They were 18, 12 or 4 years old and lived through the hell of the Nazis death camps. Today, 80 years after the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, survivors from around the world share their memories and their hopes, perhaps for the last time.
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00:00I decided in 2015, as I am part of the very last generation, that I had to tell.
00:09I often wished they would treat me as well as they treat their dogs, but they didn't.
00:16The essence of this story will always be the ferocity of those who control us.
00:30My father and I were considered able-bodied, and they sent us to the other side to get
00:44undressed.
00:45They washed us, they gave us this striped uniform, and the first food we got was the
00:54following day around noon, a bowl of soup, one bowl for four people, no spoon.
01:06They said, well, you are no better than dogs, eat.
01:12We did, and later on I often wished they would treat me as well as they treat their dogs,
01:21but they didn't.
01:23When we got there, he looked at you and waved you right or left.
01:29We had no idea what it meant, but we found out later.
01:34He looked at you, if he thought that you can work, sent you on one side.
01:39Children, old people were sent to the other side.
01:45They were told, you must be dirty, you were trained for three days, you need a shower.
01:54And they took them into a big building which said bathhouse, make sure you know where you
02:00put your clothes.
02:01Then they took them into the shower room, but instead of water, gas came.
02:09They were killed, unfortunately.
02:12My sister and my mother were amongst them.
02:17They were killed then and burned at night.
02:42They beat her up and threw her in the truck and she left with our whole family.
02:49I stayed there.
02:51I remember my mother's last look for the umpteenth time.
02:55The concentration camp in February of 1943 is when they liquidated my whole family,
03:02after we had already started.
03:05The terrible, terrible hunger we suffered in the ghetto when they brought us a year and a half ago.
03:11And there I was deported with the rest of my family, we stayed directly in Auschwitz.
03:18And from there I was chosen to do medical experiments.
03:24My brother died the next day, he came with me.
03:27Why? Why did they kill him?
03:29No, because they chose me for the experiments, not him.
03:32And nothing else.
03:34I couldn't even say goodbye, hug him.
03:38I was 12 years old.
03:40I couldn't work at all.
03:43There were no 12-year-old children.
03:45You can't find the exact words to describe what we suffered in the camps.
03:57The bottom line of this story will always be the ferocity of those who controlled us.
04:05I was lucky enough to have gout in November 1944.
04:12If I had gout in August 1944, it was the gas chamber.
04:18If you have gout, gas chamber.
04:22It wasn't gout, it was filth, it was filth.
04:27I had never washed since I arrived in the camp.
04:31But by putting this product on me, it washed me.
04:36And what I took for gout was filth.
05:02I didn't even know they were being murdered, because I was chosen to work as a slave.
05:09But not to even have a memory, a pictorial memory of her, what she looked like, just the braid, is extremely hurtful to me.
05:24And whenever I think about the Holocaust, the first thing that comes to my mind is my sister.
05:54Wurtz was a camp where children died of hunger, misery and illness.
06:00I had stopped being present, I was in a bubble of misfortune.
06:08Someone who was 9, 10, 12 years old, well, he remembers, while I have flashes.
06:13And how nobody talked about it, I didn't talk about it either.
06:25We stood as my father, my brother and me.
06:33So we have a series of numbers.
06:37I tell my story to the youth and also to the elderly,
06:46because I think it is important for them to know.
06:51And I also do it for those children who can no longer tell,
06:58who have no mouth to tell what happened.
07:01So I feel a kind of obligation that as long as I can, I must tell.
07:07What I do, I do so that they will remember the Holocaust,
07:13and they will remember the sacrifices, the cruelty of the Nazis,
07:18and the suffering that my family went through, and the Jews of Europe went through.
07:25It is very important that they remember.
07:28I think that after people like me, who served the Holocaust,
07:37and tell it from the original, from the first hand, it is important.
07:44And I also think that over time it will be less and less,
07:50and it will enter the history books as a historical event.
07:55I use testimony because it is selfishly good for me.
08:02I try to believe that all those who listen to me will become passers-by of memory,
08:11and that people will think before saying,
08:15oh, another black man, oh, another Jew.
08:33To go as low as possible and start murdering people
08:39on an industrial way, which is incredible.
09:02In a way, I hope that I leave a trace that it could have existed and that it did exist.
09:09When my husband wrote a text about the few memories I had,
09:17I was 50 years old, my mother called me and said,
09:20it's funny that you wrote all this, I didn't think you were concerned.
09:27Concerned? I was in three camps, with my father and with her, but I was not concerned.
09:33And in the end, it reassured the parents a little to think that the children were not concerned.
09:40What will remain of this memory when there will be no more survivors is the traces of what they left in their lives,
10:05that is, movies, writings, books, videos, all their testimonies.
10:09What will remain is that.
10:11Because our word is not the same as theirs.
10:13Unfortunately, what scares me today is the feeling that no one believes us anymore.
10:17As if there was no more truth with social networks, there is a kind of loss of words.
10:21So I just wonder when it will be gone, when we will speak, will we be believed?
10:26As long as I can do it, I will do it.
10:30So as not to forget.
10:32So as not to forget.
10:34So as not to forget.
10:41The world has not learned anything.
10:43People are so hostile to the South today that a thousand years later ...
10:50It looks so bleak that you don't even want to think about it.
10:55You were hoping that maybe somehow a messiah will come.
11:02Maybe something will happen and this individual or situation will create a place or a world where things are not going to be as orderly as they seem to be going at the moment.
11:22With populism, nationalism raising its ugly head, anti-Semitism, which I call Jew hate and so forth and so on.
11:30I want to have hope.
11:32I want to have hope.
11:34I do all this to ensure that this is fulfilled.
11:39That I have fear, of course I have fear.
11:52I do all this to ensure that this is fulfilled.