by being nice. You just needed good fortune.
“We suffered because of the lack of hygiene. There was no privacy and very little food. We starved and were in constant fear of being selected for execution. You cannot put into words what that felt like – especially for a young boy separated from his parents.”
Gabor had just celebrated his 15th birthday and weighed under 27kg – just over four stone – when freed from the camp. He had been held for seven months after being captured and transported to Poland in June 1944 as the fate of persecuted Jews in his native Hungary deteriorated rapidly following the Nazis occupation of the country.
Many years later he found a photograph that he believes shows him swathed in blankets shortly after taking those first faltering steps to freedom. The astonishing picture – discovered during research of the subject – will be among those shown when he relives the ordeal tonight in the annual Holocaust Memorial Day lecture at the University of Wolverhampton.
Only child Gabor spent months in German and Soviet camps after being released from Auschwitz before being reunited with his father and returning to school in Bekescsaba in south-east Hungary. “You just had to get on with life,” he explains. His mother had perished in another Polish camp.
The electrical engineer fled to Austria during the 1956 Hungarian uprising and later moved to Switzerland where he married and had two sons, now aged 35 and 38. He became a Swiss citizen in 1972 and lives on the outskirts of Zurich.
Gabor – on his first visit to Wolverhampton – told the Express & Star: “Everybody has a different strategy for dealing with the past. Some of my friends had their concentration camp tattoo removed. I did not. What had happened was not my fault. I felt no shame and thought it was an important part of my past.
“During my professional life I had less time to dwell on what had happened. I was more interested in the present and the future, but I read books and later wanted to find out more about the concentration camp.
“I went to the library and studied archives. I set up a group of survivors in Switzerland and then in 1990 one of my sons asked to visit Auschwitz and I decided that it would be easier if I went with him.
“I have been eight times since. I spent six weeks there in 2000 working as a volunteer and returned for the 50 and 60-year commemorations of the camp. I have lots of questions and too few answers.
“It is a bit like having bits of puzzle but not being able to see the whole picture. I do not believe that I will ever be able to view it in full but I must try – that is why I started the survivors’ group. I want to hear their experiences in the hope that it would help me know exactly what happened.
“People say that it is difficult for people who did not experience the concentration camps to understand what it was like – well, it can be equally difficult for those who were there. Certain things are blotted out or forgotten with the passage of time. It was very emotional when I first talked about my experiences at the camp but I am happy to do it again occasionally.”
Gabor speaks fluently about his experiences until asked about his feelings for the people who made him – and millions of other Jews – suffer so terribly.
He pauses for several seconds while searching for the right words. Then he smiles sadly and says simply: “I don’t like them.”
He continues: “I have no problem with today’s generation. I only have problems if I meet people of my age but there are not that many of those still alive. I cannot forget, but can I forgive? Who shall I forgive?
“Even if I cannot actively forgive, I do not take revenge. I accept the past. I can live with it when others who endured similar experiences could not. Some committed suicide. I hope my lecture tonight will show my audience something of the consequences of the Holocaust so that they can help ensure that nothing like it ever happens again.”
Gabor was invited to give the address after a chance meeting via the internet with University of Wolverhampton religious studies and history lecturer Deidre Burke. They were both using the same research site and got into cyber conversation.
Since then he has forged increasingly close links with the university and its students and these culminate in tonight’s lecture.
Dieter Steinert, Professor of Modern European History and Migration Studies at the university says: “The response has been overwhelming. You can read all the history books you like, but nothing compares with getting the facts first hand.”
* Gabor was among 3,118 prisoners packed onto a train that took him from his home town to the extermination camp in June 1944 just days after the D-Day landings in France. He lost touch with his mother soon afterwards and later learned that she was murdered on December 18, 1944. Like many of the young prisoners he was sent to the so-called Gypsy camp at Auschwitz where most of those held were murdered in a mass slaughter two months later. He was then moved to work at Camp 3 which was called Monowitz and from which doctors regularly selected the weakest for the gas chambers.
Tonight will be the first time that Gabor has spoken to an audience in England about his experiences. All the tickets for the free talk have already been allocated and there is a waiting list.
9 Comments
hello my father is now in his 96th year and has many stories about poland and the war and also photos if any one is interested at the uni please contact me because something should be written down about a remarkable life and a time in our history years that i am glad i missed. Richard.
I went to look round this camp in 1992 when I first joined the Polish clan in marriage. A site to behold !!!
I have also nursed patients in my time who survived Auschwitz.
The bravest of the brave.
- LEST WE FORGET !!!!
Some 10 years ago I was invited to visit Israel and whilst we were there we visited the holocaust museum and garden of rememberance to friends of the Jews, whilst in the museum I was taken by a friend to an upstairs room where there was a simple raised wooden platform and piled high in the centre were childrens shoes taken from them after going to the gas chambers. It was so quiet, so cold in that room and tears came unashamedly quickly. Later we went to the memorial to the children of the holocaust and again I cried unashamedly to the memory of those innocent young children. If God can forgive those that committed such evil I most certainly could not. What I saw that day will live with me forever.
Hugely moving my own mother survived Aushwitz-Birkenau and I was lucky to visit her beutiful home town of Krakow in Poland with her whilst she was still alive. I now take trips to that town and the death camp if anyone wishes to join.
On hearing the news, that the Holocaust would be removed from our children’s history classes, upset me greatly.
One day these terrible decisions (and this isn’t the first) will come back to haunt us.
When will it effect Remembrance day?
I don’t know whether it is usual, but probably I didn’t expressed myself correctly, so I would like to make some remarks to the interview.
I never been - untill liberation - in the maincamp/Auschwitz_I, or in the camps of Auschwitz_III. All the time I spent in the camp was Auschwitz_II or Birkenau. Birkenau was build in 3 sections, BI; BII and BIII and each of this sections were divided with fence of barbedwire and highvoltage in different subsections or subcamps. BII the section where I was, had the subcamps BIIa to BIIg. From June 29th untill mid October I was in BIIe or Gypsy camp, for about 2 weeks till 2nd November in BIIa quarantine camp and afterwards untill evacuation in BIId men’s workingcamp.
I was liberated in BIIf hospitalcamp on 27th January, but during all this time, I never left or have been outside of Birkenau, which was at the same time
1.) extermination camp, for the “unable to work” of the incoming transports,
2.) transit camp for the “Depot prisoners” to supply other camps outside Auschwitz with slave laborers and
3.) working camp for several commandos and workshops in and outside of Birkenau.
This is the history that schools should be teaching. It is terrible that schools dont teach this to pupils. when i was at school it was about henry and his wifes but so children can realise this happend and so many people died it should be included in our history lessons. come on schools get with it
well said sylvia . no school my children have gone to teach this history but they should have to . It would be easy for someone like hitler to start this all again. Not nearly enough children are aware of the terrible situation millions of people faced . It is very very sad and all the books i have read make me cry at the terrible situation those familys went through. how they come out of it without been angry people i dont know . they are so much a better person than i would be .
There are students at university today who don’t believe it ever happened at all. It’s disturbing…. This should be on every school curriculum for each secondary year group, and at university to the overseas students who deney it. Once it’s forgotten, it could happen again. We should never forget.